I respond that the immediate occasion of non-elaboration went like this, if you'll believe a single word that comes from so Celtic-surname-sounding a source as McClatchy :
| Abdulhussein, who was not present during the raid, said his brother and three other bodyguards were at the home of [a] sister, their cousin, in a guard station attached to the main, two-story villa. Before dawn Friday, Abdulhussein said, the guards heard U.S. helicopters in the area. Abdulhussein said about 50 American ground troops in camouflage then stormed into Janaja. He said he still has no idea why they came to [that particular family] home. "(The troops) raided this room, the guard room, and detained the guards, including Ali, who'd memorized a few English words and tried to tell them, 'I'm police. I'm a [family] guard,'" Abdulhussein said. "They tied the hands of the three guards and took Ali to the room. Ten minutes later, they heard gunfire. The American forces killed Ali." |
(( Not to get distracted, sir, but is it not slightly remarkable that ten minutes should pass after the break-in and the kidnappin’s and before the eventual murder? ))
The New York Times Company, bless its bottom line!, diselaborated this little human event pretty drastically:
| [There have occurred] two recent attacks in which soldiers killed people who the government said were civilians. One death occurred during a raid by American soldiers on Friday near Karbala [and the other one elsewhere at a different point in time.] (...) Local officials in Karbala echoed [certain collaborationist politicians'] sentiments and the provincial police chief, Maj. Gen. Raad Shakir, said there had been no effort to inform Iraqi security officials about the raid. The American assault began at 12:15 a.m. Friday in the Janaja area south of Karbala, he said, “without coordination with the Karbala military operations command or with the general commander of Iraqi armed forces.” An American military spokesman said that in the Karbala raid, in which the Americans were hunting for Shiite militants, soldiers were acting in self-defense when they killed a local security guard who was holding an AK-47 against his shoulder as if to fire. “Coalition forces deeply regret the loss of life and are conducting an investigation,” said the spokesman, Cmdr. Ed Buclatin. |
(( What ‘murder’ was that, Mr. McCloskey? Why, the alleged perps took a full ten minutes to decide in advance that it was strictly warrantable self-defense that they were actin’ in! [1] ))
Less polemically, Mr. Bones, thee may infer by conflating the two Narratives that the bodyguards who surround International Zone OnePercenters are technically classified as civilians by their own neorégime. Unless, to be sure, official corruption and malfeasance are being covered up here as well as coalitional incompetence. I suppose that issue boils down to whether the Hannibal of Da‘wa pays their salaries out of his own pocket or with petroleum revenues properly belonging to Them The People of the Former Iraq. Yet different cultures are well known to disagree about exactly where honest graft stops in such cases, so one cannot take it for granted that there are any guilts or shames at all associated with the financial aspect of this episode.
Anyway, that is most of the facts, ma’am. When it comes to the quest for shames, I vote we begin by noticing that the victim was a kinsman to Hannibal II. ‘Alí the Loser may even have worked as a civilian guard for nothing on that account, although I doubt it. More important is his exact relationship to Hannibal II, a point which is slightly obscure as McClatchy expounds it:
| [T]he man described by the military as "a local security guard" was actually a cousin of Maliki's and served as the personal bodyguard of Maliki's sister, relatives and Iraqi officials said. Ali Abdulhussein al Maliki was killed at his guard post outside the villa belonging to Maliki's sister, said the guard's brother, Ahmed Abdulhussein al Maliki. The brother — referred to here without his tribal name to avoid confusion with the prime minister — was reluctant to speak about the incident, but allowed a few minutes for a visiting journalist in part because tribal custom deems it shameful to turn away a guest. Dressed in a dark-brown suit, he was presiding over the mourning ceremony and had long lines of sheikhs in flowing robes and traditional headdresses waiting for him. |
Let's see: the scene of the uncrime belongs to Hannibal's sister. The victim of the uncrime, ‘Alí the Loser, was Hannibal's cousin, which is consistent with him being the son of the sister of Hannibal, but that is not necessarily the case. ’Ahmad ‘Abd al-Husayn (the Narrator to McClatchy) is brother to ‘Alí the Loser, and therefore presumably cousin to Hannibal in the same degree as ‘Alí used to be, unless perchance ‘Alí and ’Ahmad were only half-brothers, in which case . . . .
Well, I guess we do not have quite enough information to do a secure stemma, Mr. Bones, but if the word ‘cousin’ applies in anything like the Homeland sense, as one would expect when Mac tells us about the uncrime in English, the relationship was close. Of course that does not mean they liked one another, and the Badger-Lynx-Cartoonoclastes breed of goofball might even conspiratize that Hannibal II himself ordered the murd..., the liquidation, it would have been, I mean. Mac narrates that Hannibal was distressed about it, however:
| Janaja residents said the prime minister's office privately has reassured them that Maliki is furious with his American allies but that he wanted to keep the ensuing diplomatic crisis out of the media spotlight. On Sunday, tribal leaders from throughout the south gathered under funeral tents to offer condolences and whisper about what went wrong. |
At some risk of seeming excessively Levantine or Byzantine -- maybe even cartoonoclastic, let Father Zeus forbid! -- I would point out that Hannibal II could be angry about the uncrime without being sorry that it happened. It could, I believe, be imputed unto him as a shame that just as he was about to get rid of ‘Alí the Loser himself, his ‘allies’ stepped in high-handedly and did the deed. As if the Hannibal of Da‘wa were a small child who needs a (foreign!) nurse or nanny to wipe its own nose, don’t thee see, Mr. Bones?
That the Grand and Willful Coalition (AEI-GOP-DOD) actually did the deed is not seriously contested, according to Mac:
| The U.S. military broke its silence on the incident Sunday, releasing a vague statement confirming that coalition forces had shot and killed "a local security guard" during operations early Friday that targeted special groups, a reference to suspected Iranian-backed militant cells. The statement, which did not mention the military branch or even the nationality of the force that conducted the raid, said the guard "exited a building in close proximity to coalition forces while brandishing an AK-47 held against his shoulder as if to fire. Perceiving hostile intent and acting in self defense, coalition forces shot and killed the armed man." Only later did the forces realize he was a local security guard. "Coalition forces deeply regret the loss of life and are conducting an investigation," the statement read. There was no other information about the target of the raid or whether the troops had made any arrests. |
The blank labeled ‘Nationality’ may safely be filled in with the words "Militant Extremist North American Republican," then. (MENAR than thou are the Baní Crawford, O Bones!) No question about whodunnit, only about whatwuzzit they done, exactly. Mac tries to work the Exactly part out, but achieves no firm conclusion, which is not, under such circumstances, the least bit surprising:
| A high-ranking member of the Iraqi government told McClatchy on Saturday that the raid was conducted by a U.S. Special Forces "antiterrorism unit that operates almost independently." Other U.S. and Iraqi officials speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the involvement of Special Forces. The U.S. military command in Baghdad declined to offer further comment. The U.S. military's muted apology, three days after the raid, still leaves plenty of questions for the residents of Janaja. |
Plenty of questions about so memorable and diselaborated an uncrime as this one remain right here in beautiful downtown Zipcode 02139 as well, should any central Cantabrigians care to pass the Silly Season by asking them. I expect they mostly won’t, though, what with the former Iraq having been formerized off the holy-Homeland scope pretty near altogether.
Mac's interest in the case is 95% above praise, but unfortunately there is the other five percent. Nitsy and Alissa presumably want to hush the uncrime up because they have decided that Hannibal II is likely to survive and flourish amidst the radiant dawn of Responsible Nonwithdrawal™. Mac -- "Qassim Zein and Hannah Allam" and the McClatchy Washington Bureau -- are not in sympathy with that para-Bushevik spin, but they are not entirely spinfree. If Nitsy and Alissa want to make sure that the blood of ‘Alí the Loser does not stain their lovely new SOFA, Mac is not above hoping that by "cruel irony" [yuck!] it may do precisely that:
| As Janaja grieves, Baghdad is still working through the diplomatic fallout from the incident, Iraqi officials said. In a cruel irony, officials said, the crisis could strengthen the hand of Iraqi negotiators who are involved in the drafting of a Status of Forces Agreement, a long-term U.S.-Iraqi security pact to govern the conduct of American forces in Iraq. Two of the main sticking points are whether the U.S. military can conduct independent operations and whether to grant immunity for American troops or security contractors who are accused of criminal activity. "If this changes anything, it will make the Status of Forces Agreement even more important," said Ahmed Shames, a media officer from Maliki's office. "It will definitely influence the negotiations and give the Iraqi negotiators even more to ask for." |
It would do no harm if editors struck out that damn I-word every time a journalism school alumnus resorts to it. The chances that ‘irony’ is used respectably are negligible; getting rid of 9,998 verbal abuses at the price of one bingo and one arguable specimen makes excellent sense. Here I have not a clue what Mac meant by it. His own "cruel irony" may pass for a sly sarcasm considering how easy it is to see that he wants to "strengthen the hand of Iraqi negotiators who are involved in the drafting of a Status of Forces Agreement, a long-term U.S.-Iraqi security pact to govern the conduct of American forces in Iraq." Nevertheless, the absence of ‘irony’ would be better than its presence.
Mac concludes
| SHAMES CONFIRMED WITHOUT ELABORATING that the guard who was killed was connected to the Maliki family's security detail, adding that the prime minister certainly "was not pleased" with what happened in Janaja. "You can tell he is upset by this," Shames said. "He hasn't been in a good mood since the incident.", |
| I translated a passage one day, which said that "the infuriated tigress broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest" (Tannenwald). When I was girding up my loins to doubt this, I found out that Tannenwald in this instance was a man's name. |
"Ahmed Guilts, a media officer from Maliki's office" is not entirely impossible at the general level of the invasion-language press , but the McClatchy Washington Bureau would never mistransliterate quite that weirdly.
___
[1] Aunt Nitsy's other body-count reports from the semiconquered provinces of AEI-GOP-DOD seem to have been dragged in deliberately so as to help non-elaborate the McClatchy one. The one immediately paired off with it does no more than adumbrate an Arendtoid "Banality of Aggression":
| [On Wednesday] three people described by the Interior Ministry as bank employees on their way to work were shot and killed near the Baghdad airport when they tried to pass an American convoy. (...) In the shooting near the Baghdad airport, the American military disputed the Interior Ministry’s account and described the three people who were killed as “criminals” who had fired on the convoy. Elsewhere in Iraq, a car bomb in Salahuddin Province on Sunday killed seven policemen, and in Diyala Province the police shot a female suicide bomber. [&c. &c.] |
Nitsy and Nitsy's Alissa J. Rubin then supply much more "[&c. &c.]" about that last affair than about either of the other two, after which we are treated to yet a fourth killin’ (and third red herrin’):
| The intelligence commander for Basra, Brigadier Jabar Mujhed, was assassinated by gunmen while visiting Baghdad on Saturday, according to an Interior Ministry official, who asked not to be identified since he was not authorized to talk to the press. |
It should be reckoned as an independent fourth red herrin’ that the International Zone neorégime's loss of poor M. al-Mujhid gets decked out in the journalistic claptrap usually reserved for fresh revelations from Major Leaker at Beltway City. To dignify the assassination of a mere indig secret state policeman with "not authorized to talk to the press" would be quite unaccountable if it stood alone. Ordinarily Nitsy and Alissa would have given their corporation's customers some indication why all of New Baghdád now clamours "Who killed Brigadier Jabar Mujhed?"
More exactly: they would have left it to the AP and Reuters and "Informed Comment" and Slogger City to commemorate that particular gentlethug, because the holy Homeland's fishwrap of record does not regularly double as the Tigris River City Daily Bugle and Bodycount.
But God knows best.
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