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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.
Definitely, it might alter our perception because we knew they had cameras, but the military officers did not know they had weapons. They saw objects, presumed they were weapons, then reported these unclear objects were weapons in order to obtain clearance to engage. It's alright to make a mistake, but it's not alright to err when you are killing someone.
I'm no warmaster, but it might be the case that AK-47s, which is what they reported the weapons were, weren't a threat to them. If that's the case, then they had leave to further investigate whether these unclear objects really were weapons. Although I'm sympathetic to the officer who believed he might have seen an RPG. That's an immediate threat.
I think the moral issues are compounded by the fact it was a manufactured war, where no threat existed. For instance, whether they were wrong to bring children into the area (I don't know what their circumstances were), is preceded, in my opinion, that there never should've been a war. I'm not saying it's justifies their actions of bringing the children in, I'm saying we should've never had to judge these people because there oughtn't have been a war.