The Airstrike edit
The Initial Airstrike edit
On the morning of July 12, 2007, the crews of two[1] United States Army AH-64 Apache helicopters observed a gathering of men near an open air section of Baghdad. The crews estimated that group was made up of twenty men.[2] This group included two members of staff from the Reuters news service, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh.[3][4][5][6][7] The helicopter crews mistook the cameras carried by Chmagh and Noor-eldeen for weapons.[8] At least one man in that group was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and another was carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. [9][3][10][11][12] A crew member reported seeing "five to six individuals with AK-47s" and, believing that the entire group were Iraqi insurgents, requested authorization to engage.[3] The men were obscured behind a building.[3] Once they became visible again, both helicopters strafed a group of ten men with 30 mm rounds.[13][3][14] Several men were killed, including Noor-Eldeen, and others wounded, including Chmagh.[3][1][5]
Attack on the van edit
The wounded Chmagh was crawling on the ground,[5][15] when a van appeared at the scene.[3][5][15] Unarmed[5] men attempted to get him to the van.[3][5][15] The watching helicopter crews requested permission to engage, stating "…looks like [the men] possibly uh picking up bodies and weapons" from the scene,[16] and upon receiving permission opened fire on the van and its occupants.[3][5][15] Two children sitting in the front seat were wounded in the attack but survived.[3][5][15] Chmagh was killed[3][5][15] along with the father of the children.[17]
Attack on the building edit
There is a period of 20 minutes not included on the leaked tape.[18] According to the internal legal review, the helicopters engaged a group of armed insurgents, and that some were seen entering a nearby building.[1]
As the tape resumes, two men holding objects are seen walking. They split up and the footage focuses on one who appears to be armed.[19] He walks into a building, after which the helicopter crew reports that "there's at least six individuals in that building with weapons". They request permission to fire a missile at the building, describing it at first as "abandoned" and then as "under construction". The ground controller responds, "If you've PIDed the individuals in the building with weapons, go ahead and engage the building". The gunner then takes a few moments to ready a Hellfire missile, during which two more unarmed men are seen entering the building.[19] One member notices this saying, "Got more individuals in there". As the gunner prepares to fire the first missile, a man is seen walking along the street in front of the building. The missile is fired and hits the building in a large explosion through which the man can no longer be seen. Afterwards, Crazyhorse 1/8 asks for permission to fire another Hellfire a few times. Once granted, they take a few moments to ready another missile, during which several people are seen walking around the debris from the first missile.[20] The footage is then directed in the opposite direction of the building, as the gunner says, "There it goes! Look at that bitch go! Patoosh!". Shortly after, the crew fires a third missile into the building, covering the area with smoke and dust.[19]
Commentary edit
WikiLeaks said in the preface to one of their videos of the incident that "some of the men appear to have been armed [although] the behavior of nearly everyone was relaxed" in the introductory text of the shorter video.[21] Fox News said that of the attack “at least one man in that group was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a clearly visible weapon that runs nearly two-thirds the length of his body”.[11] The Guardian stated “It is unclear if some of the men are armed but Noor-Eldeen can be seen with a camera”.[5] Julian Assange said “permission to engage was given before the word ‘RPG’ was ever used”.[21] Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com said that “the vast majority of the men were clearly unarmed”.[22]The Australian newspaper said the group was displaying “no obvious hostile action”.[23] The owner of the building says that three families had been living in the building and seven residents had died, including his wife and daughter.[19] On April 7, 2010, The New Yorker published a report which concentrates on the Hellfire missile attacks, describing them as "inherently more indiscriminate"[19] than the earlier engagements. The report states that the helicopter crew did not know how many people were in the building when they destroyed it with missiles, and that "there is evidence that unarmed people have both entered and are nearby".[19] It concludes that an investigating officer would want to know how the armed men were identified as combatants from the earlier engagement; would question the nature of the collateral-damage estimate carried out by the crew before the missiles were launched; and would wish to determine whether a missile attack was a proportionate response to the threat.
Reactions edit
Greenwald called this attack a "plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety".[22] Julian Assange stated that initial attempts to evacuate the wounded children to a nearby US military hospital were blocked by US military command.[24] The legal review carried out by the US Army states that the two children were evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital via Forward Operating Base Loyalty, then transferred to an Iraqi medical facility the next day.[1]
In an article published in The Independent on April 8, 2010, human rights activist Joan Smith asserts that the engagements were as a game to the helicopter crew. She writes that the co-pilot urged a dying, unarmed journalist to pick up a weapon as he tried to crawl to safety; and claims that the footage shows "...the Apache crew opening fire on civilians...".[25] When the crew were informed that a child had been injured by their attack, one commented "Well, it's their fault for bringing kids into a battle".[25] Smith describes this reaction as inhuman. She draws parallels with soldiers who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder in earlier wars. She continues "...the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are inflicting huge psychological damage on combatants".[25] In refusing to recognise this, the US military fails both its own soldiers and their "victims".[25] Command structures need to be in place to identify "combatants with serious psychological problems",[25] she concludes.
On Democracy Now!, Josh Stieber, a conscientious objector who was at the time assigned to Bravo Company 2–16, said that although it's natural to "judge or criticize the soldiers", in fact "this is how [they] were trained to act". He said that the debate should be re-framed, that it is more appropriate to ask "questions of the larger system" that teaches "doing these things is in the best interests of my own country".[26] "If you want to keep things like this from happening, stop screaming at soldiers...and instead spend your energy exposing the training that soldiers are put through and demand...leaders reexamine the system that creates the callousness displayed in this video...".[27]
On April 29, 2010, Lateline interviewed Ethan McCord, the U.S. soldier who is seen in the leaked video carrying an injured child. He said:
From being in the perspective of the Apache helicopter crew, I can see where a group of men gathering, when there’s a firefight just a few blocks away, which I was involved in, and they’re carrying weapons, one of which is an RPG. ... Their overall mission that day was to protect us, to provide support for us, so I can see where the initial attack on the group of men was warranted. However, personally I don’t feel that the attack on the van was warranted. I think that the people could have been deterred from doing what they were doing in the van by simply firing a few warning shots versus completely obliterating the van and its occupants.[28][29]
WikiLeaks' rationale for their title of "Collateral Murder" edit
In an Al Jazeera English interview on April 19, 2010, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange explained (while watching the leaked video) why WikiLeaks titled the video "Collateral Murder":
And you can see that they also deliberately target Saaed, a wounded man there on the ground, despite their earlier belief that they didn’t have the rules of engagement — that the rules of engagement did not permit them to kill Saeed when he was wounded. When he is rescued, suddenly that belief changed. You can see in this particular image he is lying on the ground and the people in the van [(who came to rescue him)] have been separated, but they still deliberately target him. This is why we called it Collateral Murder. In the first example [(attack on personnel)] maybe it’s collateral incompetence when they strafe the initial gathering, [that was] recklessness bordering on murder, but you couldn’t say for sure that was murder. But this particular event — this is clearly murder.[30]
The event referred to occurs at 8:49 in the full unedited video.
References edit
- ^ a b c d Cite error: The named reference
legal-reviewwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike_transcript
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Cite error: The named reference
cohen-cnnwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
cohen-seattlewas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b c d e f g h i j Cite error: The named reference
mcgrealwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
senguptawas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
mcelroywas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ http://articles.cnn.com/2010-04-05/world/iraq.photographers.killed_1_war-zones-two-reuters-journalists-gunship?_s=PM:WORLD
- ^ http://theweek.com/article/index/205972/the-wikileaks-way
- ^ http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/collateral-murder-baghdad-anything
- ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
fishelwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?_r=1
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Reuters: leaked videowas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
cnndeathswas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b c d e f Cite error: The named reference
Goodmanwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Collateral Murder (Internet video). Iraq: WikiLeaks. 2007-07-12.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
family-aljazeerawas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Barrowclough, Nikki (2010-05-22). "Keeper of secrets". The Age. Melbourne.
- ^ a b c d e f Cite error: The named reference
NewYorker-Useofforcewas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "Collateral Murder Op Ed". Dispatches. Retrieved 2010-04-22.
- ^ a b Robert Farley (2010-04-14). "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange tells Colbert permission to engage was given before the word RPG was ever used". Politifact.com.
- ^ a b http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/06/iraq/index.html
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Australianwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
Collateral Murderwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b c d e Smith, Joan (2010-04-08). "Joan Smith: Now we see what war does to those who wage it". The Independent. London. Retrieved 2010-04-08.
- ^ "'This Is How These Soldiers Were Trained to Act'–Veteran of Military Unit Involved in 2007 Baghdad Helicopter Shooting Says Incident Is Part of Much Larger Problem". 2010-04-08. Retrieved 2010-04-13.
- ^ "Lessons of Collateral Murder".
- ^ Youtube, (ddchalmers channel) Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Lateline (2010-04-29). "2 soldiers in 'Collateral Murder' video apologize. (quote begins at 5:15)". Youtube, (ddchalmers channel) Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 2010-08-20.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Lateline, Reporter David Mark (2010-04-29). "Soldiers in 'Collateral Murder' video apologise". Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Lateline. Retrieved 2010-08-20.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Al Jazeera English (2010-04-19). "Collateral Murder? (The quote begins at 12:22 in video, and the shot that killed Saaed is at 12:25)". Al Jazeera English Channel , Youtube. Retrieved 2010-08-20.