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shows Americans deliberately attacking and killing civilian first responders

Only when it is not obvious, they are "first responders" — and civilian ones at that, because shooting the corpsmen attempting to evacuate a wounded comrade is not at all illegal...

The video's description says:

Wikileaks has obtained and decrypted this previously unreleased video footage from a US Apache helicopter in 2007. It shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad. They are apparently assumed to be insurgents. After the initial shooting, an unarmed group of adults and children in a minivan arrives on the scene and attempts to transport the wounded. They are fired upon as well. The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths ocurred. Wikileaks released this video with transcripts and a package of supporting documents on April 5th 2010 on http://collateralmurder.com/

How was an Apache pilot supposed to discern the motives and the allegiances of the newly-arrived group of people?

But, for all your hatred of America and our military, you illustrate the OP's point — if the incident really was a war-crime rather than an unfortunate mistake, it would be a cause for real outrage among the Westerners. This undoubtedly deliberate killings of concert-goers, on contrast, elicit nothing but insincere "official" condemnations from their society.

We really are better than they.

We have a window into some other people's characters as well.

Wrong! The first rule you learn in the US Army is that you are to uphold the Constitution and defend the citizens. You also learn that you are not to obey orders that are unlawful and therefor illegal.

Uphold the Constitution, Defend the citizens, and lawful orders. That would be the Abu Ghraib iraq prison scandal, the US government putting prisoners in a room with mustard gas to test its effects, and shooting unarmed bystanders trying to help the injured after a botched air strike, respectively.

Wear the Uniform and learn the job before you spout off bullshit propaganda.

I think the work speaks for itself. I don't think I need to participate in the torture and murder of people, or use chemical weapons on them, to arrive at the conclusion that some of the things our military has done has been very shameful. That all said, our military is better than most, but waving the flag and saying we can do no wrong is propaganda, man. We need to move past being "pro-USA" or "pro-Russian" or "pro-chinese" and start being "pro-human", because patriotism is built on the same principles as racism, sexism, fascism, communism, and all the other isms: It is dogma. It is a refusal to admit to mistakes, a belief in your own moral superiority, and those two things combined have written some of the darkest chapters in human history.

As Einstein wrote, and I paraphrase: The pioneers of world peace will be the youth who refuse military service. Yeah, putting on the uniform can be an honorable and necessary thing. You won't hear very many people dissing WWII veterans. But as long as people like you are eager to sign up to go kill foreigners, our leaders have little incentive to find peaceful solutions.

crime against humanity

Here's a few:

http://collateralmurder.com/
1. Murdering journalists.
2. Murdering kids.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/bradley-manning-leaks_n_3788126.html
3. Thousands of 'unrecorded' civilian deaths.
4. Torture and illegal rendition.

Go read up a bit, you ignorant, git.

What crimes?

http://collateralmurder.com/

killing journalists & children is a crime, even in war.

You probably haven't even looked at the video they deliberately mislabeled "collateral murder". (which, by the way, is almost certainly clearer for you on your computer than the pilot had on their little 4" screen in the apache)

It sounds to me like you are the one who hasn't looked at the video. Try watching it again. The long version. And notice how the helicopter pilot fires on unarmed innocent people including children who clearly are not carrying any weapons. It is true that there was a guy with a camera. And no it didn't look like a rocket launcher. And there were a couple of guys some distance away from the main group who were carrying what may have been rifles, probably guards to try to protect the rest of the people in a war zone.

But that does not excuse a cold blooded massacre of unarmed civilians including children. They were even cheering and celebrating as they machine gunned innocent children. If they weren't sure they could have moved closer and waited to see if the two guys with rifles fired at them. Or at least picked up their rifles (assuming they actually were rifles) to aim at them.

That video is probably the most disgusting thing I have ever watched. It is almost impossible for me to watch the whole thing in fact. I just get too angry. Those guys should be executed. I would happily do it myself. Not only have they not been reprimanded. Their names haven't even been released. That is just wrong. Very, very wrong. They committed serious war crimes. As clear cut as any war crimes. Those particular guys were truly no better than Nazis, and I say this as a jew with ancestors in Poland.

I suppose I was naive, but I never really believed that our military behaved like that. Like vicious animals killing with enjoyment and laughing about it. Showing no honor or mercy even to children. And that is the importance of this video and in my view what really makes Manning a hero. That video needed to be released. Manning has given his life to get that video, among other things, out into the open.

I can tell you one thing. After watching that video it will be a cold day in hell before I ever approve of us going to war for any reason except to directly defend ourselves here on US territory. Between that video and the revelation of what was going on at Abu Ghraib we have shown that we cannot fight with honor. We cannot be trusted to fight a war without senseless massacres and god only knows what kind of sick war crimes. We truly are just as bad or even worse than what even the most anti-American critics have always claimed.

He quickly pointed out that it was missing a bunch of context because at that time the insurgents had been trying to score an apache kill, so the army was holding apaches back unless there was confirmed need for them

In what possible way is that supposed to excuse a massacre of mostly unarmed civilians? Those were not insurgents. They shot at least one child and two guys from Reuters. This was a clear case of massacre an entire crowd of people first. Ask questions later. This is a crime of coward chicken-hawk murderers too afraid to get close enough to their victims to confirm that they really are enemies actively engaging in combat with them. Those are some evil fucks.

He had no business leaking what he did.

Yes he did

Are you paid to lie?

The Collateral Murder site has had the full video available from the beginning. I viewed both, from that site, the day it was announced.

Wikileaks actually went above and beyond the accepted standard by providing the full file. Most news organizations edit heavily and don't provide the original.

frankly speaking most of them were boring drivel

Wow, and yet you slogged through to be able to deliver your critical insight.

[and most] didn't reveal any kind of criminal activity.

I'd hope most of them were mundane...

But, the issue is criminal actions at all. And criminal coverups of the criminal actions. And the video and the response to it prove that clearly enough for anyone outside the USA.

Vote Bradley Manning for president!

the infamous "helicopter video" they'd have published the whole thing instead of editing it down to make it look worse like Assange did. And before the fanboys downmod me YES that's what happened, he admitted to it, and later published the entire video. Which you can still view on Wikileaks but the site "collateralmurder" still links to the edited version.

The edited video does not seem dishonest, it does not change the message in a significant manner, and as you said they did publish the full raw footage. And the website you mention has both videos up and a third version with commentary by US soldiers.

Do you have any other footage, or links ?

Bad things happen.

Your way of stating "Bad things happen" WRT the second strike is as wrong as calling the first strike entirely legit. The moment we start to excuse bad things with "Bad things happen" we will accelerate our ride down the slippery slopes.

You're assuming that, "bad things happen" was stated as an excuse instead of a mere statement of fact.

The "collateral murder" video was a selectively edited, perversely annotated, propaganda piece.

For those that has not visited http://www.collateralmurder.com/ for a while i recommend a re-visit. If you dont like the "selectively edited, perversely annotated, propaganda piece", you can watch the unedited full version of the video and make your own opinion what is propaganda and what's not.

Yes, they should. And more important, they should read as much as they can about what happened that night. It throws the whole media hack-job into sharp relief.

WRT lessons learned: Don't deal with wikileaks.

WRT lessons learned: Keep yourself well informed. Have an opinion. Do what you can to affect society in the direction YOU think is for the good of all. Like Bradley, like Ethan.

That's a fine in theory, but I'd really rather more people abstained from having vocal opinions until they knew what they were talking about. Too many make judgements and sweeping generalizations that are provably false based on bad material like... wait for it... edited video clips. How many people saw that thing and didn't bother to find out what really happened? Think about it.

Bad things happen.

Your way of stating "Bad things happen" WRT the second strike is as wrong as calling the first strike entirely legit. The moment we start to excuse bad things with "Bad things happen" we will accelerate our ride down the slippery slopes.

The "collateral murder" video was a selectively edited, perversely annotated, propaganda piece.

For those that has not visited http://www.collateralmurder.com/ for a while i recommend a re-visit. If you dont like the "selectively edited, perversely annotated, propaganda piece", you can watch the unedited full version of the video and make your own opinion what is propaganda and what's not.

But most of all watch Ethan McCords eyewitness story from what happened not only in the video of said incident, but what was the instructed ways of handling incidents on the streets of Baghdad given by US military to its soldiers. Then take a few moments to consider what is your opinion on this.

WRT lessons learned: Don't deal with wikileaks.

WRT lessons learned: Keep yourself well informed. Have an opinion. Do what you can to affect society in the direction YOU think is for the good of all. Like Bradley, like Ethan.

Does it kill fewer innocent children and reporters than combat pilots?

That depends on where you deploy it, and what your definition of an "innocent" is. Reports are neutral objects, they are to be treated just like a Referee on a Soccer (Football) field. You're not supposed to intentionally target them, but you're also not supposed to worry about hitting them on accident- it's their job to get out of the way.

Does it kill fewer innocent children and reporters than combat pilots?

I once watched a video clip of an American helicopter killing a crowd of people, because one of them had a camera in his hand. And it was not a clip from a movie, just like what you've watched. It was a clip from recordings of the Apache helicopter, that was later named Collateeral Murder by Julian Assange.
So, let's talk about facts, not movies.

Sorry, his only options were "obey orders," or "leak millions of classified documents to Julian Assange"? That's a curiously short list of alternatives. How about... report it to the Inspector General (essentially, "internal affairs" for the military), or up his chain of command, and failing any action from any of them, end with:

How do you know he didn't take it up the chain of command? Because his superiors claim he didn't? As in, the same superiors who gave access to shit-tons of top secret documents to a private?

Doesn't sound like a trustworthy group if you ask me.

You think a letter like that would be completely ignored, especially if he "accidentally leaked" a copy of it to a couple major news outlets, even Wikileaks?

Wait... I thought you were trying to argue against his releasing the info to Wikileaks, and now you're supporting it?

If they have Dates & locations, how hard is it for a couple journalists to start digging and saying, "whoa whoa whoa, we have some strong evidence that a bunch of Army soldiers kicked in the door, raped all the women, and then executed all the people in this house."

Reuters did, and were told "the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement".

Those 'Rules of Engagement' happened to be classified, and were changed several times before, during, and after the murder of the Reuters journalists.

Had the video of the execution never surfaced, you know damn well the entire incident would have been swept under the rug.

There are ways to whistleblow which would make it impossible for the government to ignore the issue, without actually copying the entire database of classified materials and releasing it unedited to Wikileaks.

Such as? Can you provide an example?

Any argument that there were only 2 options available to him is completely false,

Yet you seem unable to provide a third option...

and to suggest that he was right to disregard the numerous measured responses he could have pursued

Options which, again, you appear incapable of providing.

This wasn't whistle blowing material. If say the US was using chemical weapons to devastate a town. Where the US is in violation of war crimes and showed a policy of knowing about and supporting such crimes, that is whistle blowing material. What he did was just stupid and deserves to be locked up for.

Murdering journalists and children isn't what you would consider a war crime???

What the hell is wrong with you?

You may be correct that the legal papers in the case and the extradition are all legit, with dotted Is and crossed Ts, but how likely is it that international extradition proceedings would be started against a man for having consensual sex that was turned out to be a little too agressive, or without a condom? To be sure it sounds like Assange was irresponsible, but it's hard to imagine that these proceedings would have started without political motives. Have you seen Naomi Wolf's take on it?

See also

You're right that the "enemy of state" thing is overstated and hyperbolic (an eyeball grabber - "made you look!") but there is no doubt that some U.S. mucky-mucks are extremely pissed at WikiLeaks. I bet some of them would be happy to punish Assange by any means necessary, to discourage anyone else from ever leaking classified information. Collateral murder is not the kind of thing you want to be public.

Did not reveal anything? Only a diplomatic embarrassment? At least check Google or something before making a statement like that.

You apparently haven't seen http://www.iraqwarlogs.com/, which is a good place to start. Also check out http://www.collateralmurder.com/.

There's evidence of many war crimes committed by the US, not merely something embarrassing. Things like this NEED to be exposed, not hidden away with the reasoning of "You took an oath to keep it secret." Sometimes you have to break an oath if the ones who told you to keep quiet are doing evil things.

What did i say to you? Are You making a comment there is no difference between the Terrorist and our government? See the difference is our government doesn't TARGET civilians. Terrorist DO.

What about those dozen or so people the US army lined up in the targets of their guns and blew to bits in Baghdad?
They were all civilians, two were Reuters staff, two were children.

http://collateralmurder.com/

Of course we only know what was leaked, there are likely many more killings we don't know about. This shows a clear intent to murder civilians.

My brother is an Apache pilot

One of these Apache pilots, by any chance?

First of all, posting AC for a reason, I'm not trolling but I am going against the groupthink, at least I think I am - I'm not entirely sure, the groupthink here seems here to be contrary to previous discussions about related but different use cases of artificial intelligence.

If a self driving car can result in less death and injury how can we not see that an automated targeting and killing system cannot result in more effective warfare. Don't get me wrong, I'm anti war, and hardly what you'd call a republican but I would hazard a guess that an automated system would do better over all. It would be faster, more accurate, with little bias and absolutely no emotion.

The false positives scare me, as they scare you but I would prefer less false positives and less flat out murder where possible.

Either we are falling prey to the same issues "society" fall prey to when a self driving car kills someone, or the question of morality and discussion thereof is certainly not over yet.

Makes you wonder what would happen in the world if people in the armed forces were actually held responsible for their actions and were not able to do whatever they wanted.

http://www.collateralmurder.com/

'You see enemy soldiers not only brutalizing American civilians, but outright murdering a mother in front of her children and callously tossing corpses around,'

Oh, so pretty much what the US military does in many parts of the world every day. Making this game pernicious propaganda intended to demonise a universal enemy—"foreigners = bad guys"—along with its tag team of TV and Hollywood.

And it works very effectively: You quickly end up with Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, an astonishing rate of civilian massacre by flying robots piloted by laughing good ole boys, trophy killings for sport, and all the rest of the bloody, horrible theatre perpetrated by the world's most dangerous rogue state.

Sorry for double post... But I just went and watched the "full" video here, and around 4:35-4:45, I very clearly see a cut. Is that how such videos generally work? Is there any reason to believe that too was not edited, or can we trust that THIS time, it was the full video?

And I thought the point of a site like wikileaks was to be a neutral, thrid party publishing site; sticking orwell quotes onto a video doesnt seem very neutral to me.

The 'rpg' was a camera, the suspicious positioning was paranoid cameramen not wanting to be mistaken for an rpg user and being shot (sure it made it look bad but he maybe had a chance of taking the footage/picture he wanted without issue, as opposed to standing in broad daylight and definitely raising suspicions)

I read somewhere in connection with the footage when first released that stated that AK47s were very prevalent in the area and the journalists most certainly would have taken (similarly) armed guards with them for protection. But my memory of it is unclear that may have just been slashdot comments.

I originally saw the full version which was released by wikileaks http://www.youtube.com/v/is9sxRfU-ik

But I also saw the edited version wikileaks released on http://collateralmurder.com/ and they absolutely do NOT edit out these pertinent points as you state. And released the full version at the same time on the same pages.

They just point out in the edit that the two guys walking across the street actually just have cameras slung over their shoulders. The two guys further back are still fully in view possibly holding ak47s.

As an aside I hadn't seen the interview video on there until today, very disturbing :-(

According to the Canadian 2007-documentary War made Easy, civilian casualties in war rose from 10% in 1WW to 90 in the Gulf War

WWI: 10% of the dead where civilians
WWII: 50%
Vietnam-War: 70%
Gulf-War: 90% (not sure if they where talking about the 1991-war or the 2003-war)

And this with the 'most accurate weapons known to man'

Smart enough to shut the hell up when they see something they shouldn't have?

Clearly you are laboring under the misapprehension that wikileaks is not an opinion site trying to make itself a facts based site.

http://www.collateralmurder.com/ is a prime example of this in practice, even the name is opinion rather than fact. The framing of the video itself also poses some issues, they have taken great pains to emphasize the portions where people are getting killed but pay no attention to what the pilot was saying after ground troops arrived. This changes the entire thing from a guy making a pretty bad mistake and clearly regretting afterwards to a guy who knowingly murdered a bunch of people on a street because he felt like it.

Facts can be framed to make them opinion, this is what wikileaks does. If they were the disinterested NGO you claim then not only would the argument for releasing the material be stronger (transparency is a great thing) but there would be far fewer grounds to object to it.

Release the data and let people make up their own minds, don’t frame it in a way to try and make people make a specific conclusion.

Two words for you Shirley Sherrod.

Video evidence can be edited to presenting misleading versions of the facts, quotes out of context, essential details left out,etc,etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resignation_of_Shirley_Sherrod

Then there also people like Commodore_64_love, make up crap to embellish the story

btw: Im watching the actual unedited video.

Also the "brat" quote was FAKE go actually listen to the actual video.
When the gunner found out the
the actual quote "Well its their fault for bringing kids to a battle" no laughing when they said that.

  Plus the kid WASNT DEAD! Another FAKE claim, the kid was wounded in the belly and the gunner said "damn" and called for
  a medical evac of the child at minute 18 of the unedited video.

runaway was telling the truth and got smeared as a flamebait.

Go look at the video yourself instead of making up phony quotes.
http://collateralmurder.com/ even the website doesnt claim the kid was killed

This article, and:

http://collateralmurder.com/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/16/army_wikileaks/
http://www.examiner.com/x-6495-US-Intelligence-Examiner~y2010m6d20-Censored-news-Pentagon-attacks-Wikileaks-more-gulf-drilling-approved-Fed-fights-reform-more

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Errors_in_the_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_that_have_been_corrected_in_Wikipedia
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html
http://thestatsblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/britannica-versus-wikipedia/

"Why is it that only people with guns who kill people get criminal prosecutions"

But that is not true at all. Being a cop or a soldier is a license to kill.

Stop whining about the edits already, Wikileaks immediately posted both a short and full version of the video

The Freedom of Information Act seems to be working pretty well despite resulting in mass humiliation for countless officials.

Yeah, it worked so well getting a copy of this ... oh wait, it didn't. Tell me, why is information like that even allowed to be classified? If my tax dollars are paying to have Beavis and Butthead murder children in the desert, I have a right to know about it.

What this means is that unless the aircrew saw the men attempting to help the wounded reporters pick up the reporters "weapons", they where not allowed to engage them. I would think that if the aircrew had seen the men pick up weapons, they would have mentioned this fact when requesting permission to engage - but they didn't.

Look at the transcript. At 7:18, the gunner says:

Bushmaster; Crazyhorse. We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly uh picking up bodies and weapons.

You can't blame the superior officer for giving permission to engage in these circumstances. But from the video it is clear that the gunner is simply lying. The men who come out of the van go straight to help the wounded crawling man. The gunner's fright and bloodlust must have clouded his vision.

As for the Geneva convention, it is not clear to me whether it applies in this case. After all, the responsibility is on the insurgents to wear uniforms, so that the Americans can know whom to shoot. It is not their fault that they have a really hard job distinguishing between civilian and combatant.

This was a complex situation. It is tragic that the gunner had no training and killed the journalists, but he legitimately saw weapons, even if he was in error about cameras being RPGs. He should have been punished for his poor judgement, and continued fighting. However, his firing on the van and killing the civilians in and around it is completely unjustified. He should have been court marshalled and severely punished for such irresponsible behaviour.

The broader problem is how the soldiers in the video sound completely immature and not up to dealing with the responsibilities of being a member of the army. They seem frightened, unprepared, timid, unable to think critically and rather bloodthirsty. If this is representative of the US military in general, then I'd say they have a serious problem that should be solved on the policymaking level.

But the gravest problem of all, which everyone seems to be missing, and which WikiLeaks points out with the opening quote, is the lies, doublespeak and cover-ups of the US military/government. If situations such as this are kept secret, there state has no accountability, and democracy, or, taking it further, personal freedom, cannot be upheld.

Maybe the rules have changed?

See: http://www.collateralmurder.com/

Just to be clear they presented the data in both an edited and unedited version . I would agree with you if wikileaks had released only the edited version, but the fact that they released the full video right next to the edited one, puts them several levels above something like National Enquirer IMO. It also puts them at a higher standard than most of the current US mainstream media which is usually very light on references and heavy on granting anonymity even when it's not needed.

Did the edited video go overboard with the picture of the son in the edited video? Yes, probably. But in general I think wikileaks does a good job of providing unbiased information and filling a big gap left by most of the media.

"First off, the Army gets to be pretty picky about who it lets in."

WHAT!? They are letting in convicted felons, non U.S. citizens, gang bangers, all kinds of malcontents these days just to get BODIES to go fight in Afganistan and Iraq. I know - I have friends and family SERVING in the Army right now (no none of them are in the above list - they know people who are though). We have PYCHOS's in the Army killing kids FOR FUN, killing dogs FOR FUN, killing reporters and kids FOR FUN! Read the news watch the videos WIkileaks released!

Here is just a few for you:

Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraq-attack
"Footage of July 2007 attack made public as Pentagon identifies website as threat to national security"

Wikileak'd video shows U.S. troops firing on Reuters reporters and Iraqi children
http://www.infowars.com/wikileakd-video-shows-eager-to-kill-troops-firing-on-reuters-reporters-and-children/

http://www.collateralmurder.com/

Neo-Cons Defend Massacre Of Iraqi Journalists, Children
http://www.infowars.com/neo-cons-defend-massacre-of-iraqi-journalists-children/

Wikileaks leaked video of Civilians killed in Baghdad -- Full video
http://www.infowars.com/wikileaks-leaked-video-of-civilians-killed-in-baghdad-full-video/

Wikileaks Video Exposes Apache Murders of Journalists, Children In Iraq
http://www.prisonplanet.com/wikileaks-video-exposes-apache-murders-of-journalists-children-in-iraq.html

Alex Jones Covers the WikiLeaks Pentagon Snuff Video
http://www.infowars.com/alex-jones-covers-the-wikileaks-pentagon-snuff-video/

WikiLeaks VIDEO Exposes 2007 'Collateral Murder' In Iraq
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/05/wikileaks-exposes-video-o_n_525569.html

Mainstream media ignores Wikileaks video and pays more attention to Tiger Woods
http://snardfarker.ning.com/group/MainstreamMediaAndMindControl/forum/topics/rt-video-mainstream-media?commentId=2649739%3AComment%3A167787&xg_source=activity&groupId=2649739%3AGroup%3A134445

Wikileaks Iraq Video Authenticated By Senior Military Officer
http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/04/06/wikileaks-iraq-video-authenticated-by-senior-military-officer/

Leaked U.S. video shows deaths of Reuters' Iraqi staffers
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6344FW20100406?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

36 Still Images - WikiLeaks Iraq Video (Dial-Up Warning and UPDATE from Wikileaks
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8095770

Violence in Video Games and the Baghdad Massacre

And, where is the raw video? The timestamps are almost unreadable, it's obviously been reduced in size and re-encoded. Wikileaks put it into a boxed frame with titles and subtitles. The MP4 they provided is larger but is still blurry and obviously not the source video. Why are they not leaking that???

The raw video is here: http://collateralmurder.com/file/CollateralMurder_full.mp4.torrent

Wow, you are seeming kinda of crazy here, from those of us who watched the entire video. Watch the unedited version of the video, first two minutes. LISTEN to the what the military are saying. WATCH when they tell you these people have weapons. UNDERSTAND that while you might not "see" the weapons, they can easily be mistaken for weapons. http://collateralmurder.com/

It's been said by some people that he pointed the camera at the Apache to take a picture, but they've got the last few pictures from his camera here and that doesn't seem to be the case. The EXIF data has been stripped, but presumably whoever leaked the shots had the original files, and you can tell through a variety of means (most simply, the sequentially numbered filenames) if any shots had been deleted.

He was obviously doing *something* with the camera behind the wall, but I see no evidence to suggest they even knew the Apache was nearby, or looking at them - they were quite a distance away.

Wrong. Game Over. Read the transcript.

It was clearly Murder.

You mean this http://collateralmurder.com/en/resources.html rocket launcher marked "Canon"?

and when the soldier says "serves them right"?

The actually say @17:46 "Well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.". See more on transcript: http://www.collateralmurder.com/file/transcript-en.txt

Also keep in mind that, if you need to pause and watch closely to "clearly see" the children, then it's not really clear - the gunner didn't have the luxury of being able to do that back then.

If you watch the short video you will see that they do have the luxury - they had plenty of time to zoom in on the van while the van was stopped to pick up the wounded reporter - they even have to wait for authorization to fire on the van. Also, if you watch the long video you can see that they have a ridiculously good zoom on that camera - they can easily zoom into great detail on anything they like... they did not bother to do so on the van though you'll note. In the short version on video they point out the kids on the front seat for you and also quote the public report that they made every effort to identify civilians/kids - which you can see they did not do. Even worse they changed the hospital to take the kids to from the US base to a local one.

http://collateralmurder.com/file/CollateralMurder.mp4.torrent