Slashdot Mirror
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.
They experience traumatic stress at higher levels than those who are on the front lines.
I hope the guilt leads them to suicide.
I really feel bad for the journalists. But, you knew the risk when you started walking in a war zone with the enemy of a power. A convoy was coming through the area, the chopper's job is to remove all threats. At least one of them was armed. Sorry.
I actually did bother to watch the video.
It was not a "crowd". It was a small group of people. Calling it a "crowd" is just media sensationalism.
We also don't have any context for this stuff.
In isolation, it makes the Apache crew look pretty retarded but we also don't know what else was going on at the time or anything about this location.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Outrage is not dead. It's just been co-opted by the tea baggers over nonsense issues..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Talk about compensation... dude, your microphallus is showing.
Put that away before you owe someone a new keyboard.
I can see the fnords!
Them and their friends should then not serve to their evil overlords and kill innocent people overseas for oil or whatever other interests... "In every war waged, only kings emerge unscathed." i'm sorry if your friends or family are in a situation like those soldiers, cause they're victims too the only problem most of those soldiers don't realise it
The fire order was pretty legit, he was told "We have several people with AK-47's and an RPG here, do we have permission to fire?", ofcourse he'd give the fire order. The problem is the blind idiot who can't see the difference between a camera and an rpg.
"What's wrong with this" is they had mounted infantry 100m away. The gunship crew could have just called in the coordinates and had the eyeballs check it out. They might have seen that the "AK-47" was a tripod and the "RPG" was a camera lens
I disagree. For one thing, it's not like the guy who identified the "RPG" expressed any hesitation about his analysis, that would lead his comrades or superiors to request another set of eyes. He stated very clearly and confidently in the video that the individuals had RPGs.
Secondly, approaching with infantry exposes far more people to harm. The only reason to do this would have been if you had doubt about who the targets were - which you can clearly tell from the video they did not.
The error here came not from the aftermath, but from that initial error of seeing an RPG where there wasn't one.
And there was no excuse for blowing away the minivan trying to carry off the wounded survivor.
If you believed, as they did (mistakenly), that the targeted individuals were insurgents armed with RPGs and AK-47s, then logically two others things would be true:
1. The van coming to pick these guys up would be more insurgents. It's not like this was an ambulance or other marked rescue vehicle.
2. The corpses of the insurgents could have important intelligence information (pdas, laptops, cell phones, etc) being taken by said newly-arrived insurgents.
Did they screw up? Absolutely. Did they knowingly attack civilians - "murder" - as Wikileaks would have you believe? After watching the whole video, I think it's clear the answer is no.
Wikileaks was able to go over the video with a fine-toothed comb, zooming in to find small details you couldn't see watching the regular feed. Those solders didn't have that luxury. They were in a war zone and saw someone with what they believed was an RPG. That's a risk to them and their comrades. They did what they thought was right in the heat of battle, based upon what later turned out to be faulty information.
What's more, it seems to me Wikileaks is abusing the tragedy. I would have understood if they had just posted the video unedited for everyone to make up their own minds. But I can't imagine what is gained, other than anti-American propaganda, by putting the video up on a site entitled "Collateral Murder", as well as by prefacing the real video with a lengthy sentimental story about the civilians. It seems designed to inflame our emotions against the soldiers before we even see the evidence.
If you really think they're serving evil overlords for oil, you are just as delusional as the people trying to cover this up.
Get a grip on reality please; this isn't and wasn't the case. I'm certainly not excusing the actions in this video, but it would be helpful if you could contribute some rational thought rather than ingesting and spewing ridiculous propaganda.
In isolation, it makes the Apache crew look pretty retarded but we also don't know what else was going on at the time or anything about this location.
What makes apache crew quite a bit retarded are their comments. Those s**heads were begging for permission to shoot and enjoying it. "Come on... pick up a weapon" and begging for that wounded reporter to pick up his camera. That makes me sick. And there was no remorse at all: "it's their fault for bringing their children to the battle". What a mess. Have those idiots played too much Quake ?
The sad thing about that is that no matter what equipment is in use, you actually need people willing to use it. And it seems that they achieved this by having some half brained chicken sh*ts enjoying shooting people even being comfortably out of range of their perceived enemies and not seeing any indications of those people attacking anyone (or anything). With such attitude they can carpet bomb any country in the world for any reason and still be proud of it.
Typical insurgent tactics include a getaway vehicle. Their job is to remain in sight of the ambush (often filming it for recruiting purposes) and once the ambush is triggered, they move in to help the ambushers get away.
If the ambush goes poorly, they attempt to recover weapons and bodies.
While tragically mistaken, the arrival of that van fits the usual pattern of activity post-ambush.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Their friends are being shot and killed or blown up on a daily basis,
Yes please, after watching this video, I like the sound of that.
He is obeying the rules of a coward. Shooting innocent civilians from a metal tank armed to the teeth.
Well, I'm glad you're here to straighten us all out. What would we do without you.
Yes he looked like an RPG guy to me too, acted suspiciously, and could've taken down the chopper at any moment. This is not Call of Duty, you don't get to reload when your chopper blows up because of your "good faith in men".
They should have confirmed with intel before they opened fire.
What intel? You think they should have phoned up James Bond and gotten him to drop by for a chat with the guys? Or maybe they could have tapped out a command on their wrist watches to bring in a CIA satellite to read the brand name stamped on the sunglasses of the third guy from the left?
You've been watching too many Hollywood movies, buds. The guys in the chopper ARE the intel. Moreover, from what I understand, they were there in the first place because ground forces ASKED THEM to check out the situation. Intel isn't some magical thing that just happens when you need it - it's people looking at the situation and trying to make some educated guesses. A lot of the time they get it right, most of the time they get it partly right, and sometimes they get it disastrously wrong. Pretty much like any other human endeavor.
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.
No, I TOTALLY agree with you. You know what's even worse? In the 7 years since the invasion of Iraq, more than 17 MILLION American civilians have died in their own nation! It's crazy I tell ya. Those US soldiers are completely out of control!
Listen, I know you mean well, but you're clearly a bumper-sticker thinker who hasn't bothered to put any real thought into the subject. That's fine - not everyone can be an expert - but please don't pretend to have a valid point to make when you're motivated by a blinkered ideology and clearly can't even understand the stats you're quoting.
I'm not lumping everyone into "the other side." That was not my term to begin with. The enemy combatants in the area around Baghdad at that time were, principally al-Qaeda in Iraq and Jaysh al-Mahdi. They both did things like that, but many of them were not Iraqi; your use of nationalities precisely demonstrates how little understood that conflict has been. It would be more like Republicans and Democrats fighting each other in Mexico while fighting against the Brazilian Army, too, but with bigger language differences. They would still be fighting the same, though; it's what they know.
Oh, and by the way you may want to see this. No one is innocent.
You think they should have phoned up James Bond...
What the fuck are you talking about? The soldiers did not want to find out if they represented a danger. They didn't even wait to see if armed men got out of the van, they just opened fire.
clearly can't even understand the stats you're quoting.
All of those statistics cite the numbers counted in media reports and official statements by the US military. The Iraq Body Count, specifically, states that there are at least 80,000 civilian deaths by violence which are confirmed. The Lancet study is the one that talks about above average death rates in the neighborhood of 600,000. Which has nothing to do with the regular death rate you cite in America.
Your mind is a sad little place.
Listen, I know you mean well, but you're clearly a bumper-sticker thinker who hasn't bothered to put any real thought into the subject
This is the third time you'll ignore that the US was in Iraq illegally and for reasons having nothing to do with self protection. You may not be an American, but you sure know how to shill like one.
I saw three guys with AK47s in that video at time frame 3:40-3:48 with the helicopters cross hairs on them.
The cameras looked more like side weapons than cameras the way they carried them.
Too bad the journalists were there, but they know the dangers of reporting in a war zone, that is why they are paid so well to do it.
Too bad the guys in the van brought kids in, that was just wrong...they outta have gotten shot for bringing their kids into a obviously dangerous situation. I hope the kids make it, but in those areas kids often are taught to fight as if they are adults (not their fault really, but it happens ... so I cannot say whether they were civilian children or not, they could have been enemies).
The 1st Geneva Convention protects those treating the wounded. It provides no such protection for evacuating the dead; I still don't think it was a valid military objective. That would depend on enemy TTPs in that area.
For example, if it were common in the immediate or surrounding area to use corpses of those killed by CF for propaganda or for booby-trapping, etc., it would be allowed. I don't think that's the case, here, but they did ask for clarification. Their chain of command would have more information about neighboring AO's enemy TTP', though, so that is questionable, not outright banned by Geneva Conventions.
Also, if the enemy evacuate wounded and you are reasonable certain they are not being, or going to be, treated, they are not protected. The wounded are, but not those evacuating them.
What I mean is that, just the fact they're collecting wounded people up, does not make them eligible for protection under the Geneva Conventions. If they are rendering medical assistance, they're eligible for protection as noncombatants under the First Geneva Convention.
Also, the standard of evidence is much looser than in any court: reasonable certainty. If A and B are soldiers in one army, C and D soldiers in another army. C is wounded. D does not have the ability to give medical care but wants to avoid having C interrogated. If A and B are reasonably certain that
then D is still a legitimate military target.
I don't think that's what they thought here, though. I think they had a lazy chain of command that thought commissioned and warrant officers didn't need to train on law of armed conflict.
It provides no such protection for evacuating the dead;
Civilians do not need specific protection.
You're absolutely right; the United States should immediately abrogate from the Geneva Conventions and all other international agreements on conduct of belligerent nations with regard to civilians, because they don't need specific protection.
Civilians plant IEDs. Uniformed armies (generally) don't. Civilian does not mean noncombatant and when civilians become combatant, they lose that specific protection (although they may gain others, such as when wounded or captured).
It is *always* incumbent upon the military to try avoid killing civilians, whether they're walking down the street, picking up bodies, whatever..
Anyway, it's irrelevant - the crew clearly were aware the civilians were helping a wounded man.
They were clearly aware that they were moving dead bodies into a van, in an area where booby-trapped bodies were being used as a weapon. Denying enemy combatants corpses in such an area, where one would be reasonably certain that would be the use, unless people pick up corpses from a controlled station where their identification, address, etc., are recorded, is a legitimate military target. It shows a lack of decorum, but is not in itself a war crime, if given no other context.
As I said earlier, they fucked up. That does not mean it was deliberate; it does not mean nothing can be learned from incidents like that, to avoid them in the future. Most of all, if anyone should be blamed for this incident, it is the higher chain of command that you don't hear in that video that failed in training these soldiers.
The protection I'm talking about is that offered to civilians by the 4th GC. It applies *generally* to civilians:
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities
Hostility does not mean shooting at you right this minute. Hostility is demonstrating ill will or desire to harm. The video clearly shows that they were reasonably certain, of a threat. Yes, they were mistaken and their training was inadequate.
They didn't fuck up. They murdered civilians who:
Mistaken though they were, they, from this recording, seemed to be reasonably certain that they were a threat, and collecting bodies is not treating wounded. Once someone is dead, he's dead.
I just watched this again. From the audio in the beginning, they believed there to be an RPG aimed at them. Later, someone on the ground radioed about a visible RPG round underneath the body. Recovering corpses because they're carrying munitions is not treating the wounded. I applaud WikiLeaks for making this available, but their analysis is one-sided and they provide no context.
The AH-64 crew, according to the 4th GC, were bound to *protect* those civilians - not execute them!
Yes, they are required to take reasonable precautions to prevent undue harm to noncombatants; they did err in identifying noncombatants. They fucked up. There is no indication that that was deliberate. Callous, yes, but not deliberate.
The gunner can clearly be heard itching to finish off the wounded man!
Yes, because he believed him to have been a combatant and likely to reengage. He, sensibly, wanted fewer distractions.
At the end the crew are *laughing* about humvees driving over bodies,
Several points:
and later they're blaming the civilians for the death of the kids!
There were two children; they were both wounded, not killed. They were also taken to FOB Rustamiyah and treated. And, yes, if someone's just been shot up by an Apache, and you're messing around in that area, don't fucking go there with Apaches still in the air. That is stupid. If there were gunships shooting up my neighborhood and a neighbor of mine did something like that with kids in their car, I would probably kill them myself.
There are many other points that WikiLeaks deliberately did not communicate that are completely relevant to this video. Among them:
I don't think the Iraq War was a great idea. I also think that people that can't even identify NATO-standard pro-words in a recorded radio transmission should be armchair generaling. Not even 5 seconds into it, WikiLeaks' transcript is fucked up, and their bleating about it has not been about the Defense Department's indiscretion, but criticizing it with terms so vague they could be used to describe almost any action in any war, ever. I don't glorify war and I don't sugarcoat it. Following the rules of war, people still die. People there are used to it; their own government did more to them than the US invasion and occupation did. The civilian combatants there don't care for the women and children that are harmed by their collateral damage, either. They're often targets, because of their increased vulnerability. Everyone's heard of the Mahmoudiya incident (even though
Also known as Al-Reuters (a reference to Al-Jazeera of course) during the Israeli-Lebanese war a few years back... Made characters like "Green Helmet Guy" (a guy in a green helmet showing up at every incident reportedly all over Lebanon), "the dead child" (killed at least a dozen times, also photographed between 'jobs' drinking a soda in the shade) and "Worlds Unluckiest Mom" (she lost her family, house, children at least at three different locations) famous, as well as the worst photoshop job ever to hit the newspaper front pages (the graphic hack added dozens of bad copies of a single plume of smoke all over a single picture). Probably made the worst job of impartial objective reporting ever in the history of the world, nazi-propaganda from the Third Reich included!
Maybe these guys were different. I don't know. I do know that Reuters has made a mockery of honest reporting recently, especially in the middle east.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --