
Wikileaks gun camera video of civilians shot in Baghdad 07/12/07 - dsplittgerber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik
======
mindcreek
Whatever happens in the first five minutes of the video, killing unarmed
people helping wounded is murder, it is out of moral and military code of any
legal combat group.

The sad and disgusting part is this video was in the hands of the us military
all along and they knew, what happened and how it happened, and they also
tried to stop the video from leaking out actively to cover their malformed
policy.

This video is proof of murder, disresctpectful combat, imcompetent ranking
officers and blind trigger happy pilots.

Calling this video anything other than above is political bullshit.

~~~
run4yourlives
Same assessment here as a former soldier. The first piece is debatable. I
clearly saw an RPG and a personal weapon, and to be honest, unless the
cameraman was ID'd, I would be 50/50 on that.

I don't know the tactical situation, but it looks like they were providing
aerial cover for a convoy of some sort, since that's who they keep chatting
with. This was quite possibly an ambush in it's very early stages. While
disturbing (welcome to war) I don't think that the actions of the crew where
unbecoming at that point.

I did however have an issue with the destruction of the van. There were no
weapons visible, it was clear that they were collecting bodies for
transport/medical attention. Any perceived or real threat to the convoy was at
that time neutralized, and there was no need to fire.

Doing so clearly violated the Geneva conventions and the US Army's ROE. Both
apache crews should be charged with murder, and the authorizing officer should
be charged with some lesser charge for not confirming the intended target.

~~~
subpixel
run4yourlives sums up by feelings about this particular incident very well.

However, I'm uncomfortable with the way Wikileaks has couched the release of
this video (the editing, the title, and the url used to promote it). It's
agitprop, and in the long term I think it undermines the ability of leaked
documents like this to enter the public discourse and (possibly) effect
change.

My advice to Wikileaks if they want my continued support is to stick to what
you're good at: enabling whistleblowers to anonymously release documents that
may serve the public interest. But let Michael Moore handle the filmmaking.

~~~
krschultz
Especially the really slow lead in. 2 minutes of time before you get to the
video? A lot of people are just going to click out before they see that,
especially with the editorializing. You will turn off a lot of people
predisposed to support the US military over all other considerations. If you
start right with the video and let the document speak for itself you might
reach a wider audience. You also bias the viewers perception by showing the
pictures beforehand that clearly tell you they are journalists which is
something the pilots did know until after the fact.

------
pg
I've been of two minds about this post. On one hand, it does seem important.
But Wikileaks presents it with a lot of propaganda mixed in. They are going
far beyond their original role of merely leaking information. So if anyone
knows of (or wants to make) a version that's just the original footage, please
supply a url and I'll switch the link to that.

Edit: Switched link. Thanks. Please note that many of the comments on this
thread refer to the original page.

~~~
noodle
i agree that they're presenting it beyond their original intent, but i'd also
point out that they've been striving for a business model as a pure
information source, just to keep the lights on, and it hasn't been working
out. this might be their attempt at finding a way to monetize some of their
information.

~~~
uriel
Financial difficulties (which to be honest, I have trouble understanding),
does not justify over-hyping and over-editorializing content, it only hurts
their image and reputation and means less people will appreciate their work.

Also, if they allow their funding issues to compromise their principles it
would be a much bigger issue than if they allow their principles to affect too
strongly the way they editorialize.

So if your theory is correct that would be more disturbing, not less.

~~~
noodle
yeah, it does. the auction wasn't a good idea either. they might be good at
what they do, just not good at distribution/monetization/etc..

------
jcromartie
I feel like we have a bunch of trigger-happy teenagers viewing the world
through a video-game-like HUD with a joystick, just _itching_ to light
something up.

Nobody should support this.

Also, imagine being a child with an Apache circling your town waiting to
dispense this sort of justice. You'd probably become a terrorist, wouldn't
you?

~~~
NathanKP
I am going to play devil's advocate for a moment. I obviously don't condone
the killing in this movie, but just for a moment think about the young kids
who were in that helicopter, doing the shooting and all the shit they have to
face now. Think about all the haters that are going to be calling down evil on
them over the internet and news. Think about how bad they must feel knowing
that they killed innocent people when they thought they were killing the
enemy.

From their point of view they are in a helicopter, scared, and afraid that
someone is going to shoot a RPG at them. You can't seriously expect them to
notice the kids or the difference between a camera and a weapon.

Sure they jumped the gun, they killed innocent civilians, but it was a product
of the environment and training they received. It happened because America
made those kids soldiers and put them in that situation, with a deadly weapon
to control. Don't blame them personally.

What does need to be blamed, on the other hand, is the fact that this video
was kept secret and that the world was lied to.

That is disgusting.

~~~
ck2
_Think about how bad they must feel knowing that they killed innocent people_

Er, they could have joined the Peace Corp, Red Cross, etc. They didn't
_accidentally_ wake up one day and kill someone, they made a series of choices
and put themselves into a series of events where they got to use powerful
weapons against people.

Think about how bad the friends and relatives of the innocent people they
killed feel.

~~~
J_McQuade
If I walk down the road right now, I will not see billboards encouraging me to
join the Red Cross.

~~~
daten
Are you saying you're not responsible for the lives you take if the
organization that trained you had better advertisement funding?

~~~
J_McQuade
No, I'm saying that the choice between joining an organisation that gives you
aid packages to distribute and one that gives you a rifle isn't as clear-cut
as you implied. Not for the majority of people who end up joining the forces,
anyway, though my view may well be coloured from having grown up in the self-
styled "Home of the British Army".

------
youngian
In case anyone hasn't heard, Wikileaks is badly in need of donations.
<http://collateralmurder.com/en/support.html>.

This video is a damn good argument for why what they do is important. Go give
them a few dollars. I can't think of a cause I see as more important in the
world right now (with the one possible exception of free software).

~~~
jacquesm
The video is important, but the way it's been released is exactly the opposite
of a 'worthy cause', they could have done that a lot better.

Wikileaks is starting down the 'greenpeace' road, great initial intentions
eventually becoming a self-perpetuating PR machine.

They should cut down on the hyperbole and the editing, simply release that
information that they consider to be legitimate once verified.

~~~
krschultz
And their expenses wouldn't be so high. Forget the editing, forget the
hosting, forget the editorializing. Post the video and the transcript on a
bittorent channel and let it move on to better funded news agencies. Is their
job to protect the sources that release information, or be an advocacy group
based around information leaked from sources? Because I would donate to the
former but not the latter.

~~~
youngian
My impression is that this is a publicity move on their part to get people
interested and get donations. The presentation seems part of that. They're
pitching "hey, look at how useful we are."

Before the shutdown, Wikileaks did present most of their content without
editing or editorializing. Content would generally be accompanied by a short
couple of paragraphs discussing the context, veracity, and format. If memory
serves, they did write some opinion/publicity pieces, but labeled them as such
and published them separately from the content itself.

I guess what I'm saying is this: I think the extra stuff is there because they
need money badly and are basically marketing themselves with this. I don't
think they intend to make a habit of straying from their original focus on
content. I don't have any proof of this, but that's because they're still
short on money. So if you would donate to the former, donate. Hopefully
they'll be back to their old selves soon.

~~~
jacquesm
They need the money badly for what exactly ?

Wikileaks could run on a shoestring budget and be just as effective as they
are today. A simple rss feed with the magnet links of available torrents would
be all it takes.

~~~
youngian
Oh, and who would provide the tracker? Who would make sure there were always
seeders? Who would protect the servers when every person they've ever pissed
off comes knocking?

Wikileaks has managed to protect all their sources and repel all the legal
assaults on their publishing. And they're not playing in the kiddie pool with
those RIAA clowns. The intelligence arm of just about every major country
wants them extinguished, not to mention a bunch of multinational companies and
some very pissed-off warlords.

This "Wikileaks costs too much" discourse on HN is ridiculous. $600,000 a year
for unprecedented whistleblowing, provided to the entire world, against all
comers, _is a fucking bargain_.

~~~
jacquesm
> Oh, and who would provide the tracker?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_tracker#Trackerless_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_tracker#Trackerless_torrents)

Hence the magnet links.

> Who would make sure there were always seeders?

The same people that would find it important enough that this information is
distributed. I would certainly dedicate a bunch of bandwidth for something
like this.

> Who would protect the servers when every person they've ever pissed off
> comes knocking?

The Streisand effect is partial protection here, if you don't want your stuff
to be even wider disseminated 'coming knocking' (by which you probably mean
lawsuits) would actually increase the stature of the project. As long as you
do not accuse without hard proof.

But simply spreading the information would be the first move in a game of
whack-a-mole that can only be lost.

The 'RIAA' clowns are some of the best funded legal teams and they don't seem
to be making much headway. A much more serious threat is the threat of overt
violence, but that's not something where money will help.

Agreed that the service that wikileaks provides is a bargain, but they could
be going about their fundraising a lot better than they do. Most of it seems
to be along the lines of 'pay up or the data gets it'. And literally holding
stuff hostage and pretend-shut-downs is not the right way to make the point.

That just plays in to the hands of the people that would like to see wikileaks
disappear.

~~~
youngian
I'm not crazy about their chosen marketing stance either. I've been careful
not to say that I like what they're doing, just that I think I know why
they're doing it. It's a little distasteful, but so are the various
fundraising strategies most other orgs employ ("Don't you have two minutes for
starving orphans in Irkutsk?" or public radio's week of not playing any music
to lecture you about donating instead).

At the end of the day, if this is what it takes to get Wikileaks back online,
then I support it because of that. Because I still very much believe in their
mission, and believe that they are unique in what they provide the world right
now.

------
drinian
_Iraq is a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139
journalists were killed while doing their work._ That seems like an enormous
number given that about 4,800 US soldiers died in the same time period. At
about 250,000 US troops in Iraq, that would imply about 7,200 journalists
total in-country, assuming an equal proportion of journalists killed.

In fact, there were about 220 "embedded" journalists in 2007 [1]. Certainly,
there were a lot of journalists not associated with the US Army, but, still,
the conclusion seems to be that being a journalist in Iraq is _far_ more
dangerous than being an American soldier in Iraq.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/10...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101002934.html)

~~~
elblanco
Not only that, but journalists are often more exposed than soldiers. They tend
to shack up out in the city, drive around in unarmored vehicles with local
translators, and aren't tapped into the information network about where bad
things are happening _right now_.

------
ErrantX
I agree that the shooting of the van was unequivocally wrong and, possibly,
murder.

People commenting, though, need to remember a couple of points; they are sat
at home viewing this on big monitors under no pressure. In reality that was
viewed on a small screen under the pressure of war fuelled on adrenaline.

I can see how the first attack could be considered simply a tragic mistake.
Also there is probably little chance they would have spotted the kids in the
van. Regardless the attack on the van _was_ utterly unprovoked - I wouldn't
call it totally malicious but a mistaken, adrenaline driven, undisciplined and
rushed attack. He wanted to shoot it and didn't take the necessary pains to
decide if it was a threat or not (clearly, it was not).

Someone should be held very responsible for this.

However I also feel Wikileaks have milked some aspects of the video. I would
much prefer to have seen the shortened version without the "heart strings"
introduction etc. I believe doing that actually takes away from the impact of
the video - show us what happened first, then do the dedications.

------
Qz
Watching the video, it's fairly obvious to me that the people holding supposed
rocket launchers were in fact holding cameras with telephoto lenses. However,
this is obvious to me after having read comments about the video, as well as
with all the captions in the video explaining what it is we're seeing. This is
a lot information gathered after the incident, when the people on the ground
actually got to go in and see that there were no RPG launchers and so on. So
even though I clearly see a telephoto lens, I can't say that the guys in the
helicopters could see that. I have a hard time saying that this is clearly
murder.

The whole situation seems like a no-win to me. If they (US Military) don't
release the video, they cover their ass in the short run, but when the video
gets leaked it makes them look more guilty than perhaps they really were. But
if they had released the video then, you'd still get tons of people
proclaiming how horrible this is.

Don't get me wrong, this is horrible, but it doesn't seem _more_ horrible than
a lot of the stuff that happens over there. It's horrible that we're even in
this situation.

------
aheilbut
The US Army released some lightly redacted versions of the reports on its
investigations (linked by Salon:
[http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/04/05/wikil...](http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/04/05/wikileaks_gun_camera_footage))

[http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%2...](http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fsites%2ffoia%2frr%2fCENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210%2fDeath%20of%20Reuters%20Journalists&FolderCTID=&View=%7b41BA1AAF%2d785A%2d481A%2dA630%2d12470AFCD6FD%7d)

In hindsight there were clearly mistakes made, but it looks like the Army took
the incident pretty seriously, and there was no big cover-up. One also gets a
bit of a sense from those reports of the broader context in which the events
were happening, which the video on its own does not show.

I'm not so sure that the histrionics from Wikileaks does anyone much good.

~~~
delackner
Reading the investigation you linked to (the one labelled "1st" I was
surprised to see that they describe as perfectly correct the shooting of the
van, despite also describing the van as clearly just picking up wounded.

War is very ugly, always, and this is just one of the many aspects of its
reality.

Some comments have said this sort of stuff wouldn't happen if the crews
involved had high quality optics. The van scene clearly _would_ still happen.

Also very late in the video, when preparing to fire a missile straight into a
building, there is very obviously an unarmed man walking along the sidewalk in
front of the building, totally relaxed. The excited gunner is so impatient to
blow up the building that he simply fires with his crosshairs practically on
top of this person.

Again, something that would happen regardless of optics improvements, and a
sad message about the level of desensitization soldiers are forced to.

------
jackfoxy
Whoever was shooting lived through this once in real-time. Everyone else gets
to view it again and again, stop the action, if they please, back up...

~~~
EliRivers
Isn't that true of everything ever recorded? What point are you making?

~~~
etherael
I think the point he's probably making is it's a lot easier for us sitting
here in front of our computers with no risk to our person watching a video
edited and subtitled with helpful descriptions of exactly what's happening
after the fact than it is for a pair of soldiers strapped into a piece of
military hardware hovering over an active warzone with immediate risk to their
lives in the event that they're engaged by enemy forces armed with RPG's.

~~~
EliRivers
It is easy for us, yes, but the topic at hand isn't how easy it is for us to
watch footage. How easy it is for us to dissect it has no bearing whatsoever
on the events themselves. Put another way, how difficult does it have to be
for us to see what happened before it's acceptable for us to disagree with the
actions taken?

Edit: This is a fantastically unpopular comment! Is it my lack of respect for
the "Thou shalt not Monday-morning quarterback, no matter how badly the
quarterback screwed it up" commandment? :)

------
lionhearted
People are missing that the helicopter was called in by ground forces who were
getting fired upon. This is from the unedited video at 15:23:

"Bushmaster to all elements: Which element called in Crazyhorse to engage the
eight man team on top of the route?"

"Bushmaster six, this is hotel-two-six, I believe that was me. They had AK-47s
and were to our east, where we were taking small arms fire. Over."

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik>

Looks like the helicopter wasn't flying around and saw a group randomly - it
was called into a combat region to support ground troops under fire. Still a
bad situation, but a bit different than it's being made out.

------
drinian
While this isn't on the same scale, we spent several weeks in high school
studying My Lai[1] as a lesson in personal responsibility and morality. It
seems we've learned nothing, not even to be honest when these things happen,
but, then again, perhaps the lesson is that war changes people in horrible
ways?

Wikileaks' continued existence is essential to our democracy.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre>

~~~
jacquesm
I always found it depressing that Colin Powell got a red card for his UN
speech but that My-Lai cover up was never even mentioned.

------
gort
Significant events (note that this refers to the link as modified by pg, not
the link as originally posted):

1:11 - We hear there's a guy with a weapon.

1:38 - We see the weapon.

2:05 - Identification of a second weapon. One of the pilots requests
permission to engage. This is given; however the helicopter does not have a
clear shot and waits.

2:33 - Identification of apparent RPG (is that the camera?)

2:45 - "We got a guy shooting", not sure what this refers to.

3:15 - One helicopter opens fire. The other joins in a bit later.

4:40 - Apparent gap in the tape?

6:15 - We see a survivor crawling slowly, obviously injured.

7:29 - First mention of a van approaching "and picking up the bodies".

7:40 - We see this van and some apparently unarmed men.

7:48 - One of the pilots says "let me engage". They ask permission to engage
several times but get no response until...

8:19 - They finally get a reply, and ask for permission to fire on the van.

8:32 - They get permission and open fire with several bursts.

9:28 - Shooting ceases.

(I didn't go much beyond this.)

------
johnnyg
Without the labels and WikiLeaks cuts, could you have looked at these pictures
and determined what the guys on the ground were holding? Honest to god, I
could not.

Rules of engagement are good. They should be followed. Unfortunately, the
government sets them, and I think even a YCombinator startup would get its
butt kicked coming up with better rules.

Example: the Van, that is very gray. Is it a weapons collection unit or a
medical assistance device? Its both. Its war. Its moving...

As I read through these comments, some gave a back story that the Apaches were
called in by ground troops that had taken fire earlier in the day. If that's
the case and you are on that trigger, in that moment, I doubt many of us would
be as judicious in our decision making.

------
vaksel
I like how it's been how many hours since this story leaked...and not a single
major U.S. news organization covered it yet(as far as I can tell).

~~~
pg
Even more interesting perhaps is that I didn't know that, because I don't
depend on news organizations for news anymore. Aggregators have been my
default source of news for years. News organizations now have the role that
weekly publications used to: they're a place you sometimes find interesting
articles about things you already knew about.

~~~
dkarl
Here's something published just today that shows both the value of well-funded
commercial journalism and the folly of trusting major news organizations to
bother with real journalism:

[http://www.salon.com/news/afghanistan/index.html?story=/opin...](http://www.salon.com/news/afghanistan/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/04/05/afghanistan)

In this case, most of the major news sources simply parroted the Pentagon, but
some bothered to investigate. Eventually the Pentagon was forced to change its
story, at which point CNN and the NYT were able to report that U.S. and Afghan
government forces accidentally raided a peaceful party and blamed the deaths
of three women they killed on honor killings.

Gotta love this quote from some American Rear Admiral acting as Nato's
"director of communications" in Kabul: "You don’t have to be fired upon to
fire back." He's either from the "What Would George Bush Say?" school of
communication, or he's incompetent, or, if he was choosing his words as
carefully as you would expect in such a delicate situation, he decided to send
a damned chilling message, not something I want a representative of my
government saying to people we're supposed to be educating about freedom and
liberal government.

Source for the quote:
[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/arti...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7060395.ece)

------
dsplittgerber
Video will be posted at 16h UTC latest, according to Wikileaks press
conference. It shows this incident
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)
and supposedly shows a military helicopter shooting a van rescuing two Reuters
journalists.

~~~
ugh
Murder? What can that video possibly show that would justify calling this
incident “murder”? And what’s the motive? Killing journalists can only be a
bad move for the US military, so why would they do it on purpose? We already
know that those journalists were killed by US military, so that alone wouldn’t
be news.

I’m curious.

– edit: I have now seen the video, looks like major incompetency combined with
what looks like the wrong training for those situations. Also a possible
coverup of this incompetence on part of the investigators. No murder. Bad
enough. I would probably argue that this is negligent homicide. Has definitely
a different effect than just reading the New York Times article.

~~~
dsplittgerber
Had you seen the video at that point? No.

Look at 04:50 onwards. It was obvious there was no RPG, the group of men
started dispersing, yet they started shooting and kept shooting.

Edit: Look at 10:15. They just killed people who were trying to rescue one
wounded guy. No weapons to be seen anywhere.

~~~
iaskwhy
At 3:45 and until 4:25 everything is kinda suspect. It really looks like at
least one guy is carrying a big weapon (could be an AK like they say or even
some launcher) and by 4:09 one of them kneels at the end of the building with
something in his hands then he quickly gets up, turns arounds and it seems
like he's shooting something (I'd say he was trying to take a picture but
that's not clear at all).

I believe the war was wrong, etc, but I can understand why the army was so
alerted by this. I'm not shocked by it (until the van arrives, what happens
next is not easy to explain, maybe that move happens a lot?) and while I'm
completely against it, I also understand that this can happen sometimes.

To call this a murder is a much simpler version of what happened there.

~~~
Zak
I think it's fair to call firing on the van murder. The people in the van were
pretty obviously trying to remove the dead and help the wounded. They did not
appear to be armed, though it's certainly possible to conceal weapons in a
van. They were clearly not taking any aggressive action.

------
Maro
The basic premise here is that the guys on the helicopter claim they see
weapons (AKs and RPGs). So they shoot shit up, and then the soldiers get
there. What I don't get is that nobody seems to be following up on the basic
premise: there is no audio communication where the helicopter guys are asking
about weapons, or the guys on the ground saying that they do or don't see any
weapons (or that they instead see a camera with a bigass tele lens).

This implies that the soldiers don't care whether their kill was justified.
Setting aside conscience, this is bad because there's no feedback - next time
they'll just mistake the tele lens for an RPG again.

------
dsplittgerber
It's here:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0&feature=youtu.be)

------
patrickk
I thought one particularly sickening part was around 18:50 when a Humvee drove
over a body, or at least the driver thought he did. And then the other guy on
the line jokes "well, he's dead". Talk about disrespecting the dead.

When an American soldier dies, his mates will risk their own lives to recover
the body and a book and testerone-fuelled movie get made about it (Black Hawk
Down). But when an Iraqi gets shot to shreds by a chain gun and run over by a
Humvee, its some sick joke. We live in a twisted, unequal world in many ways.

ps. How amusing that this comment is getting down voted. The truth is
unpleasant, but still the truth

~~~
epochwolf
Soldiers joke about their job. It's a way of coping with the stress.
Firefighters and police officers will make jokes about things most of us
wouldn't dare.

------
etherael
I can't help but think this isn't a bad argument for a heavier investment in
removing the risk to allied lives element from decisions like this, it's one
thing to mistake a telephoto lens on a camera for an RPG as illustrated here
<http://collateralmurder.com/en/resources.html>.

You might be more prepared to risk being wrong if, were you not wrong, you
weren't potentially betting your life on the fact. The pilot sounded genuinely
scared when he misidentified that RPG, one would not expect the same if it was
a UAV feed.

~~~
jacquesm
Au contraire, the fact that a soldier is far enough away to be able to murder
indiscriminately when _not_ at risk is what caused this. If he had been
standing more vulnerable but right by that road side this would not have
happened.

The further you take the person pulling the trigger away from the person they
murder the easier it gets.

Do you really believe the guys that dropped the bomb over Hiroshima and
Nagasaki would have been able to do it given an infinite supply of ammo and a
machine gun that never jams pointed at fields full of tens of thousands of
unarmed civilians?

~~~
etherael
You make an interesting point but the alternative is to purposely hamstring
your combat abilities in order to make a commitment to using them less
appealing. That doesn't sound like a sound survival strategy.

I am by nature a pacifist and would prefer not to engage in war or violence at
all. However, once the bonds are slipped and the blood starts flowing, I don't
think there should be any punches pulled and the more options on the table the
better. I still maintain that if the pilot in this particular instance had
less reason to fear for his own safety he would have been more careful with
his judgement call on the combatant status of the target group.

This is actually one of the common arguments for increasing the role of remote
robotic agents on the battlefield, less necessary to be overly aggressive in
defense in edge cases. I think the commonly cited example is not calling
artillery on apartment buildings to flush out a sniper.

~~~
jacquesm
> That doesn't sound like a sound survival strategy.

It wasn't meant as one. There is a price to war, it should be paid by both
sides for things not to go badly out of control.

The current trend is to minimize the cost to the aggressor so that 'home
support' for a war is easier to come by. If there would have been one American
soldier dead for every Iraqi civilian this conflict would have been over long
ago.

If the perceived cost of waging war to a nation is low then the chances of war
being waged go up.

~~~
etherael
If you were a world champion boxer would you get into a lot more fist fights
because it's less likely that you'd be injured in them? Speaking for myself, I
would not.

I'd hope that just because we _can_ doesn't necessarily mean we _should_ in
any case.

~~~
jacquesm
It depends on the character of the person.

Plenty of people with martial skills are amongst the most controlled that I've
known. And then there are the psychos that are fascinated by violence.

Some countries are a lot more restrained when it comes to applying violence
than others. Compare Switzerland and America for instance, the gun ownership
in Switzerland is one of the highest in the world, yet gun related fatalities
are extremely low. In the US it's a bit different...

------
nfriedly
The two men shown around 3:39 (not the journalists) do appear to be carrying
weapons.

------
mambodog
Torrent of the video available here:
[http://collateralmurder.com/file/CollateralMurder.mp4.torren...](http://collateralmurder.com/file/CollateralMurder.mp4.torrent)

(for anyone interested being part of the crowd-archive)

------
teilo
It is quite obvious from watching this video that the boys pulling the trigger
have no idea what they just did. So, calling it "murder" is a bit misleading.
We got to see the photos of the reporters with their cameras before watching
the video. So we obviously know, going in to it, that those are not AK-47's
and RPGs. But that fact that they have no idea what they just did, is damning
in itself.

One could easily presume from watching this video, that we have inculcated a
sense of utter callousness for the taking of life, and an inability to
distinguish peaceful from threatening activities. The judgement is made in an
instant that there are guys with guns, despite the fact that there is no
suspicious activity going on. It looks like a lawful public assembly. The
presumption is: Iraqi men, milling about an area, some with something slung
over their shoulders. Must be insurgents. Kill em. Good job, soldier.

Is anyone in doubt that the guys who drove up in the van were unarmed? Did
they LOOK like they were trying to shoot back at the helicopter. No. They kept
looking at it, wondering if they were next. They were risking their lives
trying to save an innocent. And they were killed for it.

The most chilling line, after announcing that two children were wounded: "It
serves them right for bringing kids into a battle." Serves them right? Setting
aside the fact that nobody who got shot on that day knew that they were in a
battle until the bullets starting raining down, do they truly deserve to have
their children shot because they bring them into a battle?

I have no doubt that these boys will be haunted by what they did the rest of
their lives. I utterly abhor what happened and I was literally shaking
watching this video. At the same time, I cannot help but sympathize with the
young men that we have placed into a situation that, quite literally, cuts off
their common and moral sense and requires them to be trigger-happy in order to
gain the accolades of their commanders. My God, what are we doing?

------
failquicker
Let me first say that killing unarmed ANYONE is wrong. And that I did get
queezie watching this video. We are suppose to be better than this. That being
said, war is not clean. It is not merely a set of commands and rules that are
followed where everything turns out ok. It is horrible.

I have been in the smoke of war. Crazy things happen out there. Sometimes,
there are children with guns and bombs too. And those bullets kill just as
well. It is easy to make mistakes when you're in an area where there are very
real threats to your life and the lives of your friends all around. Even so,
they are MISTAKES. I don't believe these pilots felt as though they were
murdering these people. I'm sure at the time they felt they were dealing with
a real threat. But they made egregious errors in judgement and caused a
terrible tragedy because of those mistakes.

But there is another tragedy in this case. In the military there is a process
called an "After Action Review" that is suppose to be done after EVERY
mission. It is a time to look back on what happened, talk openly, and analyse
how things could have been handled better. The military could have used this
horrid event as a way to change training and tactics to prevent things like
this from happening in the future. In just a few hours of being released on
the net, there are already scores of dissection and analysis about how things
could have been done differently. Imagine if tactical analysts had reviewed
this and in theater pilot briefings were changed to reflect the results of
that review. Imagine if the military had actually acted in good faith on this
event instead of trying to cover it up. This is 2010. The event happened in
2007. And still they did not release the video. It had to be leaked.

In cases like this where mistakes were made, the government loses any
credibility to "mitigating circumstances" when they try to cover it up.

I hope one day the military can be more transparent with this sort of action.

I hope one day that we don't need an organization like wikileaks, but I am so
glad we have them right now.

And most of all, I hope we aren't going to be watching a similar video in 2013
of a similar event that happened this week.

------
Sethnektochy
Straight from the posting guidelines.....

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic."

This is in no way an interesting new phenomenon. People have been dieing in
wars because of stupid mistakes since the beginning of civilization. How
shocking can it be that an individual died who was hanging around people who
remotely looked as if they were militants?

Source: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

------
GiraffeNecktie
So, let me get this straight. In Iraq, anyone seen carrying something that
resembles a gun or who happens to be in the general vicinity of someone
carrying something that resembles a gun is subject to immediate summary
execution without stopping to make sure its a gun or sorting out who the
people might be or why they might be carrying something that looks like a
weapon? And then helping an injured person get to the hospital is also grounds
for summary execution? And all this is according to the rules of war and the
rules of engagement? And here I thought the Nazis were hard core.

------
cj
"Look at those dead bastards"

"Nice, nice. Good shoot'n"

They bask in the moment, somehow deriving pleasure from the murder of 12
people. This is what disgusts me.

It's dangerous how far from reality some people can drift in certain
situations.

------
spoiledtechie
Iraq is a war zone. Thats the first thing people need to understand. Everyone
is a civilian, but they could be the enemy. They don't wear formal uniforms.
If you were in a War zone and your life was threatened, would you pull the
trigger or would you wait to see if someone else is gonna pull the trigger
first. War Zones are very worrisome places. You need your BASIC instincts to
survive there. Most of those soldiers are using just that. The instinct to
survive.

~~~
dsplittgerber
At 04:36 in the video: "Just fuckin', once you get on 'em just open 'em up."

They did not have a proper visual and just randomly started shooting at a guy
with what looked like an RPG but was a camera. Now this is a war zone, agreed.
But these guys were not under fire in their helicopter, they just started
shooting at hard-to-make-out images.

~~~
waterlesscloud
What's random about it?

From the chatter, there's a ground force element moving in that direction. The
pilots see a group of men gathered in the street, some of them undeniably
carrying weapons. They see a man with a long tube crouching around a corner
and pointing it down the street. There's a line "Yeah we had a guy shooting",
indicating that fire had already come from this group, or at least the pilots
thought it had.

There's nothing random about it. They may have been wrong, but it wasn't
random targeting of people walking around town.

The van portion of the incident is more questionable. It sounds like they
followed the rules they had, but those rules may not have been proper for this
situation.

------
sliverstorm
reading the comments in this thread is a little depressing, and reminds me why
the army has their own justice system. we as safe citizens, protected by these
very soldiers, want to scrutinize and analyze and put every move under a
microscope to ensure it meets our concept of right and wrong and decency.

Guess what. Mistakes will happen. War is war, and it is inherently already not
particularly moral. We reap the benefits in security, and wish to tear people
down when mistakes are inevitably made... If soldiers were tried by civil
courts I can see things getting just as bad as the private sector, where
liability laws and their effects are suffocating and nobody can move for fear
of a civil suit.

Put another way, we send these boys- kids my age, people much like myself-
into a pressure cooker with their lives at risk. We ask them to sweat and
fight and sufferand die all on our behalf, and they do so. Then we want to
punish the ones who aren't perfect and make a mistake. That's right, go on and
punish a man sent there _for you_ and _by you_ who did his best _for all of
you_. Then come back and tell me how you can sleep at night.

~~~
Frazzydee
Except that it's not war. It's a unilateral occupation.

~~~
krschultz
If it wasn't a war, US troops wouldn't have been killed long after the Iraqi
army was dissolved and they would have left by now. If anything the worst part
of the war was the part where the US was fighting non-Iraqis who came to fight
them in Iraq. Then the Iraqi people were losing from both sides. Nobody can
really believe the US wants to CONQUER Iraq in the sense that they want to
stay there indefinitely for control. If the insurgents hadn't fought the US
would have left a hell of a long time ago.

~~~
nfnaaron
"Nobody can really believe the US wants to CONQUER Iraq in the sense that they
want to stay there indefinitely for control."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States_in...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States_in_Baghdad)

"A new embassy, which has been described as the largest and most expensive
embassy in the world at 0.44 square kilometers—the size of Vatican City[1]—was
opened in January 2009 ..."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population>

Iraq is the 39th most populous country in the world, behind, for example,
China, India, Russia, Japan and Mexico. Why do we need such a large operation,
and personnel, for the 39th largest country in the world? We didn't build to
this size with the idea that embassy personnel would shrink in the foreseeable
future.

I believe the US did and does indeed want to conquer Iraq, because it gives us
a presence and force projection that, unlike an aircraft carrier, can stay on
station indefinitely.

Otherwise why invade a country that (differing opinions acknowledged) posed no
threat to the US?

I imagine we're still anxiously searching for the real weapons of mass
destruction.

~~~
sliverstorm
Forget about egos for a minute and consider; 9 years in and still at a
stalemate, moving at a snail's pace? If the US wanted to conquer Iraq, it
seems like it would have been over already.

Don't get upset and emotional over me saying this; Nobody's blustering and
beating their chest here. That's just my honest opinion.

~~~
plinkplonk
"If the US wanted to conquer Iraq, it seems like it would have been over
already."

No it wouldn't. (As you say don't get emotional about this). Except genocide,
which wouldn't be acceptable in this century, what exactly would the US do
differently without having an even more aggressive insurgency?

The US has conquered Iraq, in the sense of defeating and disarming its armies,
executing its leader and occupying territory. The problem it has is in getting
sections of the conquered populace to go a long with its designs for them. "9
years in and still at a stalemate, moving at a snail's pace" is _in spite of_
everything the US Army could do.

So again I ask you what exactly would the US do differently than what it did
if it were (in your opinion) a "real" conquest? I would say that troops of
another nation occupying your country for many years, and planning to stay
(albeit on a reduced scale) for many more and maintaining a monopoly on heavy
weaponry (tanks, planes, artillery etc) while building up a local
collaborating militia is the definition of "occupation" or "conquest".

This is exactly what the Soviets did in Afghanistan, for e.g. (Iran is doing
what the US did then by providing arms, motivation and ideological support to
people who fight the invasion, but on a comparitively reduced scale. Nothing
like the Saudi/Pakistani/US tieup that formed to help the Afghans fight the
Russians). If the Americans aren't ocupying Iraq, the Soviets didn't occupy
Afghanistan either and that just doesn't seem to be a sensible conclusion.

Do you have a different definition of "conquest" or "occupation"? To the rest
of the world, what the US does/did in Iraq and Afghanistan does look like
occupation.

As a (by and large) supporter of the United States (I'd rather see the US win
than some kind of deranged Islamic theocracy, the poor Iraqis don't have any
good choices) I suggest the problem is not that the US didn't occupy Iraq, it
is just that the US is way in over its head wrt the *post invasion" bit of the
operation. The invasion went smoothly. The post invasion occupation is where
the US struggles. It is very hard if not impossible for a democracy with a
free media to fight a war for very dubious ends and maintain support "back
home" over 8 years with steadily mounting casualties and huge expenditure of
treasure during a recession.

Coming back to your post, how (in your opinion) would a "conquest" look
different? How would the insurgency go away if the US adopted different
tactics? Except for massive scale concentration camps/genocide/scorched earth
tactics which wouldn't be acceptable in the US or Europe or anywhere else
really these days, how would it not face any less of an Islamic insurgency
and/or do better?

(There seem to be hyper patriot US readers here who downvote anything that
suggests the US invasion of Iraq is an occupation and the Iraqis may be
somewhat justified in fighting back.

Just think of what you would do if the USA were invaded. Co operate with the
invaders? Or fight back any way you could?

Interesting how some people in the US think the US troops and mercenaries like
BlackWater are anything but an occupying army in Iraq.)

~~~
sliverstorm
> Do you have a different definition of "conquest" or "occupation"? To the
> rest of the world, what the US does/did in Iraq and Afghanistan does look
> like occupation.

Yes, and perhaps that's why we disagree. Conquest and occupation in my mind
are not the same. We are certainly occupying Iraq. 'Conquest' in my mind
usually only involves simply seizing a country, which we don't seem to have
done; easy examples would be Japan's attacks on China and Germany's sweep of
Poland in WWII (and in Japan's case, somewhat before WWII as well), or Genghis
Khan, or the Romans.

Looking up the word, it seems it means much closer to simply 'winning', but I
usually use it in the sense of invading, taking and controlling. The US has
largely avoided the 'taking' part, at least that I'm aware of, so it doesn't
seem like conquest in my head. We are also occupying, but certainly not
starting farms and such, actually _moving in_ to live there. I may be way off
in some of this, but that's how I saw it. I won't attempt to refute your
points; they are mostly good, and through your lens they make sense.

> the US is way in over its head wrt the *post invasion" bit of the operation.
> The invasion went smoothly. The post invasion occupation is where the US
> struggles.

I absolutely agree with you there. We don't seem to have worked the second
step out yet.

------
krschultz
Do they have a non-YouTube link with the original video they have to see its
quality? I'd be interested to see if the Apache gunner has that quality of
video when making decisions or if it was clearer for them. It would seem that
a better video camera that showed the gunner more clearly what they were
holding could have avoided this whole incident, but the fuzziness may be an
artifact of YouTube itself.

------
krschultz
So if Reuters was trying to get this video via a FOIA request, and wikileaks
now has it, will Reuters be writing about it? If this pops up onto the "real"
mainstream it will (probably) be a big story a la Abu Ghraib, but if it
remains on the internet the overall impact will be smaller. Have previous
wikileaks documents made their way up the news chain?

~~~
jacquesm
It's all over the web:

[http://www.nu.nl/buitenland/2219553/amerikanen-
vermoordden-i...](http://www.nu.nl/buitenland/2219553/amerikanen-vermoordden-
irakezen-en-journalisten.html)

[http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/04/05/4117730-wik...](http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/04/05/4117730-wikileaks-
posts-combat-video-from-iraq-showing-civilian-casualties)

[http://www.mediaite.com/online/wikileaks-publishes-video-
of-...](http://www.mediaite.com/online/wikileaks-publishes-video-of-us-
military-killing-reuters-photographer/)

And since one of the people murdered was a Reuters employee I'd wager the
chances they will write about it are about 100%.

------
sliderr
I wonder what mindset one in the military must have to shoot on unarmed
carrying away wounded. I always thought that at least those people a bit
higher up in the ranks had at least some moral values or ethical
responsibility. I mean Joe Redneck doesn't get to fly a 20 Mio. $ Helicopter
just getting out of basic training.

------
sheldonwt
If you had any doubts as to the important of Wikileaks, give this video ten
minutes. This is cold blooded murder. Those people were clearly unarmed, and
the conversation that occurs over the radio is disgusting. It was like they
were begging to just pull the trigger, no matter what they were aiming at.

~~~
NathanKP
Don't forget that that is what soldiers are trained to do. They are trained to
feel scared of the enemy and shoot to solve problems. It is not surprising
that incidents like this occur, or that some soldiers go crazy and go on
shooting rampages later when they come back home.

War is a sign of a world culture that is mentally ill, and being a soldier
that is willing and eager to kill is a form of mental illness.

~~~
cellis
Mental illness? I'm surprised, but I suppose an idealist would think that. I'm
pretty sure the fight or flight syndrome has been well documented as being in
every human, not just soldiers. So, are we all mentally ill?

------
lotharbot
A partial video is currently on the frontpage of CNN.com. They don't show the
part where the helicopter crew actually opens fire, but they do show the guys
on the ground and the helicopter crew saying "we've got guys with weapons...
that guy's got an RPG" and such.

------
ivankirigin
This story toggles between dead and alive. Clearly some moderators disagree.

Most people that say this site is degrading have been here for only a short
time. I just passed my 1000th day on the site. In my opinion, shit like this
does not belong on this site.

~~~
jacquesm
'shit like this' is a fantastic display of the power of the internet at work
as a force of democracy, it is one of the worst ways of presentation that I've
ever seen but it concerns all of us here in ways that we probably don't even
realize yet.

Arguably this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1203545> belongs here a
lot less than this article.

~~~
ivankirigin
You obviously didn't read that lady gaga article. It is actually really
interesting.

If this story were about wikileaks, and not about the iraq war video, I'd
think it was appropriate.

~~~
jacquesm
> You obviously didn't read that lady gaga article.

I did, or at least as far as I got in to it (the 'eye in the sky'), it has
_nothing_ to do with hacking or computers as far as I could tell, correct me
if I'm wrong.

> It is actually really interesting.

I think you meant to say "I find it actually really interesting". It is not a
finding of fact, but an opinion.

What some people find interesting is not what others will find interesting and
vice versa.

> If this story were about wikileaks, and not about the iraq war video, I'd
> think it was appropriate.

It is about both I think, though clearly the contents of the video are what
attracts the most attention at the moment. We already know what wikileaks is,
but there is definitely a lot of stuff about wikileaks in there as well. (And
not all of it good for wikileaks).

~~~
ivankirigin
Lady Gaga (and her handlers) has everything to do with hacking. Hacking pop
music. That is explicitly what she is trying to do. In that context, a story
about the meaning of her work (that your thoughts are controlled), is really
interesting.

> It is not a finding of fact, but an opinion

You're trolling, right? Everything I say is from my point of view.

[shit like this comment thread are why I don't comment here as often as I used
to]

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, she's 'hacking' just like that great 'hacker' Michael Jackson, and the
Captain of the Greenpeace boat that sunk who was 'hacking the law'.

These are all interesting ways to try to stretch the definition of 'hacking'
so something will be palatable for HN, but the fact is that they have
absolutely nothing to do with it.

Wikileaks is an internet phenomenon with many real world effects, is
newsworthy and not just entertainment. So in spite of my apparently losing the
'moderation' I stand by this article being about a hundred times more
applicable to HN than the lady gaga article.

------
hoop
While I agree that the release of this video is important, I disagree with it
being posted on HackerNews. We are not Reddit.

------
rbanffy
A small nitpick. It's "gunsight", "gun sight" or something like it.

I sincerely hope the whole chain of command goes to jail.

------
kyro
The first thing that came to my mind was Sivers' blog post the other day about
others being a lot like us.

------
pw
I'm disappointed that this was killed.

~~~
philwelch
Why _was_ this killed? Were commenters being assholes?

------
oscardelben
youtube link: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik>

------
johnbrit
I hope those guys never come to save my country

------
clammer
As a tax payer, I'm not too happy about paying for these peacekeeping/war
adventures in the M/E. I'm not convinced that I'm more secure because of them.

That said, in the style of warfare that exists in these areas, it's probable
that innocent people will be killed. In a war, intent determines if innocent
people are being killed or murdered. Can this video prove intent?

~~~
madars
The video can prove grave incompetency. If you can't distinguish between
standard photo lens [1] and a full-blown rocket-propelled grenade [2] you
shouldn't be engaging in combat.

[1] - <http://collateralmurder.com/file/photos/5dwlens.jpg.html> [2] -
[http://collateralmurder.com/file/photos/terrorist_pg7c.jpg.h...](http://collateralmurder.com/file/photos/terrorist_pg7c.jpg.html)

~~~
bcl
On of the men clearly did have an RPG. The cameras were mistaken for AK-47's.
One the left as they point out the 2nd cameraman note the long tube that one
of the 'innocent civilians' is carrying and leaning on the ground. It also
looks to me like this is the same guy peeking out from behind the wall, the
tube is too long to be a camera.

I expect that the source video for this is much cleaner than a youtube
conversion, and seeing it in real life, by an experienced pilot and gunner,
would make it clearer that these were not simply locals gathering to talk to a
reporter.

~~~
chloraphil
at 3:55 the crosshairs are one a guy with what looks like an RPG (could be
something else) and is clearly not a camera. I think the guy peeking out from
behind the wall does have a camera with a telephoto lens and not an RPG.

~~~
bcl
Watch the mp4
([http://collateralmurder.com/file/CollateralMurder.mp4.torren...](http://collateralmurder.com/file/CollateralMurder.mp4.torrent))
or the 480p version. It is sitting on the ground as the gun camera sweeps back
around and is clearly too long to be a telephoto lens.

~~~
chloraphil
good catch - that's no camera.

------
coderdude
How the heck are they able to tell which guy is which? At 5:12 you see a guy
running and they pinpoint who it is, even though there's been all this smoke
and you surely could not keep track of people between the moving of the camera
and with all the sand and dirt in the air.

~~~
yurifury
They may have been able to tell due to the position of the bodies after the
attack.

------
coderdude
View the page source. There are quotes from people like George Orwell and
Dwight D. Eisenhower. I'm glad their display is none, because it's going to
look really cheesy.

Edit: The full page went up and the quotes are no longer in the source.

------
qeorge
Not in our name.

------
Subgun
If you are in a war zone near people with weapons you have no right to
complain if you get shot at.

You can Monday morning quarterback the scenario all day long. The fact is the
pilots saw firearms and RPG's with a group of people and knew US soldiers
would be the target. It's tragic but what armed conflict isn't.

~~~
jcromartie
When you live in a war zone, you don't really have a lot of say in wether or
not you will be near people with guns. Also, are you saying that the children
in the van have no right to complain?

