Rory McCarthy (Guardian Unltd): Reality and rhetoric in Iraq

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Wednesday September 24

Iraq: the reality and rhetoric
Our correspondent reports from al-Jisr, scene of the killing of three farmers at hands of US troops
By Rory McCarthy

It was the middle of the night when the crack paratroopers from America's 82nd Airborne Division arrived outside Ali Khalaf's farmhouse in the parched fields of central Iraq.
Some of the family were asleep on mattresses in the dirt yard outside the single-storey house. Ali's brother Ahmad lay there with his wife, Hudood, 25, and their two young sons and so they were the first to hear the soldiers as they approached the house at around 2am yesterday . . . .
By the family's account, the troops of the 82nd Airborne - known proudly as the "All American" - opened up a devastating barrage of gunfire lasting for at least an hour. When the shooting stopped, three farmers were dead and three others were injured, including Hudood's two sons, Tassin, 12, and Hussein, 10.
Yesterday a US military spokesman in Baghdad, Specialist Nicole Thompson, insisted that the troops came under attack from "unknown forces". The "unknown forces" ran into a building, which was surrounded by the troops who then called in an air strike. "I can confirm at least one enemy dead," she said.

Iraq is not like Vietnam, they say.
Read more.