US rejects Iraqi accusations on deadly night raid (but had advisors there)

[maddezmom]

~snip~
Amid a swirl of conflicting versions of the events late Sunday, the US military said Iraqi special forces raided a meeting hall in northeast Baghdad being used by an insurgent cell and killed 16 people and detained 18 others.

`snip~

"Iraqi commandos and soldiers from the Iraqi counter-terrorism force killed 16 insurgents and wounded three others during a house-to-house search on an objective with multiple structures," said the US military.

The statement added that the Iraqi special forces "received fire almost immediately from several buildings near the target area. They maintained the outer perimeter that enabled an assault force to move quickly to clear and secure the objective, a compound of several buildings."

The US military admitted that members of the US special forces were present in an advisory capacity and said that "no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation."

more;http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060327/ts_afp/iraq_060327090903

This story stinks to high heaven.

[Catrina]

1. Good news is just pouring out of Iraq today ~ multiple beheadings

massacres, firefights in Baghdad, candy blowing up children, even on the educational front there's news, the beheading of a teacher in front of his students, which is probably good news if you're an Iraqi who thought the teacher was a CIA or Mossad operative.

Bush was warned he would open up a Pandora's box if he invaded that country.

I think after this is all over, this country will have to find a way to make sure that one man cannot make, or coerce others to make disastrous and dangerous decisions like this ever again.

[anitar1]

2. You are so right , Catruna. I envision not a president but

a panel of 6 or 8 people instead of a president. I think the day has come to look at a new system.We can never allow this to happen again. The current system is screwed.It seems old hat to me, We are living in a dream world to even allow this to happen again.

[malaise]

3. But soldiers were sharing out sweets

somewhere and the media should find and carry this as priority:sarcasm:

[saigon68]

14. GRAPHIC STUFF

Men view the floor at the Mustafa mosque following a gunfight on Sunday night between U.S. troops and Iraqis in Baghdad, March 27, 2006. (Ali Jasim/Reuters)






Relatives load a coffin containing the body of one of thirty victims of the continuing sectarian slaughter into a truck outside Baghdad, Iraq Monday March 27, 2006. The victims, most of them beheaded, were found dumped on a village road north of Baghdad. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

[maddezmom]

4. more details

AP reporters who visited the scene Monday morning said the site of the attack was clearly a neighborhood Shiite mosque complex, although the American military insisted, "no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation."

Baghdad police said at least 22 were killed in the attack after gunmen fired on the joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol from a position in the neighborhood but not from the mosque. Police and representatives of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who holds great sway among poor Shiites in the eastern section of Baghdad, said all those killed were in the complex for evening prayers and no gunmen were there.

AP Television News videotape shot Monday showed crumbling walls and disarray in a compound used as a gathering place for prayer. It was filled with religious posters and strung with banners denoucing the attack. Mourners were gathering for funerals for the dead.

Sunday night video showed a tangle of dead men with gunshot wounds on the floor of what was said by the cameraman to be the imam's living quarters, attached to the mosque itself. The compound, once used by Saddam Hussein's government, consists of a political party office, the mosque and quarters for the imam.

The tape showed 5.56 mm shell casings scattered about the floor. U.S. forces use that caliber ammunition. A grieving man in white Arab robes stepped among the bodies strewn across the blood-smeared floor.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060327/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq;_

[Kagemusha]

6. Juan Cole's site clarifies this issue well

The place isn't a mosque purely on a technicality; it is a Shiite place of worship. (I likened it on another thread to a synagogue vs. a church.) So to the Shiites, it's bad. Very bad. And the US claiming it's not a mosque is an irrelevant technicality.

[Dover]

5. Here's some truth...>

http://www.chris-floyd.com/march/

[Just Me]

12. OH! MY! GAWD!!!!!!

:cry:

OMG!

:cry:

How will we EVER make up for so much injustice and horror?!?!?!

:cry:

[grytpype]

7. Juan Cole's take on this: they attacked the wrong compound!

"Then the US and Iraqi forces say they raided a terror cell in Adhamiyah. Adhamiyah is a Sunni district of Baghdad and is still Baath territory.

"But somehow the joint US-Iraqi force ended up north, at the Shiite Shaab district. They say that they took fire from Mahdi Army militiamen. But there aren't any such Mahdi Army men in Adhamiyah. I have a sinking feeling that instead of raiding a Sunni Arab building in Adhamiyah, they got disoriented and attacked a Shiite religious center in nearby Shaab instead. Iraqi television angrily showed twenty unarmed corpses on the floor of the religious center, denouncing the US for killing innocent worshippers."

[Kagemusha]

8. Now the main Shiite party is calling for security transfer to Iraqis.

That is, the US has, brilliantly, managed to piss off Sadrists, Dawa AND Sciri/Badr all in one calendar day. It's hard work, you know.

[HeatherDawn]

9. No civil war in Iraq, huh?

[gratuitous]

10. You doggone libruls!

Why don't you report on the millions of Iraqis who weren't beheaded, and the (probably) thousands of mosques and places of worship that weren't entered or damaged by U.S. forces? Always with the negative waves, you libruls. Always with the negative waves.

[rodeodance]

11. our just being there-advisory--puts our troops in the midst of trouble.

The US military admitted that members of the US special forces were present in an advisory capacity and said that "no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation."

[killbotfactory]

13. The "advisors" left their shell casings there

Whoops!

[daleo]

15. Advisor- "I advise you to shoot these guys"

Bang, bang.

"See, just like that."