MSM Silence on Al Hamira

This is just one example of the heinous atrocities being comitted by al Qadea, and not a peep out of the NBC/ABC/CBS/CNN/PBS/MSNBC conglomerate:  Bless the Beasts and Children

 

Where did they go?

On 29 June, American and Iraqi soldiers were again fighting side-by-side as soldiers from Charley Company 1-12 CAV—led by Captain Clayton Combs—and Iraqi soldiers from the 5th IA, closed in on a village on the outskirts of Baqubah. The village had the apparent misfortune of being located near a main road—about 3.5 miles from FOB Warhorse—that al Qaeda liked to bomb. Al Qaeda had taken over the village. As Iraqi and American soldiers moved in, they came under light contact; but the bombs planted in the roads (and maybe in the houses) were the real threat. The firefight progressed. American missiles were fired. The enemy might have been trying to bait Iraqi and American soldiers into ambush, but it did not work. The village was riddled with bombs, some of them large enough to destroy a tank. One by one, experts destroyed the bombs, leaving small and large craters in the unpaved roads. The village was abandoned. All the people were gone. But whereAmerican soldiers began unloading dozens of body bags, which the Iraqi soldiers, with grim looks, carried into the village.

 

The houses all were empty. We passed by two donkeys each shot in the neck. Al Qaeda had killed their livestock.

Al Qaeda often plants bombs inside the dead bodies of the animals and people they’ve killed. They have rigged children’s bodies with explosives.

……We walked into the palm groves nearby. There was a terrible stench. The heat and the vegetation reminded me of the Killing Fields in Cambodia where I had visited shortly before the most recent trip to Iraq.

Soldiers from 5th IA said they’d found some of the villagers: They were dead.

Iraqi soldiers were excavating several graves.

The bodies were fresh, and the smell was overwhelming. A small group of American soldiers were keeping a respectable distance, but the area was filled with Iraqi soldiers from 5th IA.

I told the Iraqi commander, Captain Baker, that it was important that Americans see this; he took me around the graves and showed more than I wanted to see. He said the people had been murdered by al Qaeda. I made video of him speaking, and of the horrible scene. The heat and stench were crushingly oppressive and broken only by the sounds of shovels as Iraqi soldiers kept digging.

There were bodies of men, women and children. Al Qaeda slaughters families everywhere: as these graves were being unearthed, more bombs were found in London.

There was no sign of the sacred at this gravesite.

Stashed in shallow graves.  The stench felt like punches in the stomach.

Some of the bodies seemed fresh. The air temperature was about 115°F.

One of the graves.

By the time I arrived, 5th IA had uncovered parts of six bodies. But from what I could see, they did not all appear to have been murdered at once. In one grave, there were exposed ribs and other bones, although there was still flesh on the bones.

The digging was the first part of the gruesome job.

Hot, hard work and as it progressed, the stench got worse and worse. An Iraqi soldier carefully sprinkled water on the corpses.

Soldiers from 5th IA said al Qaeda had cut the heads off the children. Had al Qaeda murdered the children in front of their parents? Maybe it had been the other way around: maybe they had murdered the parents in front of the children. Maybe they had forced the father to dig the graves of his children.

Feet of a woman.

Iraqi soldiers were barely talking. All had grim looks and everybody seemed to want to be a million miles away. Yet these Iraqi soldiers helped me do my job.

Later in the day, some of the soldiers from the unit I share a tent with, the C-52, told me that one of their Kit Carson scouts (comprised of some of our previous enemies who have turned on al Qaeda) had pointed out an al Qaeda who had cut off the heads of children. Soldiers from C-52 say that the Kit Carson scout freaked out and tried to hide when he spotted the man he identified as an al Qaeda operative. Just how (or if) the scout really knew the man had beheaded children was unknown to the soldiers of C-52, but they took the suspected al Qaeda to the police, who knew the man. C-52 soldiers told me the Iraqi police were inflamed, and that one policeman in particular was crazed with intent to kill the man who they said had the blood of Iraqi children on his hands. According to the story told to me on 30 June, it took almost 45 minutes for the C-52 soldiers to calm down the policeman who had drawn his pistol to execute the al Qaeda man. That same policeman nearly lost his mind when an American soldier then gave the al Qaeda man a drink of cold water.

While that was happening elsewhere in Baqubah, we stood around the stinking graves of people who had gotten a close-up view of al Qaeda-style justice. The villagers’ bodies were rotting in the heat before us.

The blade of the shovel struck more fingers, and the Iraqi soldiers stopped and pointed to the fingers so I could film them. But I had seen enough and pulled back into the palm groves.

Captain Baker, commanding the 3-25 of the 5th IA.

Captain Baker gave an important interview on video. Captain Baker, who in Captain Combs’ words is “an excellent soldier,” is from the Kurdish north, but Baker said he is Iraqi first, Kurdish second. He told me American Special Forces had trained him, and he shared some interesting details about the killing of Zarqawi which occurred back in 2006.  Zarqawi had been the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, until he was killed nearby by U.S. bombs.

LINK:

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/bless-the-beasts-and-children.htm

And an update:

Baqubah, Iraq

Since the publication of “Bless the Beasts and Children,” many questions have arisen: some of which I can and will answer here, and some whose answers lie elsewhere.

Today, late afternoon on 3 July in Baqubah, Colonel Hiduit from 2nd Brigade 5th Iraqi Army was able to provide some additional details about the murders, as the ongoing investigation begins to yield more facts. The name of the village was not on any maps I examined while preparing the dispatch, but Colonel Hiduit said the name is al Hamira. Coordinates to the area of the gravesites are MC 679 381.

In my dispatch, I reported that six people were killed, but mentioned that Iraqi soldiers were still digging out bodies when I left. A few hours ago, Colonel Hiduit put the number at 10-14, and said the search for bodies had ended. I made video of the graves, bodies and of interviews with Iraqi and American soldiers while we still were at the scene and have been working to make material from this available on this website.

As the investigation unfolds more pertinent details, I’ll continue to update the story. But the biggest question rippling across the internet—“Why hasn’t the mainstream media picked this up?”—is something only representatives of mainstream media can answer.

In fairness, several large outlets did publish it online: National Review Online and Fox News were both quick to place the story prominently on their websites. A few others also published excerpts. It was even briefly up on the Drudge Report. On the blog front, Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt, Blackfive, Andrew Sullivan, Captain’s Quarters and many others picked it up.

But for those publications who actually had people embedded in Baqubah when the story first broke and still failed to cover it, their malaise is inexplicable. I do not know why all failed to report the murders and booby-trapped village: apparently no reporters bothered to go out there, even though it’s only about 3.5 miles from this base. Any one of the reporters currently in Baqubah could still go to these coordinates and follow his or her nose and find the gravesites.

LINK:

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/update-on-bless-the-beasts-and-children.htm

And this from World Net Daily:

‘Nobody lifted a finger’

In an exchange of e-mails with WND, since Yon was reporting this week from a region with no telephone signal, he confirmed his report.

He was in Buqubah for several reasons.

“One of those reasons was that AP had just reported a massacre as fact which turned out to be fallacy. Secondly, this mass murder I described in ‘Bless the Beasts and Children’ occurred only about 3.5 miles from where I am writing to you tonight. There were reporters here during that time, including from AP, and AP also had a stringer here. (Meaning they had two.) The ‘massacre’ that turned out to be a farce but was reported by AP happened just days before my report of a real massacre, but AP and others simply ignored despite having assets only minutes away,” he said.

“I gave the name of the village, grid coordinates, photos and posted video, and published names of Iraqi and American officials who were very easy to reach. Nobody lifted a finger. This upset a lot of people at home, and rightfully so. I was here with hard evidence – photos, video, grid coordinates and plenty of witnesses, yet flatline from MSM,” he told WND.

But he stayed in the area, asking questions.

“That’s when one Iraqi official mentioned the baking,” Yon said, a report he said later was confirmed for him by other Iraqi sources.

“Perhaps it’s urban legend. I have no idea. But my reporting was spot on. … I quoted someone and offered zero opinion,” Yon, whose work is financed directly by his readers, told WND.

He said while he did not witness this, there have been myriad other atrocities.

“I have not just heard about them, I have seen them,” he told WND.

Yon said in another dispatch he witnessed the excavation of the heads of decapitated children.

“There is no imaginary line of credulity that al-Qaida might cross should it go from beheading children to baking them,” he wrote.

He added: “Al-Qaida: the organization that gleefully bragged about murdering roughly 3,000 people by smashing jets full of civilians into buildings and earth. Al-Qaida in Iraq: who proudly broadcast their penchant for sawing off the heads of living breathing people, and in such a manner as to ensure lots of spurting blood and gurgles of final pain, in some cases with the added flourish of the executioner raising up the severed head and squealing excitedly.”

“People at home might find it incredible, improbable, even impossible. Yet here in combat with al-Qaida, the idea is no more improbable-sounding than someone saying ‘The chicken crossed the road.’ Maybe the chicken crossed the road. Maybe not. The veterans I’ve been talking with here have no difficulty imagining the chicken crossing the road, or al-Qaida roasting kids. Sickening, yes. Improbable, no,” he said.

“One clear indicator of just how bad a terrorist group is, is when battle-hardened soldiers – and writers like me who travel with them – don’t find it hard to believe a story which purports that al-Qaida had baked a child and set his roasted body out as the main course at a lunch for his parents,” he said.

“The moral equivalency argument needs to be crushed. We detain someone without due process and AQI bakes a child and feeds him to his family. Yet many people in the West are saying, ‘We’re no better.'”

LINK:

http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56643

This is the kind of enemy we face; brutal, inhuman, and unremorseful.   Soldiers tasked with guarding terrorist prisoners at Abu Grahib and GITMO are scrutinized ad nauseum by a hostile media, while al Qadea and Taliban butchers get a pass.  We need to stop taking prisoners.