Some Witnesses Descriptions, Picture Disagree on Least One Iraqi Market Bomber

An interesting problem has arisen in identifying who those Iraqi women bombers might be.

The Iraqi government even showed a couple of pictures of heads from women who they claim were the bombers, both dark haired and showing signs of Down's syndrome to an LA Times reporter .

But some witnesses say that at least one of the bombers was a blond without Down's syndrome signs. 

Someone must have known the bombers.  The authorities should be able to get i.d.s on them.

The Washington Post says in “Death Toll Rises in Friday's Baghdad Bomb Attacks”:

some shopkeepers in the two Baghdad markets recognized them as regular visitors to the area.

The New York Times reports in “Two Bombings Wreak Carnage in Iraqi Capital ":

Maj. Gen. Abdul Kareem al-Ezzi, a senior officer in the Ministry of Interior police commandos, said officials at the Ghazil market concluded after studying the bomber’s severed head that she had Down syndrome. But Iraqi officials have made similar claims in the past, and it was not immediately clear whether the bomber’s head could have been distorted by the blast.

 Indeed, there may have been many heads available to be used to show reporters after the blast. Two were chosen.  Did they have to be the exact heads of the perpetrators?

Another report at the Washington Post "US, Iraqis Vow to Avenge Bombings" indicates that someone sneaked a snap with a cellphone camera of the pictures offered for viewing by a few reporters.

  A cell phone image of one of the heads viewed by The Associated Press was inconclusive.

More interesting statements in the report linked immediately above:

Iraqis in Baghdad demanded more protection for markets, saying one of the bombers wasn't searched because she was known as local beggar and the male guards were reluctant to search women because of Islamic sensitivities.

Ali Nassir, a 30-year-old day laborer whose hobby is raising birds, said people with disabilities often beg for food and money at the weekly al-Ghazl pet bazaar on Fridays.

"I saw the suicide bomber and she was begging," Nassir said, adding the woman was known to the vendors. "The security guards did not search her because she is a woman and because it is not unusual to have beggars, mainly women and children, moving around in the market."

... 

Onlookers gathered at the New Baghdad pigeon market Saturday ...

Haider Jabar, a 28-year-old government employee who lives near the market and often goes for a stroll among the cages, said the woman used in that attack was a stranger to the locals.

"The woman seemed to be handicapped. It was uncommon to have a woman walking inside New Baghdad bird market, this fact had attracted many teenagers who had gathered around her at the time of the explosion," he said.

Notice above that some journalists have learned not to trust the Iraqi government's collection of evidence and announcements of “facts”. Some of the witnesses may, in fact have been told the heads with signs of Down's syndrome were the bombers. How many themselves actually saw the explosions?

The US military may be accepting the Iraqi version because it helps mitigate the public relations disasters of the horrendous practices they use in the land, like targeting whole families, and endangering and terrorizing complete neighborhoods to get one “insurgent”.

Like with the Blackwater massacre of Iraqis in September it may take a lot of time before even a decent sketch of what happened is known. Also, since this investigation will be done by the Iraqi government mostly, and it is an election year here, we may never know.  This has already become great subject of talking points for warmongers, mostly Republicans, in our midst.  Our own government hasn't been very upright about sticking to facts on various touchy subjects itself.  Remember how it tried to cover for Blackwater last year?

Will our journalists, especially those exposed to the whims of the Iraqi and American governments be able to keep their spines intact and root out the facts?

 It's time for them to earn the accolades they often give themselves.

Wow. Checking for more details on this report just now I see that I'm not the only one who is skeptical and I am in good company.

I recommend Greg Mitchells piece at Editor and Publisher "Media's Report on 'Mentally Disabled" Iraqi Suicide Bombers Now Questioned" 

Fair use excerpt:

The press and cable TV news carried the stark report all day Friday: A pair of bloody suicide bombings carried out in Iraq by "mentally disabled" women who were tricked into wearing bomb vests detonated from nearby by "al-Qaeda in Iraq" operatives.

Of course, this is all too possible -- but most of the media presented it as fact, rather than wild speculation. The Washington Post headline, for example, carried no qualifier: 'Mentally Disabled Women Used in Bombings."

It turns out on the following day, that the evidence for the mentally disabled part was that one of the alleged bombers' head recovered after the blast was deformed, suggesting Down's syndrome. Now the AP and The New York Times point out that the severed head may have merely been deformed by the blast.

Also, McClatchy's crack Baghdad bureau now reports that Iraqi officials "have made similar claims in the past" about mentally crippled bombers -- and a police official told them "that authorities were still investigating whether the explosion at the second market might have come from a bomb hidden in a cage or a box of eggs." 

I'm going to have to find that McClatchy report. 

At  his blog, Mitchell has even more skepticism reported, this time by a forensic expert on "those heads".  (He doesn't seem to have seen the actual pictures as they haven't been distributed, but is talking about the force of an explosion on a body when it is triggered upon the body itself.  Please read the post (and check out Greg's new book) at "Pressing Issues: Print the headline, then let the facts catch up with it".

tags: iraq  war  suicide bombers  bush administration  military  lies  

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