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. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack.
The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
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For further information please visit the special project website www.collateralmurder.com.
@ Tread Softly - when you ask why people are so angry, it is things like this that breed and drive people to anger and despair.
There will most likely not be any justice for these victims, nor many others.
You want people to not even be angry. That is simply unfeasible.
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
frickin bastards.
I viewed this video as soon as wikileaks posted it. I will comment on it based on my own experience in the Army. There are two possible problems as I see it. Firstly (1) the decision to engage a group of people we know include reporters. Secondly (2) the callous nature of the gunship pilots in their verbal exchanges.
(1) The US Army was taking fire from hostiles from this part of the city. Their rules of engagement were such that they were allowed to kill people armed with guns and associated people: this is after all a war zone. The gunship saw this group of people and thought that they were armed, so they engaged. The problem was of course that the group of people included reporters: fact is if you're flying a zillion dollars worth of killing machine you ought to be better trained and show better judgement than the pilots of that gunship. Their futures as gunship operators should be questioned for this error of judgement. This is exacerbated by the decision to engage the van that tried to help the injured reporter.
(2) The callous nature of the pilots' verbal exchanges has been much derided but to be honest that just shows the necessary nature of a combatant whether mujihadeen or US grunt. You won't get any soldier humanising their enemy or pulling the trigger with tears in their eyes.
So my analysis from the small amount of information available here is that the pilots made a tragic error of judgement that should call into question their suitability to be pilots of a gunship. There was nothing wrong with their attitude or the rules of engagement. Yes it's ugly, that's why we should strive to avoid war and conflict.
I understand and accept that these sort of things will inflame tensions. But both sides kill innocents.
If the Allies kill civilians then it almost always due to a mistake, or because it is unavoidable. If civilians are killed intentionally then there are inquiries. The Allies do their best, under the priority of beating their opponent, to avoid civilian casualties. The same can't be said of the hostiles, who lay indiscriminate roadside bombs, mines, marketplace suicide attacks, etc. There is also a willful cruelty from the hostiles - you've seen the video of the Taliban teaching the 12 year old boy to behead someone with a knife, You, takes him about 14 minutes to hack through the spinal column doesn't it. And I can show you videos of the Taliban cutting the throats of Russian conscripts if you want, they flop around on the ground amongst their dead comrades long before the blood drains from their bodies whilst the Taliban laugh and shout "Allah Akbar".
War is ugly, but if you rage against one side only then you're not seeing the truth of the matter.
So, if people are driven to anger and despair over these kind of videos then their anger and despair is misplaced if it is directed to one side only.
I agree there will not be justice for many innocent victims. But are you saying that in a war zone every dead civilian should get an investigation? Are you saying that the gunship pilots should go on trial for murder or manslaughter?
I'm not saying we shouldn't get angry with 'innocent' deaths, but we have to hold the bigger picture in mind.
Except that there would be no such situations if our governments had not decided to go to war.
The b igger picture that we went to war because we could - where our leaders and our politicians knew that the reasons given were blatant lies?
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
No, it is a very heavily populated city. It is downtown baghdad. You cannot get away with lies such as "fog of war" especially when we should have not been there.
Besides, the people were not armed.
and this is also a problem. suspicion should not be enough in a situation of such assymetric warfare - where one side has total superiority. More, it is supposedly there to help the civillians.
I don't give a shit about reporters. Or soldiers - they chose to be in the situation. The people I am thinking about is the people who lived there and had no choice that the war was brought to them.
There being a reporter being killed in only a problem for apologists - you can not simply hide the crimes, brush them under the carpet since the reporter was was with an internationally recognised news organisation.
But what really matters, and matters more than reporters is the civillians.
Stop being so callous to not think that they matter.
I don't really care about what they said (apart from blaming the parents of the kids for bringing them into the "warzone" - it is a heavily populated city that they decided to bring their war to. the civillians are not at fault for living where others decide to wage war.)
and this is totally indefensible. Even if there was doubt earlier over weapons because they never dsid their job, there should be no doubt here that the people were not planning at shooting at others. They killed simply because they could have left the scene of massacre before the coalition tanks got there.
If that is allowed in the rules of engagement, then the rules of engagement are vile and evil.
I have never denied that war is ugly. At the same time it is you who have been bandying about one sided against the salafis and their anger - not taking the time to understand why they and most other Muslims (and hopefully humans) are angry.
"war is ugly" is only a suitable response when a war has been foisted upon you - like it was upon Iraq and on Afghanistan. It is not a suitable answer from those who are the instigators of aggression because they had a choice.
Besides, there is a longer unedited version that features this.
I am not embedding the gif image there, but it shows a civilian casually walking down the street being mowed down.
That is not fog of war. It is murder. it would ahve been covered up like everything else in this video if the video had not been leaked.
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.