QandO

June 03, 2004

The Wedding Party
Posted by Jon Henke

Just received an email that originated with an officer at the Pentagon (via a couple people I regard as reputable) about the purported "wedding party" that it was alleged the US attacked. I'll paraphrase for privacy (these are the unclassified details of a classified brief, which included many pictures), while keeping the message intact.
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- Weddings traditionally held on Thursdays in Iraq due to day of rest on Friday - raid took place on Tuesday night.

- Large stocks of food, bedding, (many) medical supplies in only permanent residence.

- Ammunition and weapons, as well as an apparent document forging set up. Meat was still frozen solid, and there were no stocks of dishes, plates, etc.

- Contrary to media reports, no "Nuptial Tent" was found and a 1KM area around the site was searched.

- No evidence of any means of support (ex: sheep farming) for the house. Appeared to be a smuggler way station - similar to others found in the past.

- "Wedding guests" (dead) were almost all men of military age, only a couple of women, no elders at all and only one child (wounded) noted. All dressed as city dwellers, not Bedouins who would hold a wedding at such a location.

No ID on any of the deceased. Only ID's found were in a nice neat stack inside the house - less of those than there were people at the site.

- Weapons included RPG's, there were also military binoculars, and IED making material.

- Lots of clothing prepackaged in pants and shirt sets. No gifts, no decorations, no food set out or left over, and the money recovered was all in the pockets of the "guests".

I strongly suspect that after their Foreign Fighter way station got whacked, they tried to set it up to look like what happened in Afghanistan when a wedding was actually hit due to celebratory firing being taken for ground fire by orbiting aircraft. Our BDA assessment was made by people on the site.

Bottom line assessment: Good hit - no wedding. These were foreign fighters that had just crossed into Iraq.
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UPDATE: Added to the Beltway Traffic Jam.

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