Monday, April 05, 2010

WikiLeaks : Collateral murder

WikiLeaks has acquired from whistleblowers in the US military a video and the chilling conversations between two Apache helicopter pilots as they open fire on people milling about on a street in Baghdad in July 2007, killing 12. A civilian van containing two children stopped to help the wounded and was also fired upon and destroyed.
"Well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle," says one pilot.

Among the people killed were a Reuters photographer and his driver. Note that it requires the death of a Reuters employee to force the military to walk back from their original statement that :
"There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force."

Elisabeth Bumiller at The New York Times confirms : "A senior American military official confirmed that the video was authentic."





Glen Greenwald : The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters

Skdadl at POGGE : Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out (and then lie, lie, lie)
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

More here:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/6/massacre_caught_on_tape_us_military

peace babies
waterbaby

Anonymous said...

Assange was on As It Happens tonight. Very well-spoken.
Unbelievable they fired on a whole crowd of people just standing around on the street because they mistook a camera for an RPG, as if it was, as Assange says, just another day at the office.

Ian

West End Bob said...

Rather refreshing to actually have investigative reporting again in our lifetime.

I had totally written the possibility off . . . .

thwap said...

I think one of the Iraqis did have an rpg.

Given that Blackwater and the US-military were ramapaging through their country that seems understandable.

Anyways, they could have been Shiite allies, private security, or it could have been something besides an rpg.

Regardless, shooting the wounded from helicopters isn't part of any official rules of engagement that I know of.

At best, for the thoroughly corrupted US legal system, the two specific individuals who fired the guns or gave the orders MIGHT be sacrificed for this, but the big fish won't ever be touched.

RossK said...

Bumiller?

Bumiller actually did something useful....

Of course, as Bob noted above, the previously always obfuscatory one, didn't actually do any investigating...instead she just managed a third hand confirmation which helped get this story catapaulted into the NYT....

Sheesh.

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