Tangos Down: WikiLeaks Misrepresents Apache Assaul…
WikiLeaks has posted video of what they decided to frame as «collateral murder.»
Anyone with a passing knowledge of the strict rules of engagment our soldiers and aviators follow, and who took the time to pay attention to the audio and video, cannot be swayed by the deceptive rhetoric offered up by WikiLeaks. While the video below confirms the deaths of two Reuters employees and the wounding of two children, it also confirms the presence of weapons within the first few seconds of the video playing.
Two Reuters employees made the mistake of joining a ragtag group of Muqtada al Sadr’s Medhi Army militia, some of which were still clearly armed, with at least one folding stock AK-pattern assault rifle (3:41, top left) and an RPG-7 (3:44, second from top left) antitank rocket carried by men at the rear of the group (the Reuters employees were near the front) in the video that WikiLeaks chose to show us.
As for the father who made the tragic mistake of trying to intercede in a hot combat zone with dust still rising and blood flowing… I admire his courage, but question his intelligence. He put his children in harm’s way, and broke laws of war that civilians in their fifth year of war should have known by rote.
People die in war, and those who die aren’t always combatants. It sucks.
But it isn’t a crime.
We would all be better off if some of those who decided to opine about things they don’t understand would withold their ignorant commentary so that those who do understand can cut through the deception offered by WikiLeaks’ editorializing.
Two crewmen share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses…
…The helicopter crew, which was patrolling an area that had been the scene of fierce fighting that morning, said they spotted weapons on members of the first group — although the video shows one gun, at most. The crew also mistook a telephoto lens for a rocket-propelled grenade.
The vehicle than ran over what appears to be human remains in a vacant lot filled with trash and rubble was decidedly not a 27-ton Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV), a tracked personnel carrier similar to a tank, but was instead a much smaller 4-wheeled Humvee, as is obvious in the video.
Froomkin, who can’t tell a tank from a truck, wants us to believe he has the discernment to tell a telephoto lens from a grenade launcher carried by a different individual at the rear of the group in the opening of the video (3:44, top of frame, second man from left).
Two questions. Is that an RPG or a camera lens? How do you know the guy carrying the AK-47 is in Sadr’s militia as opposed to a civilian carrying a rifle? There were lot’s of armed body guards in Iraq circa 2007.
I don’t think there’s murder in that video, but I’m not at all convinced there were any bad guys in the video either. I see a bunch of guys milling around. As you say after 5 years of war you’d think guys engaging, or planning to engage US troops would pay at least nominal attention to the gunship circling them, these guys look bored until all hell breaks loose.
The unarmed guys trying to help a wounded man paid the ultimate price for showing tremendous decency. I’m not sure what rule you think they were supposed to know — leave people to die because someone with a 30mm might lobby to kill you for showing courage and humanity? With extreme power comes extreme responsibility, when you’re in a helicopter 1000m+ from some unarmed men carrying a wounded man it seems to me you have the responsibility to exercise more restraint, but then again I wasn’t there.
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