Wikileaks.org, Collateralmurder.com

[I_Ryan]

Thirty-eight minutes ago, the famous WikiLeaks.org leaked a video. Go here.

@WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad – including two Reuters news staff.

[Nielsio]

Jesus..

I only watched the lead-up (“AK-47 confirmed…”) and don’t want to watch the rest, but this is so awful…

Outside of their own borders government agents show their true nature.

[I_Ryan]

@Nielsio

Jesus..

I only watched the lead-up (“AK-47 confirmed…”) and don’t want to watch the rest, but this is so awful…

Outside of their own borders government agents show their true nature.

I hear you. At 10:15, I got so intense that I had to walk a few laps around my neighborhood just to cool off.

[Mtn_Dew]

I watched most of it with the sound off. Very disturbing.

[bloomj31]

Alright, well since the first thing I posted was apparently inflammatory for its brevity, I will supply a slightly longer version but still try to not be insulting (because I wasn’t trying to be insulting the first time.) Basically, my reaction to this is my reaction to all things related to war: I feel disgusted but not overly emotional. I do not take joy from watching anyone receive harm (either physical or psychological), especially when it seems to be entirely unnecessary. However, this is war we are talking about. This is what I think happens in war, people get killed. Sometimes for no good reason. That’s really all I have to say.

I do think it would be nice to see some kind of corrective action taken about this though. I don’t know what the rules are in the military about this sort of thing but if this is an offense that can result in a court martial, I wouldn’t see any problem with that.

[Mtn_Dew]

Court martial? These guys probably got promoted.

[bloomj31]

@Mtn Dew

Court martial? These guys probably got promoted.

Is there any way to actually find out instead of just speculating?

[Catalan]

I’m glad that I deserted, and I did so before I had the opportunity to become a murderer.

[Catalan]

@bloomj31

This is what I think happens in war, people get killed. Sometimes for no good reason. That’s really all I have to say.

How does this justify anything? Even arguing from a conservative perspective, there was no margin of error - there was no justifiable way that their cameras could have been mistaken for AK-47s, let alone an RPG. To add insult to injury, it’s illegal to fire on wounded targets, and then they fired against two men helping to carry a wounded out of the kill zone. That is grounds for a court martial, at the least.

[bloomj31]

@Jonathan M. F. Catalán

How does this justify anything? Even arguing from a conservative perspective, there was no margin of error - there was no justifiable way that their cameras could have been mistaken for AK-47s, let alone an RPG. To add insult to injury, it’s illegal to fire on wounded targets, and then they fired against two men helping to carry a wounded out of the kill zone. That is grounds for a court martial, at the least.

It didn’t say it could be justified I just said it’s not particularly surprising. I said it should be grounds for court martial so obviously I agree with you.

[I_Ryan]

@http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/05/wikileaks-exposes-video-o_n_525569.html

Calling it a case of “collateral murder,” the WikiLeaks Web site today released harrowing until-now secret video of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007 repeatedly opening fire on a group of men that included a Reuters photographer and his driver – and then on a van that stopped to rescue one of the wounded men.

None of the members of the group were taking hostile action, contrary to the Pentagon’s initial cover story; they were milling about on a street corner. One man was evidently carrying a gun, though that was and is hardly an uncommon occurrence in Baghdad.

Reporters working for WikiLeaks determined that the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session. He was killed and his two children were badly injured.

In the video, which Reuters has been asking to see since 2007, crew members can be heard celebrating their kills.

“Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,” says one crewman after multiple rounds of 30mm cannon fire left nearly a dozen bodies littering the street.

A crewman begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded: “Come on, let us shoot!”

Two crewmen share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses.

And after soldiers on the ground find two small children shot and bleeding in the van, one crewman can be heard saying: “Well, it’s their fault bringing their kids to a battle.”

The helicopter crew, which was patrolling an area that had been the scene of fierce fighting that morning, said they spotted weapons on members of the first group – although the video shows one gun, at most. The crew also mistook a telephoto lens for a rocket-propelled grenade.

The shooting, which killed Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, took place on July 12, 2007, in a southeastern neighborhood of Baghdad.
The next day, the New York Times reported the military’s official cover story:

@http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html?_r=2

The American military said in a statement late Thursday that 11 people had been killed: nine insurgents and two civilians. According to the statement, American troops were conducting a raid when they were hit by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The American troops called in reinforcements and attack helicopters. In the ensuing fight, the statement said, the two Reuters employees and nine insurgents were killed.

“There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,” said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad.

The video shows otherwise.

Washington Post reporter David Finkel described the incident – and the video – in great detail in his September 2009 book, “The Good Soldiers”. A summary can be found here.

Finkel also described a review session after Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, commander of the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment and his soldiers returned to base, which “concluded that everyone had acted appropriately.” (Kauzlarich was also involved in the Army’s Pat Tillman cover-up, and later told ESPN that the reluctance of Tillman’s parents to accept the military’s story that he was killed by enemy action, rather than friendly fire, was the unfortunate result of their lack of Christian faith.)

WikiLeaks, a small, independent Web site that invites people to post information and documents that powerful interests would prefer to keep secret, says it received the video and supporting documents from military whistleblowers.

Julian Assange, the editor of the site, said the killings either violated the the army’s rules of engagement, or those rules of engagement “are very, deeply wrong.”

Unveiling the video at the National Press Club on Monday morning, Assange said the helicopter crew approached its job as if it were a video game, not something involving human lives. Their desire was simply to kill," he said. “Their desire was to get high scores on that computer game.”

Reuters released this statement from David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief of Reuters news: “The deaths of Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh three years ago were tragic and emblematic of the extreme dangers that exist in covering war zones. We continue to work for journalist safety and call on all involved parties to recognise the important work that journalists do and the extreme danger that photographers and video journalists face in particular. The video released today via Wikileaks is graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result.”

An Army spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

---

Dan Froomkin is senior Washington correspondent for the Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail, bookmark his page; subscribe to RSS feed, follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and/or become a fan and get e-mail alerts when he writes.

[bloomj31]

What do you want to see done here?

[I_Ryan]

@bloomj31

What do you want to see done here?

No idea, really.

[mhamlin]

@I. Ryan

@bloomj31

What do you want to see done here?

No idea, really.

I liked the first version of this post better.

[SilentXtarian]

I just saw it. At first I thought that the soldiers were just making mistakes in the fog of war. But they originally singled out the crowd of people which were obviously just civilians, and there was no real way you could mistake a camera for an Ak-47… so I can understand how they could mistake that original camera for an RPG… but after that they went overboard. This video shows the true horrors of modern war. Wars are still horrible, no matter how much better our weapons are.

[CrazyCoot]

@bloomj31

Alright, well since the first thing I posted was apparently inflammatory for its brevity, I will supply a slightly longer version but still try to not be insulting (because I wasn’t trying to be insulting the first time.) Basically, my reaction to this is my reaction to all things related to war: I feel disgusted but not overly emotional. I do not take joy from watching anyone receive harm (either physical or psychological), especially when it seems to be entirely unnecessary. However, this is war we are talking about. This is what I think happens in war, people get killed. Sometimes for no good reason. That’s really all I have to say.

I do think it would be nice to see some kind of corrective action taken about this though. I don’t know what the rules are in the military about this sort of thing but if this is an offense that can result in a court martial, I wouldn’t see any problem with that.

Let’s say I have a problem with you and decide to take over the city block where you live. Then I decide to blow up the houses around you. Don’t you think that I ought to be held accountable for such actions? Why the double standard?

[CrazyCoot]

Ignore previous post; read your post too quickly Bloom. My apologies.

Not going to watch the video; don’t feel like punching the wall.

[krazy_kaju]

So let me get this straight… US soldiers were receiving fire from insurgents so they call in close air support. A helicopter comes in, finds a group of young men, one of whom is carrying an AK-47 and two who seem to be carrying RPGs, so they figure these must be the insurgents and they shoot. Then, someone comes to pick up what the guys in the chopper believe is a wounded insurgent. So the helicopter opens fire on the people that were believed to be aiding in the escape of an insurgent.

This was a mistake, pure and simple. Trying to spin ludicrous conspiracy theories about how soldiers are baby killers is not going to help the anti-war movement.

[krazy_kaju]

@SilentXtarian

At first I thought that the soldiers were just making mistakes in the fog of war. But they originally singled out the crowd of people which were obviously just civilians, and there was no real way you could mistake a camera for an Ak-47… so I can understand how they could mistake that original camera for an RPG…

Having something slung over your shoulder in a weapon-like fashion, walking in the middle of a road and pointing your fingers around like a military leader apparently giving commands to the other young men around you, and then appearing to take aim at something in a war zone is grounds for taking action, IMHO. But hell, maybe that’s just my survival instinct.

[SilentXtarian]

@krazy kaju

So let me get this straight… US soldiers were receiving fire from insurgents so they call in close air support. A helicopter comes in, finds a group of young men, one of whom is carrying an AK-47 and two who seem to be carrying RPGs, so they figure these must be the insurgents and they shoot. Then, someone comes to pick up what the guys in the chopper believe is a wounded insurgent. So the helicopter opens fire on the people that were believed to be aiding in the escape of an insurgent.

This was a mistake, pure and simple. Trying to spin ludicrous conspiracy theories about how soldiers are baby killers is not going to help the anti-war movement.

You do realize that these people weren’t insurgents but they were reporters don’t you? It was more than a simple mistake. I don’t think there was any way that you could mistake the cameras for AK-47s. It’s as clear to me that those people were carrying cameras. They may have been in the right for firing at first… but this isn’t a conspiracy theory or anything. Watch the video again, and you’ll see just exactly what they did was so wrong.