This is the video US Intelligence and the State department tried to suppress. Watch it while you can.
Amongst other things, it shows the murder of a Reuters employee and the good Samaritans who tried to help him as he crawled wounded on the sidewalk in the suburb of New Baghdad.
Approximately 12 civilians were killed in the 2007 attack, including two journalists, Namir Nour El Deen and Saeed Chmagh, who worked for the Reuters news agency. Two children were in the vehicle of the good Samaritans who stopped and they were wounded.
What is important about this video is the lengths the US Government has gone to to keep the truth from coming out.
At the start of the video, US soldiers claim they are taking fire from a roof top in the area. The helicopter sees as group of men on the street and claims they have guns and RPGs. Having watched the video, the long slender items could be camera tripods and the so called RPG could be video camera equipment which is in fact what they turned out to be. The helo crew blow the men away.
You get to watch the wounded reporter crawl along the sidewalk while someone in the helo begs him to "pick up a weapon" so they can kill him. 8 minutes into the video a mini-van stops to help and the helo crew blows the van away, killing the wounded man and the people who had stopped to render him aid. Remember this is a suburb where people live and cars drive.
At 13:30, US soldiers on the ground discover there is a wounded child in the mini-van. 17:21 a soldier ont he ground says a little girl is wounded to the belly.
The helo crew hears this and at 18:00 says "It's their fault for bringing their kids to a battle."
At 18:54 the helo crew laughs about one of the US vehicles on the ground running over a body.
The helo crew decides they see armed men (maybe a rifle) entering a building and blow it up with three hellfire missile strikes. Before the first strike you can see a pedestrian walking down the street in front of the building and he is injured if not killed at 34:50. At 36:40 before another missile strike you see people running towards the building, perhaps to render aid. They are blown away.
From Wikileaks:
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.
From the Al Jazeera article about the video:
Nabil Nour El Deen, the brother of the Reuters photographer killed in the shooting, condemned the attack as a "crime" committed by the US military. "Is this the democracy and freedom that they claim they have brought to Iraq? "What Namir was doing was a patriotic work. He was trying to cover the violations of the Americans against the Iraqi people," he told Al Jazeera. "We demand the international organisations to help us sue those people responsible for the killings of our sons and our people."
I've been watching and of the cable news, MSNBC is just now showing the video.
SUPPORT Wikileaks. They work on a shoe string of a budget and with the media being increasingly unlikely to invesitgate and report, Wikileaks' role in helping whistleblowers is vital.
If you don't have the stomach to watch the full video, here is a shorter edited version:
Here is a still of the Good Samaritan's mini-van, the one that had two kids in it on their way to school:
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Chauncey DeVega
Winterene
def
the traveler
James and Lois Cowan
Redpossum
Salon.com
Comments
ug.
I suppose if there is any good news here it is that this video has made the "front page" of MSN.com
Any news we 'not there' get is news given to us by another source, perhaps reputable, perhaps plying their own agenda. Stay aware and be thoughtful and discerning - what we're shown is not always what is everything of the matter at hand.
Speaking from the perspective of one who had a brother in 'Nam and lived through the 60's (an era of protest if ever there was one) I can only say that this too shall pass, as all things do. Whether each situation passes as we would like it to is another matter, and only each one's personal conscience can determine their stance, actions and reactions. Just be ware of 'drinking the cup', no matter who is offering you the repast..
looks like his wish came true, in an unspeakbly tragic way. time will tell if he died in vain or not....
just tell your masters you want democracy, and until you get effective and accessible citizen initiative, you won't be voting for them.
until you do this, you, and obama, and rumsfeld, and dubya, are all on the same team.
Conversely I also have great admiration for mankind, as a whole and individually, we are as capable of greatness as we are of atrocity. I'm not sure what that means, other than that we are a rather immature species still.
I'm simply saying that outrage is easy to rouse, propagandists know this, so know your sources - know them, not just think you do, not just take their word for it, or the word of friends, even trusted ones.
Truth is not black and white, it is gray and always more than what we see at any given moment, and anyone can make their own use of it. I certainly meant no disrespect to any faction and apologize to those who misunderstood my pragmatism.
heard of wikileaks for the first time when i read a post you woprte last week about the slaughter in afghanistan of 97. anyway, heard about the iraq vid, collateral murder on npr this morning. watched the vids from msnbc. julian assange and wikileaks give me hope. posted the vids on my blog as well and sent it to all my friends on my email list.:)
mr. assange said they will be releasing the vid from afghanistan soon. right the f**k on!!!
mary
RATED for TRUTH
Wars are not declared by people. They are declared by governments. There is a difference. You and I didn't declare war on Iraq and Afghanistan. Our "elected" leaders did this. George Bush who was never actually elected (I've written about this in, for example, "No Paper Trail Left Behind: the Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election" and am one of the national experts on elections theft) in fact, but even if he had been, he lied us into this war by deliberate deception and conflating Hussein with 9/11. If he and Cheney and the oh-so cooperative media hadn't repeatedly and insistently perpetrated this fraud on the American people we wouldn't have gone to war with these two countries.
It isn't in human nature to wage wars. These wars are waged for profit and for empire.
What upsets me in your initial remark was your "all these things will pass" attitude. When you said wars are not pretty for anyone "least of all those in the middle of it who are simply trying to do 1) the right thing, 2) what they're told and 3) stay alive so they can see home again" did it occur to you to apply these words to the Good Samaritans who attempted to help the Reuters driver who was injured by the unprovoked attack on them by our soldiers from their Apache helicopters?
These people were 1) trying to do the right thing, 2) and trying to stay alive so they could see home again - which in their case is that very neighborhood that IS THEIR HOME that the US MILITARY HAS INVADED AND REIGNS DEATH FROM THE AIR UPON THEM.
You say these soldiers are doing what they were told. Does it bother you that they have been given orders to commit war crimes? According to the military code, you are obligated to refuse to follow orders that call for you to commit crimes against humanity and war crimes. The "I was just following orders" was the defense offered by the Nazi war criminals tried at Nuremberg. The verdict at Nuremberg was that "just following orders" is no excuse.
I continue to stand by every word I've said - every word.
I find it almost (I said ALMOST) amusing that there is such a 'hue and cry' now that GWB is out of office.. where was all of this public outrage during his 8 years of mayhem?
Make no mistake, I am not for this war, I am not for any war. As far as the old saw 'people don't wage war, gov'ts wage war' - who do you think 'gov't' is? Astounding to find it so difficult to converse with a sociology professor.
I know better but I try anyway. Silly me.
Please forgive my interruption, carry on :).
You are almost amused at the hue and cry about this and wonder where the outrage was when Bush was president: I, for one, was a leader of the move to impeach Bush. Where were you? There was much more outrage, unfortunately, when Bush was president then now. And there ought to be just as much now.
You say that your remarks earlier could be applied to either side and that either side. This is what you said: "all those in the middle of it who are simply trying to do 1) the right thing, 2) what they're told and 3) stay alive so they can see home again."
How does #2 apply to the civilians living in this suburb of Iraq? Who is telling them what they should do? Is that the way your civilian life goes?
Stay alive to see home again - this IS their home. Your comment makes no sense if it was not with reference to the foreign invading troops of the US.