(8 PM – promoted by TheMomCat)
The man, dressed in a white shirt and dark pants, strides confidently down the middle of the suburban street, his camera bag slung over one shoulder, his co worker following behind, with other men in summer clothing ambling down the road. He pauses to speak into his cell phone.
In the distance, helicopters hover.
Nearly 3 years later, what happened to him and companion as they walked to their next Reuters assignment is known.
(warning, graphic video below, noise and images, please do not view if you are prone to PTSD.)
A written commentary on this story may be seen here at Democratic Underground:
http://www.democraticundergrou…
The Columbia Journalism Review wrote about the release of the video by Wikileaks at the National Press Club here: http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/…
the video is online here http://collateralmurder.com/
An epluribusmedia writeup by Michael Collins is here:
http://discuss.epluribusmedia….
In Iraq and Afghanistan, by this year, there have been 4705 American and Coalition forces killed in Iraq, and 1713 killed in Afghanistan, with the majority coming from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. There have also been at least 462 private contractors killed http://icasualties.org/Iraq/Co…
At least 139 journalists have been killed in Iraq between the years 2003 and 2009. Of those, 7 were embedded with the military, and 132 were non embedded, or “unilateral.” An astounding 117 of those 139 were Iraqis, with the rest being European or from other Arab nations, with just 2 being from the United States.
http://www.cpj.org/reports/200…
This is a Wikileaks video released Monday, April 5, 2010, called
“Collateral Murder.” On July 12 2007, in New Baghdad Iraq, US military helicopters fire on and kill about a dozen people walking down the street. 2 journalists in the group were killed, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor -Eldeen of Reuters, by gunfire coming from those US military helicopters. They were armed with …. cameras. Two children were also badly wounded, who were riding in a van which stopped and attempted to assist Mr. Chmagh as he lay bleeding to death.
The military claimed the victims died in a combat battle between the US and insurgents.
Reuters demanded an investigation. The military claimed the incident fell within their Rules of Engagement. Reuters used the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) to request a copy of the video taken by the helicopter doing much of the shooting.
Wikileaks obtained the video.
“Well, it’s there fault for bringing their kids to a battle.”
“That’s right.”
No, it’s not.
____
now cross posted at Antemedius
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…. because this scene could be repeated over and over again this summer and coming year without public pressure to change how our country interacts with others.
Nobel Prize, my ****.
then you have an idea how commonplace such massacres are.
I’m certain the attitudes of those soldiers involved is also quite typical.
Would you crosspost this to Antemedius, please….
But it’s not really over there. When you teach American soldiers savagery and uncaring for civilian casualties as a way of life, well, sooner or later, those people will be coming home.
And, over something, the same thing will start here. People who don’t think it’s possible are fooling themselves.
It will happen over there. Eventually, it will happen over HERE. If there’s no other reason for Americans to care, that should be one.
I wouldn’t want to live in a country with robotic drone aircraft flying overhead and indiscriminately murdering “terrorists” and civilians alike. Why do we tolerate and allow this to be done in our name? Karma is a b*tch.
Iraq, March 22, 2006