Latest on the "wedding party" from DOD
The most recent briefing from the DOD can be found here. Be sure to read the stuff on other subjects as well:
Q Thanks, Dan. Do you have anything new, General, on the attack out west that resulted in people dying at the wedding party?
GEN. KIMMITT: Yes, let me show a couple of slides on that, if I could. Here are some of the items that were picked up as part of the operation. You can see a significant number of weapons. These are not just standard binoculars, but they're the type of binoculars that had engraved in them a reticule pattern so that you can use them to adjust artillery. These are battery packs already connected for use to power improvised explosive devices. This was a significant amount of medical gear that was found - syringes, needles - some of that could well be drug-related. We're having those white, powdery substances tested to see what it is. Our suspicion is it may be cocaine. Next slide.
What was interesting about the building itself was that the building seemed to be somewhat of a dormitory. You had over 300 sets of bedding here in it. You had a tremendous number of pre-packaged clothing. Apparently about 100 sets of pre-packaged clothing, expected that when foreign fighters come in from other countries, they come to this location, they change their clothes in typical clothing sets. We also had in there a waist-high medical table for examination and for treatment, and you can see that they also had about, as I said earlier, about 300 sets of bedding. Next slide.
We found a significant number of identity cards, ID-making machine, capability to make exit visas for Iraq, a couple of passports -- in this case, one from Sudan. We could go on and on and on about the significant amount of pocket litter that was found and all the other intelligence that was found, but let me go over a little bit of it and just hit the highlights.
There were a couple of other items that we found quite interesting. None of the bodies had identification of any kind on them -- no ID cards, no wallets, no pictures -- they had watches, and that was about the only way you could identify one person from another, was by their type of watches. We feel that was an indicator that this was a high- risk meeting of high-level anti-coalition forces. There was a tremendous number of incriminating pocket litter -- a lot of telephone numbers to foreign countries -- Afghanistan, Sudan, and a number of others.
This was purportedly a ranch, but there was no indication of ranching activities. Most of the homes in the remote desert exist to support sheep ranching operations. There was no evidence of livestock, however, present at that location. There were large farm trucks present, but there was no indication that they had ever been used for ranching. Bedding for over 300 people, a medical treatment room, a number of terrorist training manuals, suspected forged Iraqi IDs, and to the allegation that there was a wedding going on, there was no evidence of a wedding. There were no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration, no gifts. All the men were almost all military-age; no family elders that one would expect to see at an event of this type. Contrary to media reports, there was no wedding tent, no nuptial tent present within a kilometer of the objective.
So, again, there still are a number of inconsistencies, and we acknowledge those inconsistencies between what we saw on the APTM video and what we found on the ground, and that's why we are continuing to explore all possibilities of what happened on the ground. But the more that we look at the intelligence, the more that we look at the post-strike intelligence, the more that we continue to dig into what we found at that location, the more that we are persuaded that there was not a wedding going on. There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too. Bad people have parties, too, and it may have been that what was seen as some sort of celebration or spoken to as a celebration, may have just been a meeting in the middle of the desert by some people that were conducting either criminal or terrorist activities, and that's the conclusion that we are continuing to draw the more that we look at the material evidence, the intelligence evidence, the post-strike intelligence, the follow-up intelligence.
Q Can I just ask one follow-up on that.
GEN. KIMMITT: Sure.
Q Do you have information on women or children being killed as a result of this?
GEN. KIMMITT: As we said, we believe there were a handful of women there at that location. We believe six were killed. We acknowledged that in all of our reports. We don't believe that there were any children killed. Still no reports, and we've gone back to the soldiers involved in this; still no reports of any children being killed.
Q Have you matched the footage at all to this area? I mean, does it appear to have been taken there?
GEN. KIMMITT: No, in fact, as I understand, the film was taken in Ramadi -- that they had brought all the bodies from that location over to Ar Ramadi. That was my understanding. But nonetheless, none of the geography in those videos matched the geography of this open area.
Now, having said that, there are still some inconsistencies. We still remain open-minded about this. We will continue to look into everything that is provided to us in the way of evidence.
Yes, go ahead.
Q Guy Raz from CNN. Can you just give us -- now that you've got more intelligence about this issue, can you give us the sequence of events that you believe took place at this exchange of fire or whatever it was?
GEN. KIMMITT: Well, what happened is we had significant multiple sources of intelligence come in the night of the 18th, the morning of the 19th, which caused us to launch a quick-reaction force to that area. That quick-reaction force had air elements and had ground elements. We got into the area, our soldiers took fire, they responded. We put the ground elements on the ground; they went through the objective site; took the casualty count, as we've talked about; saw everything that we recounted in this report; took subsequent photos later on. But as soon as they had finished sweeping the objective, conducting what they needed on the ground to complete, then they were evacuated from that area, and then went back to their bases.
