http://collateralmurder.com/ 5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0 I know it's a long video, but trust me, it's totally worth the watch. (The intro text takes a long time so you can skip past/through that). EDIT: Can someone tell me why the video is not embedding?
I see what happened. The guys in the chopper saw the guys with guns behind the reporter and thought the guys camera was a bomb in a bag. there had just been a fight there and they thought the guy with the RPG was one of the combatants. The reporters gathered them to interview them and when they did...
if you ask my opinion, the reporters really should not have been where they were in the first place, it's still sad, but they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It seemed like the main thing was that the guy had an RPG, or it at least looked like he had one. There were ground troops and tanks nearby, so they probably wanted to take that guy out before anyone was put in danger. What bothered me was that the gunmen had no restraint and no concerns for the consequences of their actions. They totally lit up that van that came up to help that injured reporter, and ended up injuring children. I hate to condone what was happening, but I guess in war they have to make split-second decisions that have life-and-death consequences. Just another example of how ****ed up war is.
For a war that began as an effort to "spread democracy", it is in ****ing poor taste to attack the unarmed.
With the way the guy was looking around the corner, it was bound to happen. I didn't even notice the weapons in their hand. I just noticed him looking around the corner like he was trying to ambush people. Nothing too shocking. When wikileaks went on about this, I thought it was actually something serious.
I think the main problem was that the helicopter crew didn't distinguish between the group of armed men and the second group who posed no threat. Thats what happens when you put a trained, trigger happy killer in a piece of machinery capable of such destruction.
First of all: Nobody was armed. What looked like weapons turned out to be cameras. Really big cameras. Why they had such large cameras, I do not know. Second: Both groups were acting rather suspiciously. Group 1 had the guy with what looked like an RPG doing that weird checking around the corner. Almost like he was going to take aim or making sure where the targets were. Second group had the whole taking away the only survivor away thing. If somebody got shot, wouldn't you try to help them there or call an ambulance instead of putting them into a car and then to the hospital? Third: I doubt the soldiers were trigger happy. At the start, it looked like they were going to get shot out of the sky, in their eyes. The Van was a little less clear cut but to them, it looked like somebody was taking away somebody they could use for information.
;o They justified their actions to easily and were not bothered whether they were right or not. I think the guy was taking a picture round the corner..
My bad, I thought the first group was armed.. as the heli pilot did. That still doesn't condone them shooting the second group who were clearly not armed. I still think the pilot was trigger happy, even if they were taking away survivors who potentially had info, that still doesn't warrant blasting them apart with a ****ing mini cannon. This is what happens in guerilla warfare, innocent people die, however this time we're using bullets instead of napalm. Same difference.
Except that with napalm, you can't specifically target people, you just gotta hope it hits. These people were intentionally targeted.
My bad. No entirely sure what kind of services they have there. Either way, what he did still seem suspicious on the account of him not helping the guy instead he took him into a van to drive off.
I think the aiming problems was just a limitation of the gun, those things aren't able to hit as accurately as we would like to think. I also am pretty sure that some guys in the first group ha AK-47's. They are standing just behind the camera man right as the marker points out his camera. Not sure though, I'll check again.