Whatever happens in the first five minutes of the video, killing unarmed people helping wounded is murder, it is out of moral and military code of any legal combat group.<p>The sad and disgusting part is this video was in the hands of the us military all along and they knew, what happened and how it happened, and they also tried to stop the video from leaking out actively to cover their malformed policy.<p>This video is proof of murder, disresctpectful combat, imcompetent ranking officers and blind trigger happy pilots.<p>Calling this video anything other than above is political bullshit.
I've been of two minds about this post. On one hand, it does seem important. But Wikileaks presents it with a lot of propaganda mixed in. They are going far beyond their original role of merely leaking information. So if anyone knows of (or wants to make) a version that's just the original footage, please supply a url and I'll switch the link to that.<p>Edit: Switched link. Thanks. Please note that many of the comments on this thread refer to the original page.
I feel like we have a bunch of trigger-happy teenagers viewing the world through a video-game-like HUD with a joystick, just <i>itching</i> to light something up.<p>Nobody should support this.<p>Also, imagine being a child with an Apache circling your town waiting to dispense this sort of justice. You'd probably become a terrorist, wouldn't you?
In case anyone hasn't heard, Wikileaks is badly in need of donations. <a href="http://collateralmurder.com/en/support.html" rel="nofollow">http://collateralmurder.com/en/support.html</a>.<p>This video is a damn good argument for why what they do is important. Go give them a few dollars. I can't think of a cause I see as more important in the world right now (with the one possible exception of free software).
<i>Iraq is a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139 journalists were killed while doing their work.</i>
That seems like an enormous number given that about 4,800 US soldiers died in the same time period. At about 250,000 US troops in Iraq, that would imply about 7,200 journalists total in-country, assuming an equal proportion of journalists killed.<p>In fact, there were about 220 "embedded" journalists in 2007 [1]. Certainly, there were a lot of journalists not associated with the US Army, but, still, the conclusion seems to be that being a journalist in Iraq is <i>far</i> more dangerous than being an American soldier in Iraq.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101002934.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10...</a>
I agree that the shooting of the van was unequivocally wrong and, possibly, murder.<p>People commenting, though, need to remember a couple of points; they are sat at home viewing this on big monitors under no pressure. In reality that was viewed on a small screen under the pressure of war fuelled on adrenaline.<p>I can see how the first attack could be considered simply a tragic mistake. Also there is probably little chance they would have spotted the kids in the van. Regardless the attack on the van <i>was</i> utterly unprovoked - I wouldn't call it totally malicious but a mistaken, adrenaline driven, undisciplined and rushed attack. He wanted to shoot it and didn't take the necessary pains to decide if it was a threat or not (clearly, it was not).<p>Someone should be held very responsible for this.<p>However I also feel Wikileaks have milked some aspects of the video. I would much prefer to have seen the shortened version without the "heart strings" introduction etc. I believe doing that actually takes away from the impact of the video - show us what happened first, then do the dedications.
Watching the video, it's fairly obvious to me that the people holding supposed rocket launchers were in fact holding cameras with telephoto lenses. However, this is obvious to me after having read comments about the video, as well as with all the captions in the video explaining what it is we're seeing. This is a lot information gathered after the incident, when the people on the ground actually got to go in and see that there were no RPG launchers and so on. So even though I clearly see a telephoto lens, I can't say that the guys in the helicopters could see that. I have a hard time saying that this is clearly murder.<p>The whole situation seems like a no-win to me. If they (US Military) don't release the video, they cover their ass in the short run, but when the video gets leaked it makes them look more guilty than perhaps they really were. But if they had released the video then, you'd still get tons of people proclaiming how horrible this is.<p>Don't get me wrong, this is horrible, but it doesn't seem <i>more</i> horrible than a lot of the stuff that happens over there. It's horrible that we're even in this situation.
The US Army released some lightly redacted versions of the reports on its investigations (linked by Salon: <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/04/05/wikileaks_gun_camera_footage" rel="nofollow">http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/04/05/wikil...</a>)<p><a href="http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fsites%2ffoia%2frr%2fCENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210%2fDeath%20of%20Reuters%20Journalists&FolderCTID=&View=%7b41BA1AAF%2d785A%2d481A%2dA630%2d12470AFCD6FD%7d" rel="nofollow">http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%2...</a><p>In hindsight there were clearly mistakes made, but it looks like the Army took the incident pretty seriously, and there was no big cover-up. One also gets a bit of a sense from those reports of the broader context in which the events were happening, which the video on its own does not show.<p>I'm not so sure that the histrionics from Wikileaks does anyone much good.
People are missing that the helicopter was called in by ground forces who were getting fired upon. This is from the unedited video at 15:23:<p>"Bushmaster to all elements: Which element called in Crazyhorse to engage the eight man team on top of the route?"<p>"Bushmaster six, this is hotel-two-six, I believe that was me. They had AK-47s and were to our east, where we were taking small arms fire. Over."<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik</a><p>Looks like the helicopter wasn't flying around and saw a group randomly - it was called into a combat region to support ground troops under fire. Still a bad situation, but a bit different than it's being made out.
While this isn't on the same scale, we spent several weeks in high school studying My Lai[1] as a lesson in personal responsibility and morality. It seems we've learned nothing, not even to be honest when these things happen, but, then again, perhaps the lesson is that war changes people in horrible ways?<p>Wikileaks' continued existence is essential to our democracy.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre</a>
Significant events (note that this refers to the link as modified by pg, not the link as originally posted):<p>1:11 - We hear there's a guy with a weapon.<p>1:38 - We see the weapon.<p>2:05 - Identification of a second weapon. One of the pilots requests permission to engage. This is given; however the helicopter does not have a clear shot and waits.<p>2:33 - Identification of apparent RPG (is that the camera?)<p>2:45 - "We got a guy shooting", not sure what this refers to.<p>3:15 - One helicopter opens fire. The other joins in a bit later.<p>4:40 - Apparent gap in the tape?<p>6:15 - We see a survivor crawling slowly, obviously injured.<p>7:29 - First mention of a van approaching "and picking up the bodies".<p>7:40 - We see this van and some apparently unarmed men.<p>7:48 - One of the pilots says "let me engage". They ask permission to engage several times but get no response until...<p>8:19 - They finally get a reply, and ask for permission to fire on the van.<p>8:32 - They get permission and open fire with several bursts.<p>9:28 - Shooting ceases.<p>(I didn't go much beyond this.)
Without the labels and WikiLeaks cuts, could you have looked at these pictures and determined what the guys on the ground were holding? Honest to god, I could not.<p>Rules of engagement are good. They should be followed. Unfortunately, the government sets them, and I think even a YCombinator startup would get its butt kicked coming up with better rules.<p>Example: the Van, that is very gray. Is it a weapons collection unit or a medical assistance device? Its both. Its war. Its moving...<p>As I read through these comments, some gave a back story that the Apaches were called in by ground troops that had taken fire earlier in the day. If that's the case and you are on that trigger, in that moment, I doubt many of us would be as judicious in our decision making.
Video will be posted at 16h UTC latest, according to Wikileaks press conference. It shows this incident
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.ht...</a>
and supposedly shows a military helicopter shooting a van rescuing two Reuters journalists.
The basic premise here is that the guys on the helicopter claim they see weapons (AKs and RPGs). So they shoot shit up, and then the soldiers get there. What I don't get is that nobody seems to be following up on the basic premise: there is no audio communication where the helicopter guys are asking about weapons, or the guys on the ground saying that they do or don't see any weapons (or that they instead see a camera with a bigass tele lens).<p>This implies that the soldiers don't care whether their kill was justified. Setting aside conscience, this is bad because there's no feedback - next time they'll just mistake the tele lens for an RPG again.
I thought one particularly sickening part was around 18:50 when a Humvee drove over a body, or at least the driver thought he did. And then the other guy on the line jokes "well, he's dead". Talk about disrespecting the dead.<p>When an American soldier dies, his mates will risk their own lives to recover the body and a book and testerone-fuelled movie get made about it (Black Hawk Down). But when an Iraqi gets shot to shreds by a chain gun and run over by a Humvee, its some sick joke. We live in a twisted, unequal world in many ways.<p>ps. How amusing that this comment is getting down voted. The truth is unpleasant, but still the truth
I can't help but think this isn't a bad argument for a heavier investment in removing the risk to allied lives element from decisions like this, it's one thing to mistake a telephoto lens on a camera for an RPG as illustrated here <a href="http://collateralmurder.com/en/resources.html" rel="nofollow">http://collateralmurder.com/en/resources.html</a>.<p>You might be more prepared to risk being wrong if, were you not wrong, you weren't potentially betting your life on the fact. The pilot sounded genuinely scared when he misidentified that RPG, one would not expect the same if it was a UAV feed.
Torrent of the video available here: <a href="http://collateralmurder.com/file/CollateralMurder.mp4.torrent" rel="nofollow">http://collateralmurder.com/file/CollateralMurder.mp4.torren...</a><p>(for anyone interested being part of the crowd-archive)
It is quite obvious from watching this video that the boys pulling the trigger have no idea what they just did. So, calling it "murder" is a bit misleading. We got to see the photos of the reporters with their cameras before watching the video. So we obviously know, going in to it, that those are not AK-47's and RPGs. But that fact that they have no idea what they just did, is damning in itself.<p>One could easily presume from watching this video, that we have inculcated a sense of utter callousness for the taking of life, and an inability to distinguish peaceful from threatening activities. The judgement is made in an instant that there are guys with guns, despite the fact that there is no suspicious activity going on. It looks like a lawful public assembly. The presumption is: Iraqi men, milling about an area, some with something slung over their shoulders. Must be insurgents. Kill em. Good job, soldier.<p>Is anyone in doubt that the guys who drove up in the van were unarmed? Did they LOOK like they were trying to shoot back at the helicopter. No. They kept looking at it, wondering if they were next. They were risking their lives trying to save an innocent. And they were killed for it.<p>The most chilling line, after announcing that two children were wounded: "It serves them right for bringing kids into a battle." Serves them right? Setting aside the fact that nobody who got shot on that day knew that they were in a battle until the bullets starting raining down, do they truly deserve to have their children shot because they bring them into a battle?<p>I have no doubt that these boys will be haunted by what they did the rest of their lives. I utterly abhor what happened and I was literally shaking watching this video. At the same time, I cannot help but sympathize with the young men that we have placed into a situation that, quite literally, cuts off their common and moral sense and requires them to be trigger-happy in order to gain the accolades of their commanders. My God, what are we doing?
Let me first say that killing unarmed ANYONE is wrong. And that I did get queezie watching this video. We are suppose to be better than this. That being said, war is not clean. It is not merely a set of commands and rules that are followed where everything turns out ok. It is horrible.<p>I have been in the smoke of war. Crazy things happen out there. Sometimes, there are children with guns and bombs too. And those bullets kill just as well. It is easy to make mistakes when you're in an area where there are very real threats to your life and the lives of your friends all around. Even so, they are MISTAKES. I don't believe these pilots felt as though they were murdering these people. I'm sure at the time they felt they were dealing with a real threat. But they made egregious errors in judgement and caused a terrible tragedy because of those mistakes.<p>But there is another tragedy in this case. In the military there is a process called an "After Action Review" that is suppose to be done after EVERY mission. It is a time to look back on what happened, talk openly, and analyse how things could have been handled better. The military could have used this horrid event as a way to change training and tactics to prevent things like this from happening in the future. In just a few hours of being released on the net, there are already scores of dissection and analysis about how things could have been done differently. Imagine if tactical analysts had reviewed this and in theater pilot briefings were changed to reflect the results of that review. Imagine if the military had actually acted in good faith on this event instead of trying to cover it up. This is 2010. The event happened in 2007. And still they did not release the video. It had to be leaked.<p>In cases like this where mistakes were made, the government loses any credibility to "mitigating circumstances" when they try to cover it up.<p>I hope one day the military can be more transparent with this sort of action.<p>I hope one day that we don't need an organization like wikileaks, but I am so glad we have them right now.<p>And most of all, I hope we aren't going to be watching a similar video in 2013 of a similar event that happened this week.
Straight from the posting guidelines.....<p>"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."<p>This is in no way an interesting new phenomenon. People have been dieing in wars because of stupid mistakes since the beginning of civilization. How shocking can it be that an individual died who was hanging around people who remotely looked as if they were militants?<p>Source: <a href="http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
So, let me get this straight. In Iraq, anyone seen carrying something that resembles a gun or who happens to be in the general vicinity of someone carrying something that resembles a gun is subject to immediate summary execution without stopping to make sure its a gun or sorting out who the people might be or why they might be carrying something that looks like a weapon? And then helping an injured person get to the hospital is also grounds for summary execution? And all this is according to the rules of war and the rules of engagement? And here I thought the Nazis were hard core.
"Look at those dead bastards"<p>"Nice, nice. Good shoot'n"<p>They bask in the moment, somehow deriving pleasure from the murder of 12 people. This is what disgusts me.<p>It's dangerous how far from reality some people can drift in certain situations.
Iraq is a war zone. Thats the first thing people need to understand. Everyone is a civilian, but they could be the enemy. They don't wear formal uniforms. If you were in a War zone and your life was threatened, would you pull the trigger or would you wait to see if someone else is gonna pull the trigger first. War Zones are very worrisome places. You need your BASIC instincts to survive there. Most of those soldiers are using just that. The instinct to survive.
reading the comments in this thread is a little depressing, and reminds me why the army has their own justice system. we as safe citizens, protected by these very soldiers, want to scrutinize and analyze and put every move under a microscope to ensure it meets our concept of right and wrong and decency.<p>Guess what. Mistakes will happen. War is war, and it is inherently already not particularly moral. We reap the benefits in security, and wish to tear people down when mistakes are inevitably made... If soldiers were tried by civil courts I can see things getting just as bad as the private sector, where liability laws and their effects are suffocating and nobody can move for fear of a civil suit.<p>Put another way, we send these boys- kids my age, people much like myself- into a pressure cooker with their lives at risk. We ask them to sweat and fight and sufferand die all on our behalf, and they do so. Then we want to punish the ones who aren't perfect and make a mistake. That's right, go on and punish a man sent there <i>for you</i> and <i>by you</i> who did his best <i>for all of you</i>. Then come back and tell me how you can sleep at night.
Do they have a non-YouTube link with the original video they have to see its quality? I'd be interested to see if the Apache gunner has that quality of video when making decisions or if it was clearer for them. It would seem that a better video camera that showed the gunner more clearly what they were holding could have avoided this whole incident, but the fuzziness may be an artifact of YouTube itself.
So if Reuters was trying to get this video via a FOIA request, and wikileaks now has it, will Reuters be writing about it? If this pops up onto the "real" mainstream it will (probably) be a big story a la Abu Ghraib, but if it remains on the internet the overall impact will be smaller. Have previous wikileaks documents made their way up the news chain?
I wonder what mindset one in the military must have to shoot on unarmed carrying away wounded. I always thought that at least those people a bit higher up in the ranks had at least some moral values or ethical responsibility. I mean Joe Redneck doesn't get to fly a 20 Mio. $ Helicopter just getting out of basic training.
If you had any doubts as to the important of Wikileaks, give this video ten minutes. This is cold blooded murder. Those people were clearly unarmed, and the conversation that occurs over the radio is disgusting. It was like they were begging to just pull the trigger, no matter what they were aiming at.
A partial video is currently on the frontpage of CNN.com. They don't show the part where the helicopter crew actually opens fire, but they do show the guys on the ground and the helicopter crew saying "we've got guys with weapons... that guy's got an RPG" and such.
This story toggles between dead and alive. Clearly some moderators disagree.<p>Most people that say this site is degrading have been here for only a short time. I just passed my 1000th day on the site. In my opinion, shit like this does not belong on this site.
As a tax payer, I'm not too happy about paying for these peacekeeping/war adventures in the M/E. I'm not convinced that I'm more secure because of them.<p>That said, in the style of warfare that exists in these areas, it's probable that innocent people will be killed. In a war, intent determines if innocent people are being killed or murdered. Can this video prove intent?
How the heck are they able to tell which guy is which? At 5:12 you see a guy running and they pinpoint who it is, even though there's been all this smoke and you surely could not keep track of people between the moving of the camera and with all the sand and dirt in the air.
View the page source. There are quotes from people like George Orwell and Dwight D. Eisenhower. I'm glad their display is none, because it's going to look really cheesy.<p>Edit: The full page went up and the quotes are no longer in the source.
If you are in a war zone near people with weapons you have no right to complain if you get shot at.<p>You can Monday morning quarterback the scenario all day long. The fact is the pilots saw firearms and RPG's with a group of people and knew US soldiers would be the target. It's tragic but what armed conflict isn't.