Murder, my ass

I just watched the leaked video of the killing of two journalists and a number of other Iraqis by U.S. attack helicopters in Iraq in 2007.

The publisher of the leaked video, cialis decease WikiLeaks, sovaldi sale obviously believes the video is evidence of intentional homicide. (The web site they built to display the video is named Collateral Murder.) But from the video the attack was clearly a misunderstanding.

The audio indicates the helicopter pilots thought the men were armed (they mistook a camera for a weapon and one of the other men does seem to have an AK-47). Ground troops in the area had just been fired upon.

The attack was horribly tragic, ailment but it was obviously a case of mistaken identity not murder.

WikiLeaks slows the gun camera footage down and zooms in to reveal that the pilots were mistaken about the camera being an RPG, but the pilots were in combat not a computer lab.They didn’t have the luxury of playing the video back and enhancing it. They were making decisions literally on the fly.

This shooting was a horrible event and my heart feels for the victims and their families.

But, if anything, this footage actually supports the military’s version of events. The pilots clearly thought they were firing on armed insurgents who had just attacked their ground troops. They tried to ascertain the threat. They asked for permission to fire. They didn’t purposefully murder unarmed civilians, which seems to be the conclusion WikiLeaks wants us to reach.

10 comments April 6th, 2010