On November 30th, in Samarra, US military officials reported a raging firefight between US forces and resistance fighters. Reports suggested a large, highly organized ambush on US troops within the city by mujahideen and Fedayin fighters. Occupation forces responded fiercely, killing 54 Iraqis, according to General Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Pace went on to issue a sort of threat;

“They attacked and they were killed, so I think it will be instructive to them.”

Shortly after mainstream media in the US, as well as the CPA here in Baghdad posted these figures as fact, holes started appearing in the canvas of the picture they wished us to see. For at the same time western media was posting first the 46, then the jump to 54 Iraqi insurgents killed without questioning their sources, local media were reporting numbers from the hospital in Samarra-8 killed (one of whom is Iranian), and 50 wounded Iraqis.

During the days immediately following the battle, as people began digging deeper, the US military steadfastly held to their figures while the residents from Samarra were drawing more distinct lines in their painting of what occurred that Sunday. According to the US military in Iraq, the method used to obtain their ‘kill number’, was to ask each soldier how many people he killed, add the numbers, and this is the total. Needless to say, this lends the high probability of error. Since the battle raged throughout the streets of the city, full of innocent Iraqis, if a soldier shot and wounded someone it would be an easy mistake for him to have thought this person was killed. If we add up the numbers given by the Samarra hospital, 8 killed, 50 wounded, then it begins to shed light on the possibility that the method of tabulating kills by the Americans is subject to error.

I went to Samarra four days after the battle, to get the facts for myself, and to interview people who witnessed the incident.

The story the people of Samarra are telling about the fight this past Sunday goes something like this: US soldiers were guarding a delivery of money to the bank in Samarra, gunfire was heard in the distance and the jumpy Americans opened fire, riddling the city center with bullets, killing 8 civilians and wounding 50 in the process.

How it started remains unclear…as both versions differ so radically.

But what has become apparent is that the Occupation forces had been waging a campaign of fear and intimidation upon the residents of Samarra for quite some time prior to this tragic day.

While conducting an interview with Sheikh Abbas Naqshabandi, one of the spiritual and political leaders of Samarra who is also the head of one of the seven largest families of the city, he shared that he had been concerned about this.

“I advised them (the Americans) to get out of the cities. According to our advice they got out of the city before the attack. But then there were sanctions, embargoes on the city, they were getting to the houses in the night. They did humiliating activities to these houses they were entering in the night.”

Ismail Mahmoud Mohammed is the police chief of Samarra, appointed by the US.

“Were the French happy under the Nazis? It is the same thing here.”

Mr. Mohammed went on to tell the Financial Times that the Occupation forces had long since gone too far in their provocations of the residents of Samarra.

Talib, a 31 year old resident of Samarra I interviewed on the street angrily tells me of an incident that happened to him.

“At an American checkpoint I was dragged from my car and they put their shoes on my chest. Why do they use these actions? Even Saddam Hussein did not do that! This is not good behavior. They are not coming to liberate Iraq!”

This is the same sentiment expressed to me by Sheikh Abbas about the people in his city.

“So what are the people to do? It (the battle) is not an action, what you have seen is a reaction. If the occupation power continues to hurt and humiliate the people here, every man will become a bomb.”

The Sheikh goes on to tell me of an old Arabic statement that refers to how the people in their city always know more about their home than anyone else. How Samarra consists primarily of seven large families and because of this the people there know everything that goes on. He continues,

“So where are the other 46 bodies the US speaks of? So all these 46 other bodies are flying? The Americans took them in their tanks? Where are they? Show them to me.”

A man who was in his tea stall and witnessed most of the battle tells me shares a similar feeling about the story the US is telling.

“The Americans say the people who fought them are Al-Qaeda or Fedayin. We are all in this small city living here. Why have we not seen these foreign fighters and stranger people in our city before or after this battle? Everyone here knows everyone, and none have seen these stranger people. Why do they tell these lies?”

Another consistent story from all the people I interviewed in the city at the location where the battle began, was that many civilians, when fired upon by the Americans, ran to get their guns in order to protect their people, their city, their mosque, and their shops.

It is also consistently told to me by Sheikh Abbas, officials in the hospital of Samarra, and all of the eyewitnesses I interviewed from the streets of the city, that there were only two mujahideen (resistance fighters) who live near the city killed by the Americans.

Nobody I spoke with saw a Fedayin, or anyone from another country except Iran. There are often Iranians in Samarra visiting the golden shrine there, one of whom was killed during the battle near the mosque.

Sheikh Abbas continues.

“There were no Fedayin from these killers. Only two the people killed were mujahideen. The people who were killed are normal citizens, poor people. There are only eight dead people here. So why are we seeing this incorrect number on the television?”

Even if there was a group of mujahideen who attacked the Americans, the majority of the people fighting here appear to have been defending themselves. The Sheikh, who lost a relative in the fighting, stresses to me that the vast majority of the people involved were civilians protecting themselves from the aggression of the US Occupation forces.

“The people who attacked the Americans in retaliation are not organized, do not belong to any organization, not to Saddam’s regime or to any new organization. They are only defending their freedom, their city, their families and their holy places.”

Sheikh Abbas sums up in one line what is, perhaps, the greatest contradiction to what the Americans have said about the incident.

“The great evidence is that all the people of the city are talking about the same story, only one story.”

Could these reports from the US military be lies?

On December 5th the New York Times published a story about how two months ago the Pentagon awarded a $300,000 contract to a defense consultant (SAIC), in order to study how the DOD could design a campaign of “effective strategic influence” to combat global terror, as written in an internal Pentagon document.

This document goes on to state that one of the goals of this program was to build a “road map for creating an effective D.O.D. capability to design and conduct effective strategic influence and operational and tactical perception-management campaigns."

One can easily argue that the most powerful military machine in history is currently bogged down in Iraq, effectively being chipped away one attack at a time by an organized, decentralized guerrilla campaign. A campaign which is growing more organized and lethal by the day.

With the news from Iraq being increasingly dismal for the US, particularly the military, the need for a ‘victory’ in Iraq has become important for morale, as well as to justify the occupation.

The title of the new document produced by SAIC is “Winning the War of Ideas”.

I was surrounded by throngs of nervous and very angry Samarra residents when I visited the scene of the battle. A rusty old taxi driving by slows, and a man yells at us out the window.

“All the media is not telling the truth. They are lying, all of them! Don’t talk to them. I made 100 interviews with media and nobody is telling my truth! Nobody has told what I told them. Why should I even talk to them? They are lying all the time, so don’t talk to them.”

People were yelling, cars driving by were taunting us, and our interpreter did an excellent job of letting them know we were here to report the truth. Many people in Samarra are extremely angry, and feel betrayed by most of the foreign press currently in Iraq.

I stood near a building riddled with bullets, DU shell casings littering the ground near a wall of someone’s home, and spoke with people who crowded around, anxious to tell their story.

A 42 year old man exclaims,

“If the Americans can shoot every child walking in the street, it means the end of this planet.”

Another man shows me a parked car riddled with 112 bullets from the Americans. He then goes on to tell me how a US soldier went crazy and was firing his weapon everywhere, even up at the sky at some electricity wires running above the street. Two of the wires have been shot through, and are now very crudely spliced back together, waiting for electricity.

He tells me,

“They shot a lot of bullets to cut these wires. The US soldier was laughing and shooting the wires. Are they fedayin wires? Were the wires attacking the Americans? He was laughing like a crazy man.”

A man approaches me with two children by his side. The children are those of his dead brother, slain in the battle.

“This little boy and girl, their father was shot by the US. Who will take care of this family? Who will watch these children? Who will feed them now? Who? Why did they kill my brother? What is the reason? Nobody told me. He was a Lorry driver. What is his crime? Why did they shoot him? They shot him with 150 bullets! Did they kill him just because they wanted to shoot a man? That’s it? This is the reason? Why didn’t anyone talk to me and tell me why they have killed my brother? Is killing people a normal thing now, happening everyday? This is our future? This is the future that the US promised Iraq?”

Pointing to a building, then over towards a road, another man wants me to know there were US soldiers killed, which weren’t reported by the media.

“There is blood on top of that building, and there were only American soldiers up there. And over here on this road, everybody saw three dead US soldiers on the ground, burning and bleeding.”

Near the hospital of Samarra, about a five minute drive from the city center, there is a small mosque. It had fresh cement patching up an area near a window which had been shot by a small tank. In the nearby hospital parking area are two incinerated cars. A man using crutches points this out to me and tells the story of what happened in this area, a good distance from the battle in downtown.

“One man in the mosque was shot and killed by the Americans from a tank. Nobody knows why they burned all these cars, and why they were shooting here. US troops used small mortar from a tank to bomb the mosque because they hate Islam. There is no other reason…this happened at five o’clock, and the battle had ended at three o’clock.”

Another man standing in the small crowd exclaims angrily,

“No Americans were killed in this area because there was no battle here. Only a tank that came and destroyed hospital cars and shot the mosque. What is the reason for this?”

The central portion of Samarra has remained without electricity and water since the battle on the last day of November. The majority of the men I spoke with yesterday believe it is collective punishment by the US.

What is to be made of this?

Is it possible for every resident of Samarra to be telling the same uniform lie, with all the same details?

Or is it possible that the US military, desperate for some form of good news to broadcast to the world and its troops about the occupation of Iraq, used an attack on its forces in Samarra as part of a “tactical perception-management campaign?”

Dahr Jamail is an American freelance journalist currently in Baghdad.