Snapped Shot

I was offline when the inital story came out, but Flopping Aces has noticed that we might have a "new Qana" in Iraq.

According to reports coming across the wire, a U.S. airstrike has killed 20 people, amongst them women and children, and sparked "intense" protests against "imperial American forces."

To add to the story, this is not the first time that "atrocities" have been alleged at al-Ishaqi. March 2006 was before Snapped Shot's epoch, though, so I don't really have anything beyond that, yet.

Sound familiar? I thought so.

The left-o-sphere is up in arms about this event, accepting the press account of the story at face value. After all, everyone knows the United States is always the murderous bad guy, right?

On the other hand, the right-o-sphere is skeptical of the claims forwarded by already-suspect sources. They are bolstered by a CENTCOM press release which states uneqivocally that there is no indication that civilians were killed in the attack.

My favourite source for "fair and balanced" coverage, as usual, is FlamingLeftyIndyMedia:

IMAGES OF CRUSADER GENOCIDE AT ISHAQI
Islamic Community Net
December 10, 2006

Assalamu aleikum.

First the New World Order shot them dead.

Then the antichrist Bush regime blew up their homes with bombs to hide the evidence.

May Allah (S.W.T.) bless and reward the shaheed.

Innaa lillaahi wa inna ilayhi raaji'uun.

I'm still working on pulling pictures from the wire. Will have them here shortly!

Update: Oddly enough, it looks like a majority of the people attending the funeral are military-aged men. Is it possible that we're looking at a media production created by the so-called insurgency?

Update 2: Did I forget to mention that al-Ishaqi is the site of another alleged atrocity? In a similar vein to Qana, it's not good enough to have "a massacre." The massacre must somehow relate to a past event, perhaps to lend it more credence in the Arab world. On a positive note, at least they're not referring to it as "the holy city of Ishaqi," but it'd be interesting to see how this (and the previous event) is being used by the Jihadi propagandists online... I believe I'll leave that investigation to Robert at JihadWatch, though. He's definitely more capable of handling that than I am!

In June, a US inquiry cleared US forces of blame for the deaths of 11 civilians in Ishaqi, north-west of Baghdad, in March. Reports that troops “executed” a family during a raid on a house there and tried to cover it up were “absolutely false”, the US military said. A report filed by Iraqi police accused US troops who were trying to capture insurgents of rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people, including five children and four women, before blowing up the building.

I wonder who in the police force filed that "report?" Was it Capt. Jamil Hussein?