Dear Mr. Wilson, I read your report with interest. I read the following account of the US version in the British Independent yesterday, and am curious how you regard it:
(excerpt)
"The Americans troops were from the 84th Airborne Division, deployed late last week to stop looting and a roaring local arms trade. They fired at the crowd from Fallujah's al-Kaat primary and secondary school, a pale-yellow utilitarian concrete building of two storeys and about the length of seven terraced houses. They were shooting from the front of the upper floor and from the roof at people across the road - a distance of several dozen yards.
According to Lt-Col Eric Nantz, the troops were being shot at and stones had been thrown. They tried to disperse the crowd with loudspeaker warnings but in vain, he said. Under threat, they fired back.
Yet there are no bullet holes visible at the front of the school building or tell-tale marks of a firefight. The place is unmarked. By contrast, the houses opposite - numbers 5, 7, 9, and 13 - are punctured with machine-gun fire, which tore away lumps of concrete the size of a hand and punched holes as deep as the length of a ballpoint pen. Asked to explain the absence of bullet holes, Lt-Col Nantz said that the Iraqi fire had gone over the soldiers' heads. We were taken to see two bullet holes in an upper window and some marks on a wall, but they were on another side of the school building.
There are other troubling questions. Lt-Col Nantz said that the troops had been fired on from a house across the road. Several light machineguns were produced, which the Americans said were found at the scene. If true, this was an Iraqi suicide mission - anyone attacking the post from a fixed position within 40 yards would have had no chance of survival.
The American claim that there were 25 guns in the crowd would also indicate that the demonstrators had had a death wish or were stupid. Iraqis have learnt in the past few weeks that if they fail to stop their cars quickly enough at an American-manned checkpoint, they may well be shot.
To walk, at night, up to a US army outpost brandishing guns and chanting anti-American slogans would have been an act of madness.
But these facts - all of which point to a frightened, panicked and trigger-happy force that opened fire because it did not feel its base was safe - matter less than the larger political implications of the event. "
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=401718
I am inclined to wonder, will the US media do such investigative reporting and challenge the US version based on reporters' own observations, or simply report the US version with the Iraqi version? I believe that reporters in the US ought to be as capable as British reporters when it comes to assessing the veracity of Central Command's claims.
Sincerely ,
Stephen Philion
MPLS, MN