Teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ: 04/04/10

Wikileaks video struggles to get airing on US TV

Haven't you killed enough people for one day?

Yesterday Wikileaks released a decoded video showing the killing of a dozen people, including a Reuters news agency photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, Saeed Chmagh in Baghdad in 2007. The footage, which is harrowing not only in what it depicts but also the attitude of the Apache attack helicopter crew to those who were shot to death, spread across the internet, driven by Twitter users who were quick to pick up the story.

On the other hand the mainstream press in the US has been more reticent about the incident and for a period yesterday MSNBC blocked all search attempts using the term "wikileaks". Even as I write this CNN is not showing the whole video but rather a truncated version which has scenes from the start of the video and not footage which shows the helicopter crew a firing upon a civilian van which had drawn up to help the Reuters driver who was injured in the initial attack and resulted in the serious injury to two young children inside.

The video is also at odds with the account by the Washington Post published at the time where those who took part in the operation stated that the chopper, code named Crazy Horse was responding to insurgent fire and that every effort had been made to deal humanely with the dead and wounded. As Capt. James Hall, a chaplain with the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division, who arrived on the scene minutes after the incident said to the Post, July 13, 2007.

"We pulled up and stopped, and I could hear them over the intercom say they couldn't drive the Bradleys in because there were too many bodies and didn't want to drive over them,"

On the other hand the transcript taken from the Apache's radio traffic just after the attack (see here for the transcript on the Wikileaks site) reveals a different story.

"I think they just ran over the body,"

"Ha, ha."

"Yeah"

"Maybe it was just a visual illusion, but it looked like it."

"Well, they're dead, so."

Labels: citizen journalism, CNN, Iraq, killing, mainstream media, msnbc, twitter, us army, wikileaks

Death in Baghdad - The real story thanks to Wikileaks

Private Joker: How can you shoot women or children?
Door Gunner: Easy! Ya just don't lead 'em so much! Ain't war hell?

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

To someone like myself the madness of war is something that belongs just in movies, the product of a director's desire to shock and perhaps entertain. Somehow you don't imagine that the maniacs you see in war movies actually exist, at least not in the way they are depicted on film. So it comes are a greater shock when you see the kind of cold blooded insanity that views human life with such disdain.

Recently, Wikileaks released video footage of an attack by a US army Apache attack helicopter on a group of civilians in Baghdad in 2007. As a result of the engagement over a dozen people died, including two Reuters staff members. According to Reuters the army initially said that the incident had been a firefight with insurgents.

The video shows the attack from the viewpoint of the helicopter and shows what appears to be a group of men pointing out to the Reuter's photographer US units in the suburb of New Baghdad. The two-man crew apparently mistook photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen's camera for a rocket launcher and repeatedly opened fire on the group with 30mm calibre canon, a weapon capable of piercing armour and bunkers killing most of them. The chopper also fired upon a van which came to the aid of the survivors, resulting in the death of its occupants and causing serious injury to two children.

US Major Brent Cumming speaking to the Washington Post on July 13th 2007 was quoted as saying,

"The Apache crew fired because militants "were endangering the stability of Iraq" and because they had positive identification that the militants "had weapons and were using them against coalition and Iraqi security forces,"

The US Military investigation into the event also reportedthat the helicopter crew acted in accordance with the army's rules of engagement (which it has repeatedly refused to make public). However, while the scenes from the start of the video are open to interpretation as to whether the group was armed the following actions of the crew which launched an unprovoked attack on the van that drew up to help the wounded cast doubt on the military's version of the story which talked of an armed clash with armed iraqis insurgents.

Reuters had been trying unsuccessfully to get access to the video footage under the Freedom of Information Act since the deaths of Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh in 2007. Even as late as July 2008 US miltary officials stated that they were still processing the request for the onboard camera footage.

Labels: baghdad, collateral murder, freedom of information act, Namir Noor-Eldeen, Saeed Chmagh, us army, wikileaks