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Iraq Wedding Film Challenges U.S. on Air Strike
Mon May 24, 2004 04:31 AM ET

By Tom Perry
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - New video showing Iraqis singing and dancing at a desert wedding begged more questions on Monday about a U.S. air strike last week that killed about 40 people.

The U.S. military has insisted most of the dead were foreign guerrilla fighters who had slipped over the nearby Syrian border. Local people say the Americans massacred wedding guests.

Associated Press Television News said it obtained the footage from a survivor of the strike early on May 19.

The U.S. military says troops found no signs of a wedding in the wreckage left at the remote hamlet of Mogr al-Deeb. But a spokesman, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, conceded on Saturday that six women were killed in the strike and a celebration may have been taking place: "Bad people have parties too," he said.

The film shows pick-up trucks racing across the desert -- many of the dead came from the regional capital Ramadi -- men dancing in a tent, children playing and a musician playing an electric organ. The same man later appeared dead in a shroud.

Ultimately the truth may count for less than the perception; many Iraqis, exasperated by 14 months of occupation and by a scandal over the abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers, find it easy to believe a tale of American brutality or incompetence.

The video is unwelcome news for Washington on a day when it is to present a proposal at the United Nations seeking approval for its continued military presence in Iraq following a handover of sovereignty to an interim government on June 30.

Nor will it help President Bush, who is to make a televised speech to the nation at midnight GMT that will lay out his strategy in Iraq. Bush's chances of re-election in November have suffered as Americans question the cost in lives and dollars of occupying Iraq.

It remains to be seen how close an ally the future independent Iraq will be to Washington.

U.N. CRITICISM

The top U.N. human rights official, Bertrand Ramcharan, said even if some of those at the house in Mogr al-Deeb were involved in criminal activity, that was no excuse for killing so many people. Continued ...

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