Wikileaks releases US military civilian murder cover-up video

[Cain]

In international and especially Arab circles it is commonly accepted that US troops target journalists if those journos catch them doing something they shouldn't have.

[LMNO]

So, no change there, I suppose.


What about Western Media?

[Pariah]

The Journalists: Could go either way whether it was justified

The Van: Again, not so much. If they were so concerned about it they should've sent the Hummer (the one they talk about numerous times in the beginning of the video) to go check out what the hell was happening, check id, etc.

[Cain]

So, no change there, I suppose.


What about Western Media?

Well Italy hasn't forgotten its journalist who got shot to pieces back in 04, IIRC.  Apart from that, I suspect no-one is paying too much attention, though occasionally some British broadsheets might mention it, in the back pages of a Sunday edition paper.

[LMNO]

So: Outraged progressives, and otherwise no change?

[Cramulus]

[East Coast Hustle]

Just as important as whether or not the shootings were "valid" is how this is going to be presented/used/misued/taken out of context in the media, both foreign and domestic.

Don't matter if it was justified if everyone else says it was badwrong.

Domestically, I don't think it will be much of an issue. The Reuters employees that were killed were both of Middle Eastern descent, so most Americans will think they had it coming anyway. At least, if the vast majority of the thousands of comments on the Yahoo article about this are to be believed.

[Da6s]

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

Just as important as whether or not the shootings were "valid" is how this is going to be presented/used/misued/taken out of context in the media, both foreign and domestic.

Don't matter if it was justified if everyone else says it was badwrong.

Domestically, I don't think it will be much of an issue. The Reuters employees that were killed were both of Middle Eastern descent, so most Americans will think they had it coming anyway. At least, if the vast majority of the thousands of comments on the Yahoo article about this are to be believed.

American journalists have been killed by western military. I'm fairly certain it was due to negligence. It didn't seem like a big deal to anyone but other journalists.

As far as this incident is concerned, I don't think it would have been as big a deal if there was no attempted cover-up.

[Triple Zero]

Just saw this on the news here. In the accompanying web article (partial translation follows), they said an "anonymous US military" confirmed the images as real. Also, that Reuters has been trying to get at the truth about the circumstances under which their employees were shot. The incident happened nearly 3 years ago, 12 july 2007. The two reporters were Iraqis.

So, I guess they were real reporters. Still leaves open the possibility that their cameras that were mistaken for weapons might in fact have been weapons, that the reporters were carrying around for some reason.

The article also states that two weeks after the incident a couple of Reuters editors were shown this video in an off-the-record briefing: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL05399965 [english article, this time].

Then, Reuters filed a request (a "WOB request", unsure if this is an English or Dutch term) to the US DoD to be able to make the video public. This request has not been honoured to this date.

The Dutch Computer Scientist and founder of first Dutch ISP XS4ALL Rob Gonggrijp was involved in the production of the video.

In that article, the one about Gonggrijp, he talks about the care they took in making the video: (partial translation follows)

Wikileaks works thoroughly and spends a lot of time to validate the authenticity of the video. They worked for months on the video from Iraq. "We watched the video frame by frame, probably at least a thousand times. What are we looking at here? Is the weapon we hear being fired really an AK-47?".

At last, a team of Icelandic reporters travelled to Baghdad to check the facts. They spoke to several eye witnesses and were shown colour photographs of the wounded children. "When we saw the images in Iceland, it suddenly felt real. That's when something breaks inside of you, it really shocks you", says Gonggrijp.

"I think it is very important for people to see the reality of war. Apache helicopters that provide aerial protection from 400 meters are basically gambling about what they are shooting at. People should start to doubt the larger narrative of a war."

"The most shocking for me is that a bus arrives, at some point in the video. The passengers just want to get the wounded reporters off the street. Then the helicopter pilot asks permission to shoot these helpers as well, and it is granted. That shocks one immensely. This is apparently the reality of war."

The US DoD has not officially commented on the video images. "There are American generals on television and they just say you endanger the mission by making these images public. They support the troops and say you only see the exceptions to the good work the soldiers do over there. But that is just war propaganda."

(this Rob Gonggrijp fellow is probably one of the activist freedom hacker types of XS4ALL, which has always made a point about freedom and freedom of speech. though usually more in the context of the Internet and privacy, censorship and data retention laws. if they weren't so expensive I'd get my internet from them, just to support their causes)





aaanyway, so much for translating Dutch news articles.


What I wondered about--even though the interview with Gonggrijp does not really seem to support this--is that Wikieaks got into a fight with the Pentagon just 1-2 weeks ago, and was deemed "a national security threat". Could it not have been that Wikileaks had been sitting on this video for a while, and release it just now, to send a message to the Pentagon such as "don't mess with us, we got a whole lot more beans to spill" ?

Or, even if that's not exactly how it went, it's still kind of a coincidence that these events happen right after eachother?

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

I do seem to remember first hearing about this about a week or two ago...

[Triple Zero]

I do seem to remember first hearing about this about a week or two ago...

You sure you're not mixed up with the "Pentagon deems Wikileaks national security threat" story? cause that happened two weeks ago, the video, afaik, is new.

[Elder Iptuous]

just a curiosity....
would it be SOP to request permission to 'engage' if the vehicle coming to get the injured/killed has a red cross/red crescent on it?
i mean, we don't wantonly kill medics, right?
that's one of the things that got me in the video because the guys that came to collect them weren't claimed to be armed, were they?
and the gunner didn't even fire warning shots to let the people in the van know to back off....

[Da6s]

from what i've read in the past 2 days insurgents in iraq during 2007 (when the conflict itself was the most violent) would use darkened vans/vehicles to recover any weapons/intel their wounded or KIA's may have had in their possession before coalition forces could move in to search the bodies.

and i would think the only "medic" vehicles in an active warzone (which is where this video was) would be known and noted ambulances/medivacs.

[Remington]

I do seem to remember first hearing about this about a week or two ago...

You sure you're not mixed up with the "Pentagon deems Wikileaks national security threat" story? cause that happened two weeks ago, the video, afaik, is new.

IIRC the Pentagon's opposition to Wikileaks in the previous weeks was brought to a head by Wikileaks' announcement that they were going to release the Baghdad video.