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Originally Posted by muspell
Well, we are seeing conflicting stories, so we're all excused for just about everything, and all bets are off as usual.
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Indeed. The public is constantly being pushed from side to side as a ping pong ball, as new conflicting versions emerge. All we can do is try to seap through the propaganda and the fabrication and try to get at the truth.
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On the other hand, we're having articles that do not mention anything about a safe house, or at least a staging point, which there certainly are given enough evidence to suggest, but only the wedding and the following carnage. And the doctor of the small village counts the dead, and some reporter get the names of ten children who died in the incident(WP).
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The problem is that the US Army has no independent source to corroborate their version of the events. All the media outlets that reported the story acording to the US version have done so by basing themselfs solely on the Armyīs version. There arenīt any eyewitnesses, any depositions, or any independent reporter to corroborate their side. While the exact opposite happens for the other contender. The iraqis have a village doctor, eyewitnesses, the neighbours, the surviving victims, and an undetermined number of iraqi and western reporters. They have pictures, the bombed site that can be examined, and a whole lot of forensic evidence. While the US Army has only the officer in chargeīs word. They presented no evidence at all. Just words.
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It occurs to me that both stories cannot be true at the same time. So it's apparently a question of how much you trust the sources, and after that(as an excercise), a question of whether bombing a wedding tent, it's guests and half the village is excusable if the intel suggests it was a gathering of foreign fighters there and they found genuine terrorist equipment(tm) nearby. For some reason, it seems, it's excusable for a staggering amount of americans on this board if there were - no children - found among the dead.
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Both sides canīt be completely true at the same time, but they can both have some truth to their reports. Maybe the place WAS a safe spot, and maybe they were ALSO having a wedding. One does not exclude the other.
All we can do is seap through the propaganda and the fabrication and hopefully we can get at the truth.
However, i donīt think it would make a bit of diference wether the place was a safe house, or wether there was a wedding. In the end, we have 40 dead, that cannot be excused by the need to conduct anti-terror operations. Itīs a case of excessive use of force, no matter how you cut it.
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But I don't buy the "core of the story" theory, specially not when there are very few sources that see different things.
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Why not? When you have conflicting stories, the parts of the story where both sides agree is the "core". If neither side disputes the fact that there was an incident, then thatīs part of the core. No one side disputes that there were 40 dead, so thatīs the core aswell. No side disputes where it happened, so that is part of the core aswell. We take that basis and piece it together. The rest of it, well we will have to seap through the sewage to get at it. But the core stands. If by any chance there is nothing at all that both sides agree to, then chances are they are not talking of the same thing.
We can be sure of two things, that make the core of this incident:
We know WHERE it happened, and we know WHEN it happened. Thatīs a start.
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In any case, a headline like "American forces successfully take out covert foreign fighter reqruitment centre, staging point and disperse local drug cartel at the same time - local PD says 'pleased to assist american friends'" seems a bit off, though.
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Where was that? I donīt remember seing any title in those lines. But my bet is it was taken from FOX.
