Lexis Academic gets 25 hits for full text search, past 6 months: ammunition and falcon, and 8 hits for: base falcon, but the articles mentioning the October 10 mortar attack all say "no reports of casualties".
The search "FOB Falcon" (apparently not possible to limit to exact phrase) in CENTCOM’s Press Releases site gets 114 hits, including:
OPERATIONS RETURN TO NORMAL AFTER MORTAR ATTACK ON FOB FALCON
Release Date:10/13/2006 Release Number: 06-01-01PS Description: FOB FALCON, Iraq – Less than 24 hours after enemy 82mm mortar rounds hit an ammunition holding area, causing a torrent of explosions and fires that continued to smolder through the next day, life on Forward Operating Base Falcon has retuned to normal.
Despite triggering multiple explosions and causing fire crews to work overtime, there were no casualties, and little damage was sustained to the buildings and vehicles positioned throughout the large military base located in Baghdad’s Doura neighborhood, said Col. Michael Beech, commander, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division.
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Factiva gets 60 hits , past 3 months, for: "base falcon", including reports from Agence France Presse, New Zealand Press Association, Montreal Gazette, New York Times, and AP Newswire. The only one that mentions casualties is a BBC monitor of an Arabic language news service:
Agency says 100 US soldiers killed or hurt in attacks on Iraq base 382 words 11 October 2006 10:37 AM BBC Monitoring Middle East English (c) 2006 The British Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved. No material may be reproduced except with the express permission of The British Broadcasting Corporation.
Quds Press news agency on 11 October carries a report on "an explosion that targeted the largest weapon depot for the US forces" in Baghdad.
The report says: "A series of huge explosions targeted the US Base Falcon in the area of Abu-Dushayr, southern Baghdad, after the US base came under rocket and mortar attacks that took place at about 2200 [1900 gmt] last night. The explosions continued until 0200, which prompted the Iraqi government to declare a high alert among its ranks. The US army also announced a high alert among the ranks of its forces in the capital Baghdad."
The report adds that the Iraqi government denied that any attack was launched in Baghdad, calling on the residents of the capital Baghdad not to believe "rumours" and stressing that the situation is under control. Meanwhile, Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bulani ordered all police forces to deploy in the streets of Baghdad, urging the residents of Baghdad to stay in their houses and ask the police forces for help in cases of emergency.
The report quotes high-ranking officials as saying: "Yesterday's explosions claimed a large number of casualties among the ranks of the US forces."
The report adds: "Sources close to the Iraqi Army command told the Quds Press correspondent that an initial death toll, which will be announced in the coming hours, shows that about 100 US soldiers were killed or wounded, and were carried to the US base in Al-Habbaniyah, west of Baghdad. The sources noted that the explosions precisely targeted eight weapon depots, each of which is 40 metres long, in the US Base Falcon. A helicopter runway was destroyed at the base."
The report concludes: "The Islamic Army in Iraq and the Mujahidin Army have claimed responsibility for the series of attacks that rocked the US base. In a breaking statement posted to the Internet, they said that the detachments tasked with firing rockets and mortars shelled the base of the occupying US Army with two katyusha rockets and three mortar shells. The statement adds that these rockets fell on piles of ammunition and started to explode."
Source: Quds Press news agency, London, in Arabic 11 Oct 06 a531b633 Document BBCMEP0020061011e2ab0040i
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Google search: "Quds Press" site:uk falcon gets 5 hits, including 2 www.indymedia.org.uk sites that quote pro-insurgent organizations that make similar claims of U.S. casualties
The Kavkaz Center, which calls itself "Chechen independent international Islamic Internet news agency.... founded in March of 1999 in the city of Jokhar (Grozny)", has a report "Three Iraqi Translators Helped Mujahideen To Destroy US Base in Baghdad", Publication time: 15 October 2006, 10:33, which says: "Quds Press noted that although the American authorities reported no casualties in the attack, the Iraqi source, who asked not to be identified, said that "dozens" of American soldiers were killed in the explosions that rocked the arsenal for hours Tuesday-Wednesday night. The source said that the US military have in their custody the bodies of six Iraqi translators who were killed in the blasts, and the Americans were refusing to release those remains to their families for reasons that remain unknown."
www.libertyforum.com gets several dozen hits on its advanced search for the exact phrase "base falcon" for most recent 3 months. But an attempt to read "about us" gets a "coming soon" message.
Dissident Veterans for Peace has a Friday, October 27, 2006 report on the attack that links to photos of the destruction. Rense.com links to US State Department pages that call it a "conspiracy theory website". But conspiracy site or not, this particular Rense.com report doubts that there were major casualties:
"Now, the Web and Blogosphere are sporting claims of a Bush administration election-driven coverup of 300 US soldiers killed in the attack and resulting fires and explosions. One site even provides a purported list of casualties. In my own military experience, it seems very unlikely that US commanders would billet large numbers of troops close enough to risk such high casualties. According to a BBC video on the incident the base is quite large. Is a coverup of large numbers of US deaths possible? Yes, but unless other information emerges it seems highly improbable. Still, a successful attack of this type and so close to the Green Zone shows how miserably the US military is failing in Iraq."
So this seems to be a formidable job for an investigative reporter. It would take many hours of research simply to plow through all of the websites and blogs that are reporting on this incident, and compare them to the official reports. Checking for the credentials of reporters, the accuracy of videos of the explosion and photographs of military caskets, etc., would involve tracing many locations, times and reporter/ photographer/ videographer names that are not well documented. Possibly some of the people doing the reporting can be quickly discredited, if they clearly show an ulterior motive – but that could be open to arguments back and forth for a long time, as more evidence turns up. A good investigative report would have to include many eyewitnesses – whose presence that night could be proven; and whose stories, videos, photographs, or audio recordings could be shown not to contradict each other.
The less concerned or more patient students of history may simply wait to see if more turns up. They may decide that if 300 people were killed or wounded, it would be a fairly challenging job to hide them from every video recorder or video equipped cell phone that was likely to have been within range of the event and its aftermath (hospitals? emergency airlifts? public address warnings?) – and then stopping all of such videos or audio recordings from leaving an extremely unstable area during what all news accounts seem to agree was a major attack.
Thanks,
Jim Miller
jmiller2@umd.edu
