What Really Happened That Sunday In Samarra?

by Jim Lobe

The problem is there is an almost total lack of agreement about what happened that Sunday in Samarra, where U.S. soldiers insist they battled dozens of Iraqi guerrillas for some three hours.

Sensing the importance of the 'Battle of Samarra', what actually happened has quickly become the source of considerable controversy and a growing mountain of analysis both in the mainstream media and on Internet websites.

The military at first claimed U.S. forces had killed no less than 46 of the paramilitary 'fedayeen' whom they could identify from their black uniforms and checkered 'kaffiyas' or head scarves. That toll rose to 54 within hours on the basis of debriefings of each unit.

Briefing officers said the battle began when two convoys entering the city from opposite sides were ambushed by more than 60 'fedayeen' who lay in wait for them at either end of the city. The convoys, which included Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams tanks, were on the way to deposit new dinars in a bank located in the centre of town, and the fighting raged through the streets and alleys of the city all the way in and all the way out.

Eleven prisoners were taken, they insisted.

And, despite the high 'fedayeen' death toll, only five of the 100 U.S. soldiers involved in the battle were wounded, leaving top officers to claim a "significant victory," indeed, in terms of body count, probably the most significant since President George W. Bush announced an end to major hostilities in Iraq on May 1.

"They got whacked, and won't try that again," a senior military official back at the Pentagon told 'The New York Times' triumphantly, or, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, told a NATO meeting in Brussels, "They attacked, and they were killed. I think it will be instructive to them."

War enthusiasts, meanwhile, told reporters that the fact that so many guerrillas were involved and that they were obviously intending to ambush the convoys in order to get the bank money was a sure sign of their "desperation;" indeed, that the resistance was growing short of men and cash.

Other analysts who accepted the basic outlines of the military's version of events came to a somewhat more worrisome set of conclusions: that the number of guerrillas showed a new stage in their organization, sophistication, and recruitment; that their uniforms bespoke a growing confidence; and their apparent knowledge of when and how the money was to be delivered meant that their intelligence remains light years ahead of the occupation.

But when reporters began swarming to Samarra -- some roused from their beds by eager military press officers -- the scene was not as they had expected. Nor were the accounts of the townspeople, and, after a day of interviews, an entirely different picture of the Sunday battle emerged.

Doctors and hospital personnel reported only eight Iraqi dead, including one or two elderly religious pilgrims from Iran, a child, a mentally disabled man who was sitting in a taxi, and a woman leaving the drug factory where she worked. The hospital staff said it had treated a total of 54 people for wounds.

"Luckily we evacuated the kindergarten five minutes before we came under attack," said Ibrahim Jassim, a guard interviewed by the London 'Guardian'. "Why did they attack randomly? Why did they shoot a kindergarten with shells?"

Indeed, townspeople interviewed by name described the "battle" more as indiscriminate firing from the tanks other armoured vehicles and random shooting by U.S. soldiers, much of it in the densely populated city centre, while "dozens of guerrillas" moved around the city taking potshots at the U.S. troops at will.

Worse, according to the accounts provided by some sources to the 'Washington Post', the Iraqi resistance grew as men rushed home to get their firearms to join in the fighting.

The military explained the discrepancy in the body counts by suggesting that the guerrillas' bodies had been carried away and secretly buried by their comrades, an assertion for which the reporters could find no evidence either at the city cemetery or anywhere else.

Gen. Mark Kimmit, the deputy director for operations in Iraq, insisted that the 56 number of Iraqi guerrillas killed was accurate, although he also confirmed that, instead of 11 'fedayeen' captured, only one was in fact in U.S. custody.

Justin Raimondo, a writer at antiwar.com, which strongly opposes the occupation, also did a quick calculation suggesting that that explanation did not add up. "We are told that a total of 60 insurgents ambushed those convoys, but if U.S. troops killed 54 and captured 11, that leaves five insurgents to carry away the dead."

Of course, the two accounts could be attributed to the legendary "fog of war." But the gap was so large that the media are already raising serious questions of that dreaded Vietnam-era expression, "credibility," particularly, as pointed out by the 'Los Angeles Times' and Tom Engelhardt of tomdispatch.com, with respect to the inflated body counts that became symbol of the mendacity of the Indochina quagmire.

"U.S. military officials, in their regular news briefings in Iraq, have quietly begun reporting insurgent 'KIA', or killed in action, after months of declining to detail the other side's losses," the 'Times' reported this week.

More worrisome, perhaps, for the Bush administration, however, was the townspeople's disgust with the occupation forces as reflected in what they told the reporters. "Were the French happy under the Nazis?" the U.S.-appointed police chief in Samarra asked the 'Financial Times' after the battle. "It is the same thing here." Other townspeople had much harsher words.

Quite a contrast from what greeted U.S. soldiers eight months ago when they first arrived in the town, as noted by Raimondo who found the following account in the 'Denver Post' back then. "(A)s soon as soldiers with the brigades 1/12 Infantry Battalion had cleared the Baathist compound, taking nine men into custody as possible regime sympathisers, (Col. Fred) Rudesheim found himself to be a popular man in Samarra. All day long, men came, each offering information."

Now, eight months later, Rudesheim, who has presided over Samarra ever since, insisted the townspeople were still with him. "What we hear is that the people of Samarra are fed up (with the guerrillas)," he told reporters.

SFTT.org, a military website featured a message from an anonymous U.S. "combat leader" who claims to have been in the Samarra ambush who complained that Rudesheim "is not trained in counter-insurgency, and my soldiers are taking the heat."

"We drive around in convoys, blast the hell out of the area, break down doors and search buildings; but the guerillas continue to attacks (sic) us. It does not take a (Gen.) George Patton to see we are using the wrong tactics against these people," it said.