[Bond]

In an effort to provide a fair and balanced look at the issue, which you rarely get here at GT:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military said Monday its photographs of rifles, machine guns, white powder and foreign passports support its case that it attacked a safehouse for foreign fighters — not a wedding party — near the Syrian border.

Iraqi survivors and police said up to 45 people died, and that the victims had been celebrating a wedding. Video that Associated Press Television News shot a day after the attack shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans, and brightly colored beddings used for celebrations, scattered around a bombed out tent.

"At this point, we have seen really nothing that causes us to change our minds. That's why we need to get as much evidence as possible and hand it to the investigators," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the coalition deputy chief of staff for operations in Iraq (news - web sites).

"What we found on the ground and our post-strike analysis suggests that what we had was a significant foreign fighter smuggler waystation in the middle of the desert that was bringing people into this country for the sole purpose of attacking to kill the people of Iraq," he said.

Kimmitt said the U.S. operation lasted from midnight until about 4 a.m. and that ground forces moved in after the bombing.

"We have found no evidence of any children being killed by people on the ground," he said at a news conference. "We have witnesses say that there were no children there."

For the second time, Kimmitt showed pictures of items the military said it found at the attack site, including machine guns, rounds of ammunition, a Sudan Airways plane ticket, medical gear, a Sudanese passport and battery packs associated with improvised explosive devises.

"These are pictures that are somewhat inconsistent, to my mind, with a wedding party," Kimmitt said.

New evidence showed the events on the ground to be "somewhat inconsistent with a wedding party," he said.

Earlier Monday, a senior coalition official said on condition of anonymity that the U.S. military hasn't ruled anything out as it looks into Wednesday's pre-dawn operation, but said he is confident that a legitimate target had been hit.

The official said an investigation into the events "probably" would take weeks.

"We have not denied anything about this incident. We still don't believe there was a wedding going on, or a wedding party going on, when we hit in the early morning hours. Could there have been some sort of celebration going on earlier? Certainly," the official said.

Several hours of video footage obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News showed a wedding party that survivors said was later attacked by U.S. planes. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck.

Among those killed were 27 members of the same family, survivors said.

APTN footage taken on Wednesday in the city of Ramadi shows the burials of women and children who allegedly died in the wedding attack. The U.S. military has said up to six women may have died in its operation.

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