Potential confusion.

The raid on the Baghdad mosque that netted “AK-47s, hand grenades and an anti-aircraft missile” (noted by Tim Blair) was the Ibn Taymiyah mosque. I note this because I’m pretty sure that Sasha Castel’s site is using pictures from the raid on the Umm al Tabul mosque instead (which was the one that netted “three packages of TNT, one case of blasting caps, three bags of gunpowder, eight improvised grenades, a roll of detonation cord, improvised explosive device materials such as 9-volt batteries and unidentified propellants, 11 AK-47 assault rifles and 20 AK-47 magazines”. Then again, the Reuters article that Major Sean Bannion links to in his post calls it the al-Tabool mosque and says that the items recovered were “several sticks of high explosives, hand grenades, AK-47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and thousands of rounds of ammunition”.

It would be helpful, to say the least, if we could establish once and for all precisely which mosque it was that forfeited its privileged status under international law by stockpiling weapons. I suspect that this is one of those cases where one building has two names, but if we can’t even rely on the media to keep such a little thing straight, how can we expect them to get anything else right?

Moe

PS: Yes, I’m aware that the individuals associated with the mosque are making somewhat heated claims about what happened to them. To be blunt, as far as international law is concerned the searchers might have gotten away with leveling the place ‘as a precaution’ after they found the TNT and RPGs. Such an action would have been incredibly stupid of us, but that’s a whole other issue. You will all understand, I am sure, if I consider counterclaims in a somewhat, shall we say, jaundiced light?