BBC REPORTS ON DUBIOUS CLAIM OF U.S. MILITARY THAT IT KILLED 17 "QAEDA" MEMBERS

The U.S. military, probably at the direction of Bush and Cheney, has been trying to color all of its military actions in Iraq as a battle against Qaeda. See my posts of June 24, 2007 ("Reporters Lazy on Claim of U.S. to "Fight against Qaeda"), and June 23, 2007 ("Are All Insurgents in Iraq Tied to Al Qaeda"). Jim Muir of the BBC reports today on a U.S. raid against the town of Al Kahlis, just north of Baquba. On June 22, the U.S. military reported on a raid in the town which resulted in "17 Qaeda members" being killed. However, the town leaders and residents dispute that the dead were members of Al Qaeda. They claim the U.S. attacked ordinary people who were town guards.

"But villagers in largely-Shia al-Khalis say that those who died had nothing to do with al-Qaeda. They say they were local village guards trying to protect the township from exactly the kind of attack by insurgents the US military says it foiled.

"They say that of 16 guards, 11 were killed and five others injured - two of them seriously - when US helicopters fired rockets at them and then strafed them with heavy machine gun fire.
Minutes before the attack, they had been co-operating with an Iraqi police unit raiding a suspected insurgent hideout, the villagers said.


"They added that the guards, lightly armed with the AK47 assault rifles that are a feature of practically every home in Iraq, were essentially a local neighbourhood watch paid by the village to monitor the dangerous insurgent-ridden area to the immediate south-west at Arab Shawkeh and Hibhib, where the al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed a year ago. "

This is the trouble with reports coming from the U.S. military in Iraq. We know Gen. Petraeus and the other generals there are under pressure from Congress and U.S. public opinion to report on "progress" from the surge. Consequently, it seems that every time the U.S. kills Iraqis, it is Qaeda members who are killed.

This is bad enough, but it is compounded multiple times by having a docile news media repeat everything the generals say without inquiring further or obtaining independent sources for what the army says. If the army says it is Qaeda, then the reporters repeat the line verbatim, notwithstanding that there should be suspicion that Qaeda could not possibly have that many members in the Sunni areas where Qaeda members are mostly foreign Arabs, and where the Iraqis Shia have long been the target of the mostly Sunni foreign members of Qaeda.

Writes Jim Muir:

"The families of those who died are seeking a meeting with the head of the al-Khalis town council. They are incensed that the village guards should be described as "al-Qaeda gunmen".

"All but two of those killed were Shia and they have been buried at Najaf. The other two who were from the local minority Sunni community. "

In criticising the media, I understand being a reporter in Iraq is most dangerous. There is the ever present imminent danger of being shot or kidnapped. Most reporters thus are understandably reluctant to go out of the green zone on their own, or to travel to towns outside Baghdad to verify the reports coming out of the U.S. military's public affairs office. Nevertheless, the media, including NPR's news department, need to be much more careful about mouthing the lines of the U.S. military without more investigation, especially when there are claims that Al Qaeda is involved. As I wrote in some of my posts indicated above, Bush and Cheney would love to cast the whole Iraq misadventure as one which is the "leading front" in the "war on terror." They could then justify their militaristic invasion and aggression and sell it to the American people as a logical development of responding to the attack on 9/11.

The BBC does immense service with its reporting on this matter. Concludes Jim Muir:

"If the villagers' account is true, the incident would raise many questions, including:
On what basis did the US helicopters launch their attack that night?

"How many other coalition reports of successes against "al-Qaeda fighters" are based on similar mistakes, especially when powerful remote weaponry is used?

"The incident also highlights the problems the news media face in verifying such combat incidents in remote areas where communications are disrupted, where direct independent access is impossible because of the many lethal dangers they would face, and where only the official military version of events is available."