Shame on WikiLeaks: Framing Lawful Engagement as Anti-American Propaganda (Part One)
by Bob Owens
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/shame-on-wikileaks-framing-lawful-engagement-as-anti-american-propaganda-part-one/?singlepage=trueWar is a dirty affair where innocents die and evil men sometimes triumph.
The intensity and uncertainly of combat is increasingly caught on camera, as embedded journalists and combatants themselves capture images and video of the brutality. Even in an age where the fake violence of the video game and the cinema have desensitized many of us to imagined carnage, real images of war can still strike us like the bitter steel of a bayonet. This is especially true in circumstances where we are guided by politically motivated players — in not-so-subtle ways — to view a jarring slice of the horror of war presented through a flawed and incomplete prism.
Such is the case with the famed whistleblower organization WikiLeaks and their much-hyped release of U.S Apache helicopter camera footage from an engagement on the morning of July 12, 2007, in a hotly contested Baghdad slum. They titled their rendition of the classified combat footage “Collateral Murder,” and the group’s shaping of the narrative begins at the first frame of their 17:47 short version release of the film with a purposefully ominous Orwellian quote:
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder sound respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind."
A comment ironically descriptive of WikiLeaks’ behavior here, rather than the video’s coming content.
The exposition continues:
"On the morning of July 12th 2007, two Apache helicopters using 30mm cannon fire killed about 12 people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad.
Two children were also wounded.
Although some of the men appear to have been armed, the behavior of nearly everyone was relaxed …"
Is it the WikiLeakers’ position that only tense, spasmodic Mahdi Army militiamen should be fired upon? That the Iranian-sponsored terrorist organization’s stated desire to kill American soldiers — and for that matter, fellow Iraqis, as long as they are Sunnis — should be subservient to the primacy of body language? It’s a bizarre position that only those well-insulated from reality can afford to share.
After 2 minutes and 47 seconds of more of the same, the WikiLeakers finally run the footage shot by the helicopters. There are two versions of the film: the 17:47 short version noted above, and the 39:14 long version. Watch whichever you prefer, but by all means, please watch one of them. As you do so, focus on what the scenes actually depict rather than what WikiLeaks claims to be the case — perhaps you’ll find your view of the WikiLeaks’ story evolving, from one of disgust with a callous military towards revulsion and sadness regarding the sometimes tragic consequences of war.
You may even feel anger towards WikiLeaks’ self-proclaimed truth-tellers.
After nearly three minutes of telling viewers how to perceive the footage, the grainy black-and-white gun camera footage from a flight of AH-64 Apaches finally comes into view. The helicopters — call-signs Crazy Horse 18 (lead aircraft) and Crazy Horse 19 (wingman) — assume a protective overwatch position, providing aerial support and reconnaissance for elements of the U.S. Second Brigade Combat Team (2nd BCT) on the ground. These ground troops are conducting a sweep through a Shiite slum during the height of the “Surge,” and are attempting to locate and destroy weapons caches belonging to the Mahdi Army. The Mahdi Army is a Shiite paramilitary organization that operates like an organized crime family, and is infamous for both kidnapping fellow Iraqis for ransom and for brutal acts of sectarian violence — including beheadings and assassinations of Iraqi civilians and police.
As the 2nd BCT conducts their search operations, they encounter small arms fire and the deadly missiles known as rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs. Similar attacks had been going on all morning, and the streets were eerily absent of civilians — a telling sign in these neighborhoods, where children play soccer in the streets when they know it is safe.
Soldiers on the ground had just reported contact with the enemy, when the two Apaches located a sizable group of military-aged men sauntering through a nearby neighborhood. The pilots and gunners of the helicopters circle the group from 800 meters away, well within the range of their weapons, but outside the range where the group might easily notice them.
The pilot in the trailing Apache notices a group of men, and the camera focuses on them just before a pair of Mahdi Army scouts slip away on a moped. The crews call out their confirmation of visible weapons in the group, and the camera clearly captures at least one man carrying an AK-pattern assault rifle, and another beside him carrying a RPG launcher with a live rocket locked in place. A third man cradles another rocket under his arm.
Two men, whom we later discover are a Reuters cameraman and his driver, are mixed in with the gang as familiars — wearing the same kind of clothes, their slung cameras appearing as yet more weapons to helicopter crews with already clearly identified targets.
As they circle, the gang of journalists and terrorists group at the corner of a building. The photographer takes one step around the corner into the alleyway and crouches — pointing his camera’s large telephoto lens at a U.S. Humvee parked just a few hundred yards away. The pilots, fearing an attack on the U.S. vehicle (and one mistakenly seeing what he thought was the flash of a rocket launch), swing around the building and open fire on the tightly clustered militiamen, cutting them down in a spray of concrete, dust, and blood.
Two men sprint out of the cloud. One escapes cleanly. Another is cut down with finality in a second burst of fire.
The pilots circle, and another man emerges running from the dust and debris, and is struck down, wounded.
This is the first of three engagements for Crazy Horse 18 and Crazy Horse 19 that morning in the slums of New Baghdad. The pilots, primarily tasked with saving American and Iraqi lives from insurgent action, are now accosted by WikiLeaks for failing to discern camera-carrying journalists from militants. WikiLeaks would judge these pilots murderers for following the rules of war, and destroying an enemy force without first interviewing the armed group to discern intent. Their charges of impropriety ring hollow.
The further hot air and rhetoric of WikiLeaks will be addressed in Part Two.
Shame on WikiLeaks: Framing Lawful Engagement as Anti-American Propaganda (Part Two)
by Bob Owens
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/shame-on-wikileaks-framing-lawful-engagement-as-anti-american-propaganda-part-two/?singlepage=trueWikiLeaks has declared that American forces engaged with armed elements of the Mahdi Army during the 2007 surge are guilty of “collateral murder.”
Part of that claim is based upon the fact that two Reuters employees, embedded with a band of armed militants, were destroyed by 30mm cannon fire from Apache helicopters. The Apaches were providing support for ground forces that had been under sporadic rifle and RPG fire throughout the morning. Wikileaks would have us hold the pilots responsible for not discerning the armed militiamen from the identically dressed Reuters employees that so comfortably moved with them.
WikiLeaks would also have us believe that the presence of camera equipment should have stayed the guns of the American aircraft. Dishonestly, WikiLeaks does not mention the well-known fact that cameras are an integral part of the war for both sides, and that video and still cameras are commonly carried by militants. A few seconds of searching on the Internet would reveal militants filming attacks, from IED strikes to the alleged sniping of American and Iraqi soldiers and police.
We aren’t attempting to establish that these Reuters employees were terrorists — despite their “relaxed” behavior with the armed militants, which even WikiLeaks is forced to recognize. It is enough to note that even if the presence of cameras had been detected earlier, it in no way suggested that the armed men were anything other than terrorists.
After the initial bursts of cannon fire, Crazy Horse 18 and 19 continue to circle the scene, where we now know Reuters cameraman Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chamagh lie among the dead and wounded terrorists with whom they traveled.
Moments later, as the pilots continue to circle, a black van and two men on foot emerge to evacuate the wounded survivor of the attack. Curiously, the van that arrives in the short version of the video to move the wounded man appears as if it could be the same van spotted at the 41-second mark of the long version — sighted pulling up to a mosque. Vehicles such as these were commonly used to ferry militants and munitions, and the van shown in the longer video was captured pulling up to the front of a mosque — a favored location to hide weapons and militants because of policies that forbid U.S. troops from raiding them except under extraordinary circumstances.
The pilots make a logical assumption when the van and the extra men (who are curiously never mentioned by the WikiLeakers) pull up and infer that anyone pulling into a hot combat zone with the dust of explosions still hanging in the air may have nefarious purposes … such as helping wounded terrorists avoid capture, and recovering weapons before American ground forces can arrive. After requesting permission to fire — which is granted after a still of the gun camera footage is instantly transmitted to superiors — the van and the men around it are engaged and cut down.
The helicopters continue to circle, talking to ground forces closing in on the scene to keep abreast of their exact position to avoid fratricide. Tho bodies scattered over the length of a city block do not move. The twisted receiver of a shattered AK-47 stands out as the Apaches circle, a mute indictment of the intentions of the dead.
Only after American ground units roll up on the scene and approach the van do they learn two children are among the wounded.
Here in the video, WikiLeaks does something bizarre and contemptuous. They call attention to radio chatter where soldiers request to transfer the children to an American base for treatment — but a decision is made to instead hand the children over to Iraqi police so that the children can be brought to a nearby Iraqi hospital. WikiLeaks opines: “This could mean poorer standards of medical treatment and additional delay.”
The unambiguous statements of the U.S. reports on the incident confirm that the children were indeed carried to an American base for treatment after the incident. The boy and girl were evacuated to Forward Operating Base Loyalty, and then to the 28th Combat Hospital for treatment. They were only transferred to an Iraqi hospital after being treated by the same American medical teams that work to save the lives of our forces.
WikiLeaks, which prides itself on obtaining classified information, ignored a publicly available unclassified report that clearly refutes a dark assertion they went out of their way to make.
We’ve already established that the critics at WikiLeaks would have us question whether or not pilots in a combat zone should fire upon identified enemy forces based upon their body language and posture. WIkiLeaks also seems not at all concerned about the verified presence of weapons among those killed, and they also ignore the fact that militants use camera equipment as part of their propaganda war. Even more troubling, they go out of their way to erroneously suggest that American forces treated children wounded in the engagement with callousness. This suggests that the WikiLeaks release, “Collateral Murder,” was not intended to shed light upon the incident, but instead was carefully constructed to elicit outrage and fury.
The organization happens to be attempting to raise funds now. Claiming the need for an operating budget of $600,000, the group states they have only been able to raise $370,000. The implication seems both sad and obvious. Desperate for both attention and funding, WikiLeaks carefully constructed a propaganda video designed to raise their profile and increase donations.
They carefully framed the video footage with nearly three minutes of exposition, instead of merely allowing the video to stand on its own, relaying the actual context of this incident as it occurred during a larger battle to diminish the power of militants and restore order during the surge. (Which effectively ended militia control and greatly reduced sectarian violence in this area.) For reasons known only to WikiLeaks, they refuse in the shorter video to show or even mention the third engagement of the helicopter crew that morning, just blocks away, where a larger group of insurgents was destroyed with missiles.
WikiLeaks whitewashed the presence of weapons clearly shown by gun camera footage and ignored the confirmation in military investigations of the incident that the militant’s weapons displayed in the footage were recovered at the scene. WikiLeaks attempted to create obtuse new standards and rules of engagement, implying that “relaxed” terrorists should not be fired upon. They carefully omit the rules of engagement and refuse to note that evacuating combatants are still enemy targets and recognized as such by almost every military in the world.
The WikiLeaks video and “Collateral Murder” website seem calibrated for the express purpose of accusing soldiers of murder for the purposes of fundraising.
If they would like to continue to be though of as a non-partisan whistleblower organization, WikiLeaks must retract the inflammatory “Collateral Murder” short video, shut down the identically titled website, and provide critical and historical context — not partisan framing — around the events depicted.
The WikiLeaks fundraising effort “Collateral Murder” is not an accurate reflection of what occurred that morning in 2007 and manages only to slaughter the truth.
Politico Editor Hails Cheap Slander As “Heroic Internet Journalism.”
We are journalists and we are cool with killing American soldiers
Posted by streiff
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2010/04/06/politico-editor-hails-cheap-slander-as-heroic-internet-journalism/I was intrigued
benpolitico RT @gabrielsnyder: Heroic internet journalism:
http://www.collateralmurder.com/ Worth reading WaPo’s original report 1st:
http://is.gd/bfW5hhttp://twitter.com/benpolitico/status/11657189742What could Politico’s Ben Smith have found that was so courageous?
Back in the summer of 2007, back when America still had a president that was proud of his nation, US troops were engaged in combat operations in Baghdad against the militia of Moqtada al-Sadr. The fighting was confused, as urban fighting tends to be. From the Washington Post :
BAGHDAD, July 12 — U.S. soldiers in eastern Baghdad clashed with Shiite militiamen on Thursday, leaving at least 11 Iraqis dead and an unknown number injured, including two children hit by shrapnel from a U.S. helicopter attack, according to American soldiers who took part in the mission.
The intensive six-hour operation began at 6 a.m., when 240 U.S. soldiers in 65 Humvees, several Bradley Fighting Vehicles and two Apache attack helicopters descended on the al-Amin neighborhood, along with a dozen Iraqi troops, in response to increasing attacks on American soldiers by members of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
During the fighting, an Apache helicopter fired bursts of 30mm rounds toward several people who had been directing machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. soldiers. The helicopter also fired on a silver Toyota minivan in the area as several people approached the vehicle, soldiers said.
Two of the civilians killed during the fighting were with the Reuters news service. Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed in what a preliminary Iraqi police report described as a “random American bombardment,” Reuters reported. The U.S. military said it has opened an investigation into the killings.
What has Ben Smith all gaga is the release of nearly 40 minutes video of uncertain provenance, I say uncertain not because it might be inauthentic but because the hosting website “collateral murder dot com” implies but doesn’t say it was leaked but Reuters has had a long standing FOIA request in for the same video, which shows the incident.
The hosting website huffs a lot about analysis and rules of engagement (ROE) and gives the impression that a heinous crime of some sort has been committed, covered up by THE MAN, and now revealed by the valiant Fourth Estate.
If you look at the video you see the two Reuters employees are embedded with a group of armed insurgents. One of the men is carrying a camera and another a cell phone. The gaggle mopes down a deserted street while, unbeknownst to them, they are under observation from at least two AH-64 Apache helicopters. The lead pilot confirms the group is armed (go to 3:30 to pick up the target identification images and audio), asks permission to engage which he receives as 4:50 leaving little more than hair, teeth, and eyeballs scattered on the street.
When viewed in any context, especially in the context of the rules of engagement in force at the time one is at a loss to understand the outrage that we are supposed to be witnessing.
The story is simple. A US news organization, Reuters, sent two of its employees out with the Mahdi Army to get video of American soldiers being killed to better carry out its editorial policy of hooting about US casualties in Iraq as a way of damaging the Bush Administration and to make some money in the process. Things didn’t work out very well for Reuters and their two guys got killed along with a dozen or so Mahdi thugs. Tough luck.
Now on to Ben Smith’s noxious tweet.
First, this is not journalism. In a best case scenario this is indistinguishable from a college kid posting an upskirt video on YouTube. In a worst case scenario, this video was released under FOIA and the site in question has done nothing other than post the fruits of someone else’s labor. Conveniently for us, inconveniently for them, they have also posted the ROE.
If anything the video demonstrates the extremes to which the pilots went to follow the rules of engagement. (Go to 7:40 and watch until about 8:50.)
Smith also tries to give the impression that the initial WaPo story was wrong. If anything, the video demonstrates how accurate their reporting was in this particular instance.
Contrary to what the press seems to want us to think, being a reporter doesn’t give you some kind of a magic shield that keeps you from being killed in a combat zone. Some of the reporters killed in Iraq have simply been stupid. Leaning out of a window, pointing a video camera at a tank is not a particularly good evolutionary strategy.
More to the point, the press in the Iraq War ceased to be chroniclers of events and undertook an active role on the side of the Mahdi Army and the insurgency. McClatchey deliberately skewed its reporting to hurt the war effort. The AP not only used fraudulent sources to report non-existent events but actually embedded its reporters with Mahdi Army hit squads. Some AP stringers have been tried as terrorists in Iraq.
The two men you see killed in the video were as much enemy combatants as the men carrying automatic weapons. They made a decision, ill advised as it turned out, that it would be a real adventure to accompany the Mahdi Army into combat and see some infidels killed.
There is a scandal here. The scandal is that Reuters blithely sent two employees into combat against American troops and got them killed. The scandal is that Reuters has the chutzpah to play the victim when they were the perpetrator of the event. The scandal is that guys like Ben Smith hail posting a YouTube video as “heroic internet journalism” without taking the time to either familiarize themselves with the story or to watch the video. The scandal is that young Americans have their lives put in jeopardy by these… these… whatever… who are so devoid of a sense of shame that they try to make a completely justified, and one might say restrained, use of force in a combat zone into an indictment of the Armed Forces.
Open letter to CENTCOM PAO
Posted By Uber Pig
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2010/04/open-letter-to-centcom-pao.htmlSup, ninjas? Uber Pig here. I'd like to say a few words about this whole Wikileaks thing. You know, the thing where they've put up a 17 minute video called "Collateral Murder" that makes American soldiers look like, well, bad guys. How the heck did that happen?
It looks to me like it started when you didn't respond to what looks like a reasonable use of the FOIA by Reuters. The result of this is that you let your enemy get inside your OODA loop. You could have taken the FOIA request and complied with it on your terms to control the narrative. Perhaps you could have leaked the video out first to a few trusty bloggers who would have seen it for what it was: An ugly, sad, but common story. Sure, there was some gallows humor in there and some false bravado. But there were also American servicemen paying scrupulous attention to the ROE and a group of them, panicked out of fear for a little Iraqi girl, running through some dangerous urban streets to get her medical attention.
You could have dropped the video off with Uncle Jimbo. Or perhaps with Bill Roggio. Heck, if you were real Boyd-like ninjas, you would have leaked it to one of the more fair-minded guys over at Firedoglake. Yes, that firedoglake. The website that spent millions of words and 8 years of their lives complaining about Bush, and even one of their rabid-left writers can see the truth and is unimpressed by the video.
So instead of releasing this video on your own terms, you let it be released on the terms of some self-important Euro nerd leftists. And since the video went out yesterday morning, they've p0wned you and the narrative. And in that narrative, American soldiers like my brother are callous murderers, and Iraqi thugs are innocent chocolate makers. Anyways, I'm sure you're a good guy or gal and all that, but if I was Obama or Petraeus or Gates, you'd be fired.
My Opinion of the Wikileak Video
By: c0mputar
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/39215I want to first start by saying that Wikileaks has really misled the public on the details of this video. They made it sound like it was an unprovoked massacre of unarmed civilians, and so it angers me when I wasted my time watching this video to see nothing like that.
I would then like to plead that you not respond or argue with me unless you have watched every second of the 39 minute video. In any engagement, be it in Iraq, or a DUI arrest in Los Angelas, a complete understanding of the event is essential.
Apache helicopters are usually not called out unless ground troops request them. In this case, ground troops were under fire and requested air support. This is clear considering they approached the hot zone at the beginning of the video with intel, either from ground troops, or from the another Apache, that there were armed combatants in the area. You hear, numerous times, reports of armed combatants in the area, before this particular video feed can actually see people. This is all happening near friendly soldiers who requested air support because they were fired upon.
The video opened up with footage of a black van moving left, and the van would later become involved again. What the black van was doing in the area is unknown to us; it’s purpose was not speculated upon anywhere in the video. Considering ground troops arrived from the right, it might be possible that this van was deliberately moving away from the conflict.
After 2 minutes, the footage of the group clearly shows that at least 2 of them have AK-47s. As for the possible observation of an RPG, which some suggest could be a tripod, and the guys who have things slung over their shoulders, which could be the cameras, then it is regrettable if they were, in fact, a tripod and 2 cameras. However, too many people are acting as if the guy who peaked around the corner actually had a camera. It could have legitimately been an RPG as the gunner said, because an RPG was found at the scene after the engagement. We know that the photographer did not die in the initial engagement, his camera was found in the van… Meaning all this speculation about the tripods and cameras in the original scene is bogus, unless there were multiple journalists in the area.
When the black van, which had already been seen lingering in the area, returns to pick up a survivor, the other helicopter had observed the van picking up bodies and weapons. The reality is, an unmarked van, which was already in the area (red flag), reported to be picking up wounded men and weapons, and is in an area of an ongoing operation, is fair game for engagement.
Lastly, the last video footage leading up to the bombardment of a building is revealed to us far too late into the operation. They say there are 6 armed individuals in the building and we had only seen 2 enter at that point, and 1 of them appears to be armed, although this is the first time I actually feel that it might be a camera. For all we know, this is actually where the photographer was killed, and not at the initial site. However, this doesn’t explain the fact that the camera was found in the van.
No reports of a camera being found at the initial engagement have been revealed, and so it’s entirely speculation on our part on whether or not we actually saw a camera anywhere in any of the footage… To the contrary, we saw AK 47s, and an RPG was found at the scene of the initial engagement. Even if the photographer was killed somewhere during this video, we can be certain that he was knowingly in the vicinity of armed men near an area where American soldiers were fired upon. My prediction is that the photographer was one of those killed rescuing the wounded man, and the van was just following the conflict around. I distinctly remember a photo made public that was taken by a soldier from within the van that came from the photographers camera, I cannot recall where I saw this photo though.
Regardless, no one is allowed to be armed except for Iraqi police and Coalition forces. There is no such thing as an armed Iraqi escort for journalists. My only guess is he underestimated how quickly and deadly the situation can become if he were to hang around with armed insurgents.
I really wish Americans would get the fuck out of the Middle East and tend to their own problems… Collateral damage is inevitable during an insurgency in populated cities. You could clearly see an unarmed pedestrian get wasted by the first hellfire missile. But in the end, it is incomprehensibly stupid to be unmarked, carrying a large camera and tripod around with armed individuals, when Apache copters are overhead and are near an area where a gunfight had occurred.
Collateral Murder: Did U.S. Apache Pilots’ Actions Violate the Rules of Engagement?
by Herschel Smith
http://www.captainsjournal.com/2010/04/06/collateral-murder-did-u-s-apache-pilots-actions-violate-the-rules-of-engagement/Following up from the Wikileaks release of the so-called Collateral Murder video there has been a firestorm of activity over both the internet and television. One self-proclaimed intelligence expert claims that the actions of the Apache pilots violated the rules of engagement.
Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer … said that based on what he saw in the video, it appeared to be a violation of the military’s Rules of Engagement.
“First rule is, you may engage persons who commit hostile acts or show hostile intent by minimum force necessary,” he said. “Minimum force is necessary. If you see eight armed men, the first thing I would think as an intelligence officer is, ‘How can we take these guys and capture them?’ We don’t want to kill people arbitrarily; we want the intel take.
“Now, most importantly, when you see that van show up to take away the wounded, do not target or strike anyone who has surrendered or is out of combat due to sickness or wounds. So, the wound part of that I find disturbing, being that you clearly have people down, you have people on the way there. Speaking as an intelligence officer, my intent is to capture people, to recover them. That is the idea here. If you’re not really doing that, you’re not really doing precise combat.”
This is a misdirection play. The former intelligence officer was first addressing the issue of violation of the ROE, then switched to the issue of what he would like to see in order to categorize this as precise combat, i.e., capture and intelligence recovery. He offers us no evidence that the actions violated the ROE. He says it and moves on to his pet issues.
There is ample evidence that the actions did not violate the ROE. There are three categories under which these insurgents could have been targeted: (1) TIC (troops in contact) / self defense, (2) deliberate targeting, and finally (3) TST (time sensitive targets).
The AR 15-6 investigation into this incident points out that:
The cameraman raises the camera to sight through the viewfinder and his action appears prompts (sic) one of the pilots to remark “He’s getting ready to fire.” Photos later recovered from the camera show a U.S. Army HMMWV sitting at an intersection, less than 100 meters away from the camera. The digital time/date stamp on the photo indicates that these photos were the ones taken as the cameraman peered from behind the wall. Due to the furtive nature of his movements, the cameraman gave every appearance of preparing to fire an RPG on U.S. Soldiers.
So the actions meet the definition of self defense in the ROE. Next, there is an earlier version of the rules of engagement which has a larger list of potential targets in the deliberate targeting category.
There are six types of preplanned target sets: (1) Non-military elements of former regime command and control and associated facilities, (2) WMD storage facilities, (3) Iraqi infrastructure and Iraqi economic objects, (4) Terrorists, (5) Iraqi lines of communication, and (6) Facilities (associated with Designated Terrorists or Declared Hostile Forces).
But the 2007 revision of the ROE had at least the following list: members of designated terrorist organizations and facilities associated with DTOs. It goes on to list certain DTOs, and as a side bar comment, it isn’t clear to me why Ansar al Sunna isn’t specifically called out. But that has nothing per se to do with this incident, and “other groups or terrorist organizations” covers this operation.
Finally, time sensitive targets (for which there is insufficient time to gain formal authorization) covers the kills at the location of the van which showed up to recover the bodies.
To be sure, this video can be disturbing to those who do not understand that war means enacting and enforcing violence, and can be equally disturbing to those who have had to do so either in Iraq or Afghanistan. Memories can be difficult things. It’s always better in retrospect to learn that the targets you acquired and killed were indeed threats against U.S. forces. This is true in this instance except for two very stupid Reuters journalists embedded with insurgents, and two unfortunate children (who, by the way, lived) who should never have been brought into combat by some very stupid – and dead – insurgents.
'Collateral Murder' in Baghdad Anything But
BY Bill Roggio
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/collateral-murder-baghdad-anythingWikileaks, the website devoted to publishing classified documents on the Internet, made a splash today with a video claiming to show that the U.S. military "murdered" a Reuters cameraman and other Iraqi "civilians" in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. But a careful watching of the video shows that the U.S. helicopter gun crews that attacked a group of armed men in the then Mahdi Army stronghold of New Baghdad was anything but "Collateral Murder," as Wikileaks describes the incident.
There are a couple of things to note in the video. First, Wikileaks characterizes the attack as the U.S. military casually gunning down Iraqis who were innocently gathering on the streets of New Baghdad. But the video begins somewhat abruptly, with a UAV starting to track a group of Iraqi males gathering on the streets. The voice of a U.S. officer is captured in mid-sentence. It would be nice to know what happened before Wikileaks decided to begin the video. The U.S. military claimed the Iraqis were killed after a gun battle with U.S. and Iraqi security forces. It is unclear if any of that was captured on the strike footage. Here is what the U.S. military had to say about the engagement in a July 2007 press release:
"Soldiers of 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, and the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, both operating in eastern Baghdad under the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, along with their Iraqi counterparts from the 1st Battalion, 4th Brigade, 1st Division National Police, were conducting a coordinated raid as part of a planned operation when they were attacked by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. Coalition Forces returned fire and called in attack aviation reinforcement."
There is nothing in that video that is inconsistent with the military's report. What you see is the air weapons team engaging armed men.
Second, note how empty the streets are in the video. The only people visible on the streets are the armed men and the accompanying Reuters cameramen. This is a very good indicator that there was a battle going on in the vicinity. Civilians smartly clear the streets during a gunfight.
Third, several of the men are clearly armed with assault rifles; one appears to have an RPG. Wikileaks purposely chooses not to identify them, but instead focuses on the Reuters cameraman. Why?
Fourth, there is no indication that the U.S. military weapons crew that fired on this group of armed men violated the military's Rules of Engagement. Ironically, Wikileaks published the military's Rules of Engagement from 2007, which you can read here. What you do see in the video is troops working to identify targets and confirm they were armed before engaging. Once the engagement began, the U.S. troops ruthlessly hunted their prey.
Fifth, critics will undoubtedly be up in arms over the attack on that black van you see that moves in to evacuate the wounded; but it is not a marked ambulance, nor is such a vehicle on the "Protected Collateral Objects" listed in the Rules of Engagement. The van, which was coming to the aid of the fighters, was fair game, even if the men who exited the van weren't armed.
Sixth, Wikileaks' claim that the U.S. military's decision to pass the two children inside the van to the Iraqi police for treatment at an Iraqi hospital threatened their lives is unsubstantiated. We do not know the medical assessment of the two Iraqi children wounded in the airstrike. We don't even know if the children were killed in the attack, although you can be sure that if they were Wikileaks would have touted this. (And who drives their kids into the middle of a war zone anyway?) Having been at attacks where Iraqis have been killed and wounded, I can say I understand a little about the process that is used to determine if wounded Iraqis are transported to a U.S. hospital. The person has to be considered to have a life-threatening situation or in danger of losing a vital function (eyesight, etc.). Yet, even though the threshold to transfer Iraqis to U.S. military hospitals is high, I have repeatedly seen U.S. personnel err on the side of caution and transport wounded who probably should not have been sent to a U.S. hospital.
Baghdad in July 2007 was a very violent place, and the neighborhoods of Sadr City and New Baghdad were breeding grounds for the Mahdi Army and associated Iranian-backed Shia terror groups. The city was a war zone. To describe the attack you see in the video as "murder" is a sensationalist gimmick that succeeded in driving tons of media attention and traffic to Wikileaks' website.
Author
Logged
