Posted on 04/05/2010 9:50:58 PM PDT by honestabe010
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!"
(Excerpt) Read more at thewoodwardreport.com ...
yeah, they were all just out peacefully walking their AK-47’s and grenade launchers.
war is hell
Excellent shooting.
....rolls eyes. WTF?
Of course this was in 2007.
While Obammie the Commie completely screws up the wars in Irag and Afghanistan, the state-run media is quick to draw attention away from his disasters back to you-know-who’s alleged mistakes.
The current wars won’t have nearly this much transparency.
However, what they don't tell you is that the army claimed this whole scene went down shortly after a big gunfight in the streets nearby which we aren't shown. The official 2007 press release:
Soldiers of 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, and the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, both operating in eastern Baghdad under the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, along with their Iraqi counterparts from the 1st Battalion, 4th Brigade, 1st Division National Police, were conducting a coordinated raid as part of a planned operation when they were attacked by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. Coalition Forces returned fire and called in attack aviation reinforcement.
So the air support arrives and finds a guy with an RPG, shortly after coalition forces are attacked by RPG fire. Odd how the Wikileaks video begins after all that, isn't it?
Also note the streets are utterly deserted before the gunfire takes place. Everybody's hiding from the previous firefight.
As to the black van, Bill Roggio in the Weekly Standard points out:
Critics will undoubtedly be up in arms over the attack on that black van you see that moves in to evacuate the wounded; but it is not a marked ambulance, nor is such a vehicle on the "Protected Collateral Objects" listed in the Rules of Engagement. The van, which was coming to the aid of the fighters, was fair game, even if the men who exited the van weren't armed.
And he sums up:
Baghdad in July 2007 was a very violent place, and the neighborhoods of Sadr City and New Baghdad were breeding grounds for the Mahdi Army and associated Iranian-backed Shia terror groups. The city was a war zone. To describe the attack you see in the video as "murder" is a sensationalist gimmick that succeeded in driving tons of media attention and traffic to Wikileaks' website.
This video is a standard (and not very adroit) bit of stage magic-style misdirection; take your eyes off what's waved in front of you and look where they don't want you to and then you see what's really going on: propaganda.
Irag = Iraq, obviously.
Sounds like these fine ex-folks had been identified as persons of interest, jihadwise.
Have you noticed that before 2008 the evening news almost always led with the body count to-date in Iraq.
Once Obammie the Commie fooled the American people into electing him, suddenly the body count dropped out of the news.
It does sound like a colossally bad idea to try to embed reporters with a jihadi group.
I can count the number of evening newses I’ve watched in the last year on one hand. And that counts showings in places like restaurants.
What shocked me was the imbicile who drove a minivan with two kids into this mayhem. Don’t tell me he didn’t know about the massive ordinance the Apache had just unloaded. You could hear that for miles. HE and he alone is responsible for those kids being maimed.
I’m reporting it because its news — but you can these fellows at wikileaks are chomping at the bit not only to gain notoriety but to cast the U.S. soldiers in a negative light. I do not have any confirmation that these allegations are truthful. However, it must be noted that it is a regrettable fact of war that innocent civilians will be killed (not saying that was necessarily the case here). But to make any sort of assertion that these brave soldiers are getting kicks out of waking up each day not knowing if it will be their last or not is absurd. My message to those at wikileaks is why dont you put on a uniform and go provide the blanket of security that only the most upstanding few are brave enough to do. It is such a sad state of affairs that all the media wants to cover are possible mishaps or wrongdoings on the part of our military. How about letting us hear about the thousands upon thousands of courageous acts are men in uniform perform each day.
Even the mainstream news media has complained for decades that Reuters is notoriously unreliable and prone to fabricate news. But during the Iraq War the Associated Press adopted the Reuters model of outsourcing most of their reporting and photo work to local “stringers.” The result was a stream news that was controlled and often written by the insurgency.
Thanks for a good analysis.
One more point the video does not explain is the fact that the Apache was there to protect the army units on ground. Even if they made a mistake (unlikely in this case - RPG:s are not the usual utensils when you go for your daily shopping) the result of being too cautious could cause severe losses to the troops they were there to protect.
Nevertheless, this video is now going viral on MSM sites (at least in the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian newspapers) and on the blogosphere. The usual anti-US, anti-Western and pacifist comments are in abundance. It will be interesting to see if this will “catch fire” and how the Administration will react in that case. I fear the worst for the crew on the Apache helicopter.
I watched the video and one of the targets was carrying an RPG. Note to self, don't stand near a guy with an RPG.
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