Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 12:03 pm Post subject: Wikileaks Dramatic Video of Iraq 'Collateral Murder'
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CAUTION: GRAPHIC CONTENT
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Wikileaks Releases Video Of US Military
Slaying Of Iraqis And Reuters Employees
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.
The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.
After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement".
Consequently, WikiLeaks has released the classified Rules of Engagement for 2006, 2007 and 2008, revealing these rules before, during, and after the killings.
WikiLeaks has released both the original 38 minutes video and a shorter version with an initial analysis. Subtitles have been added to both versions from the radio transmissions.
WikiLeaks obtained this video as well as supporting documents from a number of military whistleblowers. WikiLeaks goes to great lengths to verify the authenticity of the information it receives. We have analyzed the information about this incident from a variety of source material. We have spoken to witnesses and journalists directly involved in the incident.
WikiLeaks wants to ensure that all the leaked information it receives gets the attention it deserves. In this particular case, some of the people killed were journalists that were simply doing their jobs: putting their lives at risk in order to report on war. Iraq is a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139 journalists were killed while doing their work.
Didn't watch it all the way through (too b.o.r.i.n.g.) but LOVED the military-esque talk with the frequent beeps, reminded me of other fiction coming from Houston space center on a long ago day in july 1969!
Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 2373 Location: The Canadian shield
Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 1:45 pm Post subject:
MichaelC wrote:
Didn't watch it all the way through (too b.o.r.i.n.g.) but LOVED the military-esque talk with the frequent beeps, reminded me of other fiction coming from Houston space center on a long ago day in july 1969!
Then you might like this....
_________________ The grand design, reflected in the face of Chaos.
WASHINGTON — The Web site WikiLeaks.org released a graphic video on Monday showing an American helicopter shooting and killing a Reuters photographer and driver in a July 2007 attack in Baghdad.
A senior American military official confirmed that the video was authentic.
Reuters had long pressed for the release of the video, which consists of 38 minutes of black-and-white aerial video and conversations between pilots in two Apache helicopters as they open fire on people on a street in Baghdad. The attack killed 12, among them the Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and the driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.
At a news conference at the National Press Club, WikiLeaks said it had acquired the video from whistle-blowers in the military and viewed it after breaking the encryption code. WikiLeaks edited the video to 17 minutes.
David Schlesinger, the editor in chief of Reuters news, said in a statement that the video was “graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result.”
On the day of the attack, United States military officials said that the helicopters had been called in to help American troops who had been exposed to small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades in a raid. “There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,” Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad, said then.
But the video does not show hostile action. Instead, it begins with a group of people milling around on a street, among them, according to WikiLeaks, Mr. Noor-Eldeen and Mr. Chmagh. The pilots believe them to be insurgents, and mistake Mr. Noor-Eldeen’s camera for a weapon. They aim and fire at the group, then revel in their kills.
“Look at those dead bastards,” one pilot says. “Nice,” the other responds.
A wounded man can be seen crawling and the pilots impatiently hope that he will try to fire at them so that under the rules of engagement they can shoot him again. “All you gotta do is pick up a weapon,” one pilot says.
A short time later a van arrives to pick up the wounded and the pilots open fire on it, wounding two children inside. “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle,” one pilot says.
At another point, an American armored vehicle arrives and appears to roll over one of the dead. “I think they just drove over a body,” one of the pilots says, chuckling a little.
Reuters said at the time that the two men had been working on a report about weightlifting when they heard about a military raid in the neighborhood, and decided to drive there to check it out.
“There had been reports of clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents in the area but there was no fighting on the streets in which Namir was moving about with a group of men,” Reuters wrote in 2008. “It is believed two or three of these men may have been carrying weapons, although witnesses said none were assuming a hostile posture at the time.”
The American military in Baghdad investigated the episode and concluded that the forces involved had no reason to know that there were Reuters employees in the group. No disciplinary action was taken.
Late Monday, the United States Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, released the redacted report on the case, which provided some more detail.
The report showed pictures of what it said were machine guns and grenades found near the bodies of those killed. It also stated that the Reuters employees “made no effort to visibly display their status as press or media representatives and their familiar behavior with, and close proximity to, the armed insurgents and their furtive attempts to photograph the coalition ground forces made them appear as hostile combatants to the Apaches that engaged them.”
The article on TruthSeeker attacking WikiLeaks comes from the Wayne Madsen Report.
Some reminders on Madsen:
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Madsen has some twenty years experience in security issues. As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.
Wikileaks does need to be put under the microscope, but Madsen has already been put under the microscope and shown to be a mole.
Some Possibilities:
1) This article was released a month before the release of the "classified video". Did the intelligence community see this coming and use Madsen to float a story that would discredit WikiLeaks? This doesn't seem likely, as the article was not widely covered by the fakes.
2) Madsen is trying to gain credibility. Perhaps more information suggesting WikiLeaks to be CIA will surface, and people will say "Madsen was right!" -- perhaps the WikiLeaks tape is that "later information". FOX has already released a rebuttal, which is being parroted on conservative sites all over the web. Is it going to turn out that this rebuttal is on-the-mark, and that Madsen "warned us" that WikiLeaks was a disinformation operation?
3) WikiLeaks claims that it is being targeted by a modern-day COINTELPRO operation. Madsen certainly is a modern-day COINTELPRO operative.
Last edited by Lord Carpainter on Sun Apr 11, 2010 7:38 pm; edited 1 time in total
Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press (RCFP)
The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE)
The Associated Press - world wide news agency, based in New York
Citizen Media Law Project - Harvard university
The E.W Scripps Company - newspapers, TV, cable TV etc.
Gannett Co. Inc - the largest publisher of newspapers in the USA, including USA Today
The Hearst Corporation - media conglomerate which publishes the San Francisco Chronicle
The Los Angeles Times
National Newspaper Association (NNA)
Newspaper Association of America (NAA)
The Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA)
The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ)
Public Citizen - founded by Ralph Nader together with the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO)
The word to describe this list would be "interesting". My eyebrows especially raise at the fact that it lists Gannett, which is directly connected to the Pentagon attack on 9/11, and to Hearst, which is, of course, behind the Popular-Mechanics disinformation. Associated Press, is, of course, a significant big-name here.
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