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Wikileaks Releases Video of Journalist Killings
linguizic writes "Today Wikileaks released a video of the US military firing large caliber weapons into a crowd that included a photojournalist and a driver for Reuters, and at a van containing two children who were involved in a rescue. Wikileaks maintains that this video was covered up by the US military when Reuters asked for an official investigation. This is the same video that has supposedly made the editors of Wikileaks a target of the State Department and/or the CIA, as was discussed a couple weeks ago."
Needless to say, this video is probably not work safe (language and violence), and not for the faint of heart.
Wikileaks also recently released CIA "Red Cell" files on how they will manipulate public opinion to keep countries around the world supporting the Afghanistan war this summer, a time when casualties are expected to rise and they say "public apathy will no longer be enough" to guarantee support for the war.
At 8 minutes 30 seconds you can hear the guy in the Apache, crosshair hovering over a gravely wounded individual that is clearly struggling to even get anywhere saying and I quote "Come on buddy all you gotta do is pick up a weapon".
Short version: there's a few people wandering about, on the street.In the video none of them are obviously carrying anything big, though you can hear the soldiers calling in that the people were carrying AK47's and an RPG.
They shoot and kill/wound them all.
Fast forward a little with a few people bleeding to death on the ground some poor sod driving by in a minivan stopsto help and a kid and I think parents try to carry one of the injured/dead people into the car.
Over the radio you hear the soldiers calling in that more insurgents are picking up all the weapons and rescuing the wounded and they request permission to fire.
Then they shoot and kill them all.
what followed was a coverup and attempts to strongarm wikileaks into not releasing the video.
Can you please point out the exact moment (time) in either short or full version of the video when children are clearly seen...
A few seconds before they fire on the van, while the guys in the chopper are swearing about how they want permission to fire.
Please keep in mind that what the soldiers in the helicopter see isn't a 360p youtube video (this is obvious from comments they make about details which aren't visible in the youtube video due to the low resolution).
...and when the soldier says "serves them right"?
Towards the end of the short video when mention of the kids come up one of the chopper guys says it serves them right for bringing their kids to a battle.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
They were clearly evacuating a wounded man, something I thought was pretty much a universal no-no for engagement.
I believe you are mistaken on this point. International law and the current US ROE most certainly allow one to fire on a retreating enemy target until they law down their arms and equipment and surrender. A duty to allow enemy troops to retreat with their weapons and equipment intact in order to regroup and attack again at some future time makes absolutely no sense. Customary international law (according to the Red Cross) states it this way:
http://www.icrc.org/IHL.nsf/WebART/612-047?OpenDocument
Rule 47. Attacking persons who are recognised as hors de combat is prohibited. A person hors de combat is:
(a) anyone who is in the power of an adverse party;
(b) anyone who is defenceless because of unconsciousness, shipwreck, wounds or sickness; or
(c) anyone who clearly expresses an intention to surrender; provided he or she abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape
All of this is moot, of course, if the man is not properly an enemy target to begin with, a question I take no position on here because it is a factual dispute and I just wanted to post on the law as I understand it. I'm not at all claiming that it was proper to attack these folks, only that armed retreat is not and has never been grounds for protection under the laws of war. To claim protection, a combatant must lay down his arms and cease trying to escape.
See also:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1314&dat=19910227&id=rnQfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OPEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5146,4465272
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19910227&id=7k8eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XscEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1239,3716450
The video clearly shows them shooting at the people who arrived to help a wounded victim (identified by Wikileaks as one of the Reuters employees). However, when asking for permission to fire on the new arrivals, the American gunship crew repeatedly said that the people were "collecting bodies".
But they weren't "medics" from what I could tell. They were just some passing civilians, trying to help a wounded man.
Excuse me, 30mm is NOT allowed for human targets just like WP isn't supposed to be used. Using anti-aircraft/anti-vehicle weaponry against non-armored human targets goes against the Geneva Convention.
Citation, please.
I've actually read the Geneva Conventions. I've had usage of force training, etc... I am military. USAF, to be specific.
The wording of the conventions is that we aren't to use weapons that case 'unnecessary suffering'.
You are allowed to use any weapons available on any target available with very few exceptions.
Stuff considered banned:
1. Non-metallic rounds. Metal rounds work just as well, non-metallic ones designed to be harder to be removed is just being cruel.
2. Nuclear/Biological/Chemical: Comes under 'not discriminary enough', 'militarily ineffective', and 'needlesly cruel'. Especially against militaries prepared for them.
3. Hollowpoints, but only 'sortof', it's actually a prohibition against expanding/explosive rounds below a certain caliber. Plus, this is more by convention than law, since the USA is not a signer to the treaty that actually banned them, and as long as hollowpoints are demostrated to be 'more effective', they'd actually pass the standards of the Geneva conventions rather easily.
WP is more considered a chemical weapon, plus, if you're close enough to use WP, you're close enough to use other weapons, generally speaking, thus the unnecessary suffering part comes into play.
I don't read AC A human right
going to try to post transcript, prolly will get filtered as spam, guess we'll see...
00:03 Okay I got it. 00:05 Last conversation Hotel Two-Six. 00:09 Roger Hotel Two-Six [Apache helicopter 1], uh, [this is] Victor Charlie Alpha. Look, do you want your Hotel Two-Two two el- ...this location and there's more that keep walking by and one of them has a weapon. ... Okay, we're gonna come around.
00:14 I got a black vehicle under target. It's arriving right to the north of the mosque.
00:17 Yeah, I would like that. Over.
00:21 Moving south by the mosque dome. Down that road.
00:27 Okay we got a target fifteen coming at you. It's a guy with a weapon.
00:32 Roger [acknowledged].
00:39 There's a...
00:42 There's about, ah, four or five...
00:44 Bushmaster Six [ground control] copy [i hear you] One-Six.
00:48
00:52 Roger received target fifteen.
00:55 K. 00:57 See all those people standing down there. 01:06 Stay firm. And open the courtyard. 01:09 Yeah roger. I just estimate there's probably about twenty of them. 01:13 There's one, yeah.
01:15 Oh yeah.
01:18 I don't know if that's a...
01:19 Hey Bushmaster element [ground forces control], copy on the one-six.
01:21 Thats a weapon.
01:22 Yeah.
01:23 Hotel Two-Six; Crazy Horse One-Eight [second Apache helicopter].
01:29 Copy on the one-six, Bushmaster Six-Romeo. Roger.
01:32 Fucking prick.
01:33 Hotel Two-Six this is Crazy Horse One-Eight [communication between chopper 1 and chopper 2]. Have individuals with weapons.
01:41 Yup. He's got a weapon too.
01:43 Hotel Two-Six; Crazy Horse One-Eight. Have five to six individuals with AK47s [automatic rifles]. Request permission to engage [shoot].
01:51 Roger that. Uh, we have no personnel east of our position. So, uh, you are free to engage. Over.
02:00 All right, we'll be engaging.
02:02 Roger, go ahead.
02:03 I'm gonna... I cant get 'em now because they're behind that building.
02:09 Um, hey Bushmaster element...
02:10 Is that an RPG [Rocket Propelled Grenade]?
02:11 All right, we got a guy with an RPG.
02:13 I'm gonna fire. 02:14 Okay.
02:15 No hold on. Lets come around. Behind buildings right now from our point of view.
02:19 Hotel Two-Six; have eyes on individual with RPG. Getting ready to fire. We won't...
02:23 Yeah, we had a guy shoot---and now he's behind the building.
02:26 God damn it.
02:28 Uh, negative, he was, uh, right in front of the Brad [Bradley Fighting Vehicle; an tracked Armored Personal Carrier that looks like a tank]. Uh, 'bout, there, one o'clock. [direction/orientation]
02:34 Haven't seen anything since then.
02:36 Just fuckin', once you get on 'em just open 'em up.
02:38 All right.
02:40 I see your element, uh, got about four Humvees [Armored cars], uh, out along...
02:43 You're clear. 02:44 All right, firing.
02:47 Let me know when you've got them.
02:49 Lets shoot. 02:50 Light 'em all up.
02:52 Come on, fire!
02:57 Keep shoot, keep shoot. [keep shooting]
02:59 keep shoot. 03:02 keep shoot.
03:05 Hotel.. Bushmaster Two-Six, Bushmaster Two-Six, we need to move, time now!
03:10 All right, we just engaged all eight individuals.
03:12 Yeah, we see two birds [helicopters] and we're still fire [not firing].
03:14 Roger.
03:15 I got 'em.
03:16 Two-six, this is Two-Six, we're mobile.
03:19 Oops, I'm sorry what was going on?
03:20 God damn it, Kyle.
03:23 All right, hahaha, I hit [shot] 'em...
03:28 Uh, you're clear.
03:30 All right, I'm just trying to find targets again.
03:38 Bushmaster Six, this is Bushmaster Two-Six.
03:40 Got a bunch of bodies layin' there.
03:42 All right, we got about, uh, eight individuals.
03:46 Yeah, we got one guy crawling around down there, but, uh, you know, we go
Actually, that's it exactly. In fact, the conventions are written in such a way as to specifically exclude from (most of) their protections those who are unlawful combatants, which means those who do not fight according to the rules the convention lays out. For example, a force that does not wear uniforms and hides among civilians is both not entitled to the protections of the conventions, but also is the responsible party in any attack that kills those civilians. You wear uniforms and try to avoid the civilians so that your enemy won't attack your civilians.
If you go back and look at the history of WWII, you will find that we mostly observed the rules against the Germans, who mostly observed the rules against us. (This was, IIRC, predating the Geneva conventions per se, or at least the later ones.) The exception was the SS, who massacred American soldiers at Malmedy and as a result were generally not captured after that, nor allowed to surrender. Against Japan, though, we generally didn't observe the rules, because the Japanese didn't. Japanese early on frequently used the ruse of surrendering and then setting off a grenade as they were being taken into custody. They may have kept trying this, but it didn't work for long, because we started shooting people trying to surrender.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
So I've spent about two and a half years deployed to Iraq, and seen my share of combat. I've served in several different infantry positions, both as a dismount and as a gunner in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle (the "Brad" mentioned in the video). I am always skeptical of these sorts of videos, because they lack context. As a third party, one never knows the full tactical situation, the histories of individuals and groups in the area, the mission and orders of the soldiers involved. So everything I say must be understood to be the view of a third party observer, one with a fair amount of boots-on-the-ground experience, but a third party nonetheless. Based solely on what appears in the video, it doesn't look like the gunner(s) had sufficient justification to fire. Simple possession of an AK-47 is legal in Iraq, and having it on the street isn't always enough to warrant immediate termination, and certainly not when the target is standing in a crowd of unarmed personnel. The "RPG" was poorly identified, and didn't appear to be of significant threat to the Crazyhorse element. It does sound like there had been recent combat in the area, so that may be why there was a minimum standard of ID used prior to engaging the targets. One thing to remember is that Bushmaster element can't always see everything that Crazyhorse does; they rely to some degree on the helos' info to inform their commands. If nothing else, this looked like a textbook situation for dismounted troops with air cover. It sounds like they had Bradleys and dismounts nearby, and they probably should have been sent in to deal with the situation. Dismounts have an infinitely superior view of what exactly is happening on the ground, and when combined with top-down info from the birds, they can properly assess a situation. If these RPGs and AKs were really cameras as reported by the site, then that would have been obvious to dismounts. Firing on the van completely blew my mind. This looks like a series of tactical mistakes combined with an overeager air element, combined with total disregard for the normal RoE (and again, I don't know if they were operating on some kind of modified Rules of Engagement). U.S. soldiers, in my experience, go to great lengths to prevent civilian casualties. Maybe things are different in the air, but those of us working on the ground have to look at everything we do, up close and personal. Don't paint U.S. forces with a broad brush based on the actions and mistakes of a few individuals. Also, remember that it's not the line troops that are performing coverups. Talk to your government about that.
You know what, we don't have any fucking business over there IN THE FIRST PLACE. Okay? Fuck the MIC that sends them over there to kill and be killed.
Actually, that's not true at all, there are laws regarding which weapons are allowable and not allowable in war (international treaties and such).
Sure, chemical and biological weapons are banned, as is deliberate attempts to make shrapnel out of hard to detect/remove substances such as glass.
Beyond that, there are no caliber limits. It is a frequent urban legend, to the point I've actually heard it briefed by military people. However, once I've asked them to cite the regulation, they have been unable to. I've looked myself.
For instance, the use of landmines is currently regulated. Chemical weapons are a general no-no. Nukes are considered bad. In Vietnam, American troops carried flat bayonets, whereas Viet-Cong carried three-sided ones, because of a ban that the American troops had signed. There are also maximum calibers on guns allowed to fire on human targets, above which the gun is classified supposed to be fired at vehicles and equipment.
The USA is not signatory to most of the land mine treaties. Generally because we've 'cleaned up' our act have have land mines that 'expire'.
I'll ask for a cite on the bayonet issue, and the maximum calibers, because as far as I'm aware, and I've looked, there are NONE.
The caliber thing is more a 'rule of thumb' to keep tankers from 'wasting' their main gun ammo killing individuals when the coax would do as well.
That doesn't mean that they can't use the main gun if the coax isn't handy, it's that urgent, or whatever.
'Militarily efficient' and 'breaks the Laws of War' are two different things, after all.
So, in short, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
I don't read AC A human right
I watched the video and didn't see any weapons. Certainly no RPG's, which have a fairly distinctive profile.
Check out 3:40. The journalists are no longer in frame. One guy has what looks to be a rifle swinging from his hand/arm. Another has a very long object. He even sets one end of it on the ground and leans on it, and it comes up to his chest. Looks like an RPG to me.
Most people have no idea what it is like to be in a situation like this (me included). But if you really think about it, it's easy to understand why this kind of thing happens. Most of us would do the same things in the same situations.
The main problem, for everyone involved is thoughtlessness. Soldiers are not in a position where they can consider their actions, because waiting to take action is often fatal. And regardless of their best efforts it is impossible to wage a war without killing innocent people.
The problem is not the soldiers, nor even the military establishment. The problem is, in fact, the thoughtless public who gladly pays soldiers to go out and kill our "enemy" so that they may continue to enjoy the conveniences an active military provides. Don't bother telling me that you "voted" against it and so it is not your fault. That kind of rationalization simply proves how thoughtless you really are. Our participation in a system that causes these things is what truly needs to be judged. Reflecting on the effects of your own actions, and using judgment to decide what actions to take is the only kind of judgment that matters.
For example, a force that does not wear uniforms and hides among civilians is both not entitled to the protections of the conventions, but also is the responsible party in any attack that kills those civilians. You wear uniforms and try to avoid the civilians so that your enemy won't attack your civilians.
No. This is simply poorly-researched revisionist nonsense. I guess you have never heard of the French Resistance or any of the various other national resistance movements supported by the Allied during WWII.
GCIV Article 33. "No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited."
Civilians are "protected persons" and the restriction is against the occupying power.
The fact that the parent was modded to a 4 proves how little slashdotters know about law. Maybe we should stick to praising Linux and dissing Windows.
Yep, you're right. Clearly they should have landed those helicopters, walked over, and said "Hi! We're with the US Military, and we'd really appreciate it if you could tell us: are you the bad guys?".
Don't assign me your poor reasoning skills.
They should have confirmed with intel before they opened fire. If this is outside of their capability, they shouldn't have opened fire. This is if they gave a shit about killing civilians, which they didn't.
The result is a huge decrease in civilian casualties, but results in MORE bitching by uninformed simpletons.
I won't mistake your planet sized ignorance for malice. The US Military doesn't keep a body count for a good reason: they kill a lot of innocent people.
The Brookings Institution has used modified numbers from the UN Human Rights Report, the Iraq Body Count, General Petraeus’s congressional testimony given on September 10-11, 2007, and other sources to develop its own composite estimate for Iraqi civilians who have died by violence. By combining all of these sources by date, the Brookings Institution estimates that between May 2003 and August 22, 2008, 113,616 Iraqi civilians have died.
Finally, the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (ICCC) is another well-known nonprofit group that tracks Iraqi civilian and Iraqi security forces deaths using an IBC-like method of posting media reports of deaths. ICCC, like IBC, is prone to the kind of errors likely when using media reports for data: some deaths may not be reported in the media, while other deaths may be reported more than once. The ICCC does have one rare feature: it separates police and soldier deaths from civilian deaths. The ICCC estimates that there were 43,099 civilian deaths from April 28,2005 through August 22, 2008.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22537.pdf
How you can possibly defend driving out 2.5 million people from their own country and killing hundreds of thousands more for oil resources is beyond me. I'm sure someone will be along shortly to applaud you for your capacity for evil, but they'll call it patriotism.
I hope they will be put to a life time sentence without a parole, in a cell.
Americans don't do time for their war crimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court
As of March 2010[update], 111 states are members of the Court,[7][8][9] and a further 38 countries have signed but not ratified the Rome Statute.[7]
However, a number of states, including China, India, Russia and the United States, are critical of the court and have not joined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_Parties_to_the_Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Court#United_States
In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA), which contained a number of provisions, including prohibitions on the U.S. providing military aid to countries which had ratified the treaty establishing the court (exceptions granted), and permitting the President to authorize military force to free any U.S. military personnel held by the court, leading opponents to dub it the "Hague Invasion Act."
The act was later modified to permit U.S. cooperation with the ICC when dealing with U.S. enemies.
The U.S. has also made a number of Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs, also known as "Article 98 Agreements") with a number of countries, prohibiting the surrender to the ICC of a broad scope of persons including current or former government officials, military personnel, and U.S. employees (including non-national contractors) and nationals.
None of these agreements preclude the prosecution of Americans by any nation where they are believed to have committed any crime.
As of 2 August 2006, the US Department of State reported that it had signed 101 of these agreements.[30]
The United States has cut aid to many countries which have refused to sign BIAs.[30]
In 2002, the United States threatened to veto the renewal of all United Nations peacekeeping missions unless its troops were granted immunity from prosecution by the Court.[31]
In a compromise move, the Security Council passed Resolution 1422 on 12 July 2002, granting immunity to personnel from ICC non-States Parties involved in United Nations established or authorized missions for a renewable twelve-month period.[31]
This was renewed for twelve months in 2003 but the Security Council refused to renew the exemption again in 2004, after pictures emerged of US troops abusing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and the US withdrew its demand.[32]
And then people ask why would any nation want or need a nuclear program.
Yeah, they mentioned that there were some weapons, but check out 9:30 on the short video. There's a wounded man (the journalist) and the gunner keeps egging him on to pick up a weapon so he can kill him (but a camera would have done the trick, too), then when a rescue team (unarmed) tries to save his life, they kill all of them. There's international treaties the US has signed that forbid killing people involved in taking care of the wounded.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
In Basic Training (Army), when my drill sergeant was explaining the use of a 50-cal in combat, he said that under the Geneva Convention, we could only use it against "equipment", not personnel. Then he added something to the effect of, "But the rucksack the guy's carrying? The helmet he's wearing? That's equipment."
Back then, I was young and dumb enough to enjoy the sentiment.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
He was propagating a popular myth. :)
John Browning's .50 BMG "Ma Deuce" has been lawfully composting enemy troops for nearly a century. It certainly doesn't cause "unnecessary suffering" as it is much more likely to be immediately fatal.
Some general background on similar myths:
http://www.thegunzone.com/hague.html
More info. The ICRC, being anti-US, objects to API variants on a technicality:
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/522209
"However, the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's office has issued a legal opinion that the .50 BMG and even the Raufoss Mk 211 round are legal for use against enemy personnel."
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
First of all, I apologize that it took me so long to reply, and that my reply is so long.
Rules of engagement vary with the specific mission, the unit, the combat theater, and even the year. However, the concept of PID (positive identification of threat) is always crucial. PID is the sine qua non of any ROE.
Double-tap is against ROE, and it always will be, because a "double-tap" consists of neutralizing a threat and then shooting the target again for 'good measure' even when it is no longer a threat. If it's not a threat, you're not allowed to shoot it, even if it WAS a threat earlier. If it's no longer a threat, then you don't have PID. If you don't have PID, you mustn't shoot it, even if ordered to, unless you want to get caught under a pissing contest between your Chain of Command and the ROE of your theater.
Double-tap is not to be confused with a controlled pair. Example: Room-clearing team enters the room. Target is acquired. Target is shot twice - bang, bang - and target goes down. That's a controlled pair. We use controlled pairs because the M4, with its shorter barrel (4" shorter than the M16) and collapsible buttstock, has a tendency to ice-pick the target, rather than giving the tumbling we need in order to make a nice hole. However, two holes in close proximity to one another can really mess up your day. Plus there are those blended-metal rounds that we're not allowed to use anymore. :( But I digress.
Example of double-tap: Room-clearing team enters the room. Target is acquired. Target is shot (controlled pair, whatever, doesn't matter). Target goes down. Target is no longer a threat; incapacitation, surrender, death, doesn't really matter. Target is not a threat AND YET some bozo shoots the target a second time because that's what people do in the movies. BAD.
Whether the foe is wounded or not is irrelevant. The question is, do you (the good guy) still have PID (positive identification of a threat/target)? If the guy is no longer a threat, he's not a valid target. It gets more complicated when you're talking about traffic control points, vehicles, etc. but here we're talking primarily about a bunch of guys who are walking down the road, minding their own business, with their weapons (if that's what they are) slung, NOT in their hands. They weren't a threat to begin with. Therefore, the gunner didn't have PID. Therefore, he shouldn't have even asked for permission to fire, because he didn't have PID. His Higher gave him permission to engage (G-d knows why), and from that point on, it was the responsibility of the gunner to kill the targets, period. He had permission (which he shouldn't have, but whatever); from that point on, KILL THEM. Don't half-ass the job and then come back to finish the job when they don't pose any kind of threat.
The worst thing you can do is engage a non-threat, half-ass the job, engage a non-threat AGAIN, and finally engage the non-threat a third time while someone is ferrying the injured to hospital. I know it didn't have a red cross on the side but it walked, talked, quacked like an ambulance. The gunner knew exactly what was going on -- the injured were being taken to get medical attention -- and he engaged the vehicle anyway.
Engaging a vehicle with 30mm cannon fire is fine: 30mm is anti-materiel, and a vehicle counts as materiel. Engaging a group of men with 30mm cannon fire because they MIGHT have weapons slung across their shoulders? I'm not sure whose bright idea that was.