WSWS– Iraq war veteran Ethan McCord, who is seen running with an Iraqi child in his arms in the video posted by WikiLeaks of a July 2007 massacre of civilians in Baghdad, talked to the World Socialist Web Site about the impact of this and similar experiences in Iraq.

The video, which records the shocking deaths of at least 12 individuals, including two Iraqi journalists employed by Reuters, has been viewed more than 6 million times on the Internet.

McCord, together with another former member of the company, Josh Stieber, have addressed an open “Letter of Reconciliation” to the Iraqi people taking responsibility for their role in this incident and other acts of violence. Both soldiers deployed to Iraq in 2007 and left the Army last year.

In the letter, McCord and Stieber said, “…we acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones.” They insisted that “the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how US-led wars are carried out in this region.”

The night before speaking to the WSWS, Ethan McCord had learned that the widow of one of the dozen men killed—the father of the two children he tried to rescue—had forgiven him and Stieber for their role in the incident.

Ahlam Abdelhussein Tuman, 33, told the Times of London: “I can accept their apology, because they saved my children and if it were not for them, maybe my two little children would be dead.”

Her husband, Saleh Mutashar Tuman, had arrived on the scene of the carnage caused by a US Apache helicopter firing into a crowd and attempted to aid the wounded. The helicopter opened fire again, killing him and at least one wounded man and wounding his two children, who were sitting in his van.

The widow urged the two former soldiers to continue to speak out. “I would like the American people and the whole world to understand what happened here in Iraq. We lost our country and our lives were destroyed.”

Can you explain why you and Josh Stieber wrote the “Letter of Reconciliation” to the Iraqi people?

We originally wanted it to go to the family members of those involved that day in the WikiLeaks video. Then in turn we wanted it to be more along the lines of to all Iraqi people as well. We wanted the Iraqi people to know that not everybody sees them as being dehumanized and that there are plenty of Americans and other people who care for them as human beings and wish for them to live long and happy lives and don’t agree with the war and the policies behind it.

I just found out last night that the letter was shown to the family, the children and the mother as well. She has forgiven myself and Josh and is very happy to see the work that Josh and I are doing. There was a London Times reporter who went there to see what they felt about the letter. And there is one comment from the mother that she could forgive me because if it wasn’t for me her children might be dead.

That must make you feel pretty good.

Definitely, but it doesn’t stop there for me or for Josh. We are definitely going to continue speaking out on this and do everything we can to have our voices heard about the policies, the rules of engagement and the war. As well, we are hoping to set up a trust fund for the children, as we know that they’ve had a pretty rough life afterward due to the injuries and whatnot. Hopefully, it will get them some medical care.

Could you describe the events of that day and what your platoon was doing?

It was much like many of the days in Iraq. The neighborhood we were in was pretty volatile; at least it was on the rise, with IED emplacements and with our platoons being shot at with RPGs and sniper fire. We didn’t know who was attacking us. It was never actually really clear, at least in my eyes, who the supposed “enemy” was.

We were conducting what were called knock-and-searches, where we would knock on the doors of the homes and search for documents pertaining to militias or any weapons they weren’t supposed to have or any bomb-making materials. We didn’t really find anything at all.

We were getting ready to wrap up at about one o’clock in the afternoon. We started to funnel into an alleyway and started to take small arms fire from rooftops from AK-47s. We didn’t know what was happening with the Apache helicopters. They were attached to us from another unit to watch over us for this mission, which was called “Ranger Dominance.”

We could hear them open fire, but those of us who were on the ground, outside of the vehicles, had no idea what was taking place. We couldn’t hear the radio chatter and we were pretty caught up in our own situation.

When that situation was neutralized, we were told to walk up onto the scene. I was one of about six soldiers who were dismounted to first arrive on the scene.

What did you see when you got there?

It was pretty much absolute carnage. I had never seen anybody shot by a 30-millimeter round before, and frankly don’t ever want to see that again. It almost seemed unreal, like something out of a bad B-horror movie. When these rounds hit you they kind of explode—people with their heads half-off, their insides hanging out of their bodies, limbs missing. I did see two RPGs on the scene as well as a few AK-47s.

But then I heard the cries of a child. They weren’t necessarily cries of agony, but more like the cries of a small child who was scared out of her mind. So I ran up to the van where the cries were coming from. You can actually see in the scenes from the video where another soldier and I come up to the driver and the passenger sides of the van.

The soldier I was with, as soon as he saw the children, turned around, started vomiting and ran. He didn’t want any part of that scene with the children anymore.

What I saw when I looked inside the van was a small girl, about three or four years old. She had a belly wound and glass in her hair and eyes. Next to her was a boy about seven or eight years old who had a wound to the right side of the head. He was laying half on the floorboard and half on the bench. I presumed he was dead; he wasn’t moving.

Next to him was who I presumed was the father. He was hunched over sideways, almost in a protective way, trying to protect his children. And you could tell that he had taken a 30-millimeter round to the chest. I pretty much knew that he was deceased.

I grabbed the little girl and yelled for a medic. Me and the medic ran into the houses behind where the van crashed to check whether there were any other wounds. I was trying to take as much glass out of her eyes as I could. We dressed the wound and then the medic ran the girl to the Bradley. You can hear in the video where he says, “there’s nothing else I can do here; we need to evacuate the child.”

I then went back outside and went to the van. I don’t know why. I thought both of them were dead, but something told me to go back. That’s when I saw the boy move with what appeared to be a labored breath. So I stated screaming, “The boy’s alive.” I grabbed him and cradled him in my arms and kept telling him, “Don’t die, don’t die.” He opened his eyes, looked up at me. I told him, “It’s OK, I have you.” His eyes rolled back into his head, and I kept telling him, “It’s OK, I’ve got you.” I ran up to the Bradley and placed him inside.

My platoon leader was standing there at the time, and he yelled at me for doing what I did. He told me to “stop worrying about these motherfucking kids and start worrying about pulling security.” So after that I went up and pulled security on a rooftop.

Did you face further repercussions for what you did that day?

After coming back to the FOB [forward operating base], nobody really talked about what had happened that day. Everybody went to their rooms; they were tired. Some of them went to make phone calls. And I was in my room because I had to clean the blood off of my IBA [body armor] and my uniform—the blood from these children. And I was having a flood of emotions and having a real hard time dealing with having seen children this way, as I’m sure most caring human beings would.

So I went to see a staff sergeant who was in my chain of command and told him I needed to see mental health about what was going on in my head. He told me to “quit being a pussy” and to “suck it up and be a soldier.” He told me that if I wanted to go to mental health, there would be repercussions, one of them being labeled a “malingerer,” which is actually a crime in the US Army.

For fear of that happening to me, I in turn went back to my room and tried to bottle up as much emotion as I could and pretty much just suck it up and drive on.

You had another nine months or more still to go in your tour then?

That’s right. It was a pretty long time with having to deal with the emotions, not only of that, but of many other days. What happened then was not an isolated incident. Stuff like that happens on a daily basis in Iraq.

Are there other incidents that took place in the following months of your tour that bear this out?

Yes. Our rules of engagement were changing on an almost daily basis. But we had a pretty gung-ho commander, who decided that because we were getting hit by IEDs a lot, there would be a new battalion SOP [standard operating procedure].

He goes, “If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherfucker on the street.” Myself and Josh and a lot of other soldiers were just sitting there looking at each other like, “Are you kidding me? You want us to kill women and children on the street?”

And you couldn’t just disobey orders to shoot, because they could just make your life hell in Iraq. So like with myself, I would shoot up into the roof of a building instead of down on the ground toward civilians. But I’ve seen it many times, where people are just walking down the street and an IED goes off and the troops open fire and kill them.

During this period were you conscious that you were suffering from post-traumatic stress?

Yes I knew, because I would be angry at everyone and everything and at myself even more. I would watch movies and listen to music as much as possible just to escape reality. I didn’t really talk to many people.

The other problem I had is that before the incident shown in the WikiLeaks video, I was the gung-ho soldier. I thought I was going over there to do the greater good. I thought my job over there was to protect the Iraqi people and that this was a job with honor and courage and duty.

I was hit by an IED within two weeks of my being in Iraq. And I didn’t understand why people were throwing rocks at us, why I was being shot at and why we’re being blown up, when I have it in my head that I was here to help these people.

But the first real serious doubt, where I could no longer justify to myself being in Iraq or serving in the Army, was on that day in July 2007.

How did you come to join the military?

I had always wanted to be in the military, even as a child. My grandfather and my uncles were military. Then September 11 happened, and I decided it was my duty as an American to join the military, so that’s what I did in 2002. I joined the Navy. In 2005, when the Army had what they called “Operation Blue to Green,” pulling sailors and airmen into the Army with bigger bonuses, I made a lateral transfer.

I had pretty much had it in my head that I was going to make a career out of the military. But going to Iraq and dealing with the Army completely changed my outlook.

What was your reaction when you saw the WikiLeaks video?

Shock. I had dropped my children off at school one morning, came home and turned on MSNBC, and there I am running across the screen carrying a child.

I knew immediately it was me. I know the scene. It is burned into my head. I relive it almost every day. It was just a shock that it was up there, and it angered me. I was angry because it was in my face again.

I had actually started to get a little bit better before the tape was released. I wasn’t thinking about it as often; it was getting a little bit easier to go to sleep. But then everything that I had buried and pushed away came bubbling back to the surface. And the nightmares began again, the anger, the feeling of being used. It all came back. It wasn’t a good feeling; it was like a huge slap in the face.

Do you think that the way you were told to forget about the kids and suck it up is indicative of the general culture in the military?

Yes, there is such a stigma placed on soldiers seeking mental health. It’s like you’re showing a huge sign of weakness for needing to speak about things or for seeking help even for getting to sleep. There’s fear of being chastised or being made fun of. So you end up self-medicating on alcohol. And as you probably know, alcohol is a depressant and just makes it worse.

I was self-medicating when I came home, and I was hospitalized in a mental institute by the Army because of my problems with PTSD and self-medication.

There were many times when I felt that I could no longer take what was going on in my head and the best thing for me to do would be to put a bullet in my head. But each time I thought about that, I would look at the pictures of my children and think back on that day and how the father of those children was taken away and how horrible it must be for them. And if I were to do that, I would be putting my children in the same position.

Do you think that the pressure to bury these problems is driven by a fear that if you are allowed to question your own experiences, it can call into question the nature of the war itself?

I was not able to talk about it, not able to get answers to like how I was feeling about this, why were we doing this, what are we doing here? It was just straight up, “You’re going to do this, and you’re going to shut up about it.”

Soldiers aren’t mindless drones. They have feelings. They have emotions. You can’t just make them go out and do something without telling them, this is why we’re doing it. And the pressure just builds up.

You hear in the video the Apache helicopter crew saying some things that are pretty heart-wrenching and cold. I’m guilty of it too. We all are. It’s kind of a coping mechanism. You feel bad at the time for what you did and you take those emotions and push them down. That’s what the Army teaches you to do, just push them down. And in a sense it works. It helps you get through the hard times. But unfortunately, there’s no outlet for that anymore, once you get out of the Army. When you get back home, there’s no one to joke around with, nobody you can talk to about these instances.

What happens to that soldier? He’s going to blow up. And when he blows up, more than likely it’s going to be on his family, his close friends or on himself. So I think that’s why soldiers end up killing themselves.

So a terrible price is being paid for this war in the US itself?

Yes, I feel that just as the Iraqis, the soldiers are victims of this war as well. Like we say in our letter to the Iraqis, the government is ignoring them and it is also ignoring us. Instead of people being upset at a few soldiers in a video who were doing what they were trained to do, I think people need to be more upset at the system that trained these soldiers. They are doing exactly what the Army wants them to do. Getting angry and calling these soldiers names and saying how callous and cold-hearted they are isn’t going to change the system.

What do you think drives this system? Why are they sent to do this?

As far as the hidden agenda behind the war, I couldn’t even begin to guess what that is. I do know that the system is being driven by some people with pretty low morals and values, and they attempt to instill those values in the soldiers.

But the people who are driving the system don’t have to deal with the repercussions. It’s the American people who have to deal with them. They’re the ones who have to deal with all of these soldiers who come back from war, have no outlets and blow up.

I still live with this every day. When I close my eyes I see what happened that day and many other days like a slide show in my head. The smells come back to me. The cries of the children come back to me. The people driving this big war machine, they don’t have to deal with this. They live in their $36 million mansions and sleep well at night.

Were you hopeful that with the 2008 election these kinds of things would be brought to a halt. Were you disappointed that they have continued and escalated?

I am not part of any party. Was I hopeful? Yes. Was I surprised that we are still there? No. I’m not surprised at all. There’s something else lying underneath there. It’s not Republican or Democrat; it’s money. There’s something else lying underneath it where Republicans and Democrats together want to keep us in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am hopeful that the video and our speaking out will help. There’s the old adage that war is hell, but I don’t think people really understand just what a hell war is. Until you see it first-hand, you don’t really know what’s going on. Like I said, this video shows you an every-day occurrence in Iraq, and I can only assume, in Afghanistan. So I hope people wake up and see the actual hells of war.

Written by Bill Van Auken

The video can be viewed here-

© COPYRIGHT WSWS, 2010

YAHOO NEWS– A man with explosives strapped to his body blew himself up in a crowd, bombers struck a southern city and gunmen sprayed fire on security checkpoints in attacks Monday that killed at least 100 people — most of them in Shiite areas — in Iraq’s deadliest day this year.

Officials were quick to blame insurgents linked to al-Qaida in Iraq for the shootings in the capital, saying the militants were redoubling efforts to destabilize the country at a time of political uncertainty over who will control the next government.

Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi stressed the importance of quickly forming a government that does not exclude any major political group to try to prevent insurgents from exploiting Iraq’s fragile security.

“The terrorist gangs perpetrated new assaults today on our people and armed forces,” he said. “We call on all political blocs to work seriously for the benefit of the country and … start to form a national partnership government including all political parties without marginalizing any one.”

More than two months after the March 7 election, Iraq’s main political factions are still struggling to put together a ruling coalition. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki‘s Shiite bloc has tried to squeeze out election front-runner Ayad Allawi — a secular Shiite who was heavily backed by Sunnis — by forging an alliance last week with another religious Shiite coalition. The union, which is just four seats short of a majority in parliament, will likely lead to four more years of a government dominated by Shiites, much like the current one.

Sunni anger at Shiite domination of successive governments was a key reason behind the insurgency that sparked sectarian warfare in 2006 and 2007. If Allawi is perceived as not getting his fair share of power, that could in turn outrage the Sunnis who supported him and risk a resurgence of sectarian violence.

The relentless cascade of bombings and shootings — hitting at least 10 cities and towns as the day unfolded — also raised questions about whether Iraqi security forces can protect the country as the U.S. prepares to withdraw half of its remaining 92,000 troops in Iraq over the next four months.

Continue reading about Iraq’s Bloodiest Day.

Associated Press Writers Saad Abdul-Kadir and Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.

Photo by Flickr user Peyman

© YAHOO NEWS, 2010

Democracy Now Part 1/3

Democracy Now Part 2/3

Democracy Now Part 3/3

DEMOCRACY NOW– AMY GOODMAN: The US military has confirmed the authenticity of newly released video showing US forces indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians. On Monday, the website WikiLeaks.org posted footage taken from a US military helicopter in July 2007 as it killed twelve people and wounded two children.

The voices on the tape appear to believe their targets are carrying weapons, but the footage unmistakably shows some of the victims holding camera equipment. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency, photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh.

The Pentagon has never publicly released the footage and has previously cleared those involved of wrongdoing. WikiLeaks says it managed to de-encrypt the tape after receiving it from a confidential source inside the military who wanted the story to be known.

In a moment, we’re going to hear from WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, who oversaw the video’s release. But first we turn to the footage itself. For our television audiences, some may find these images disturbing. This clip captures the moments leading up to when US forces first opened fire.

US SOLDIER 1: See all those people standing down there?

US SOLDIER 2: Stay firm. And open the courtyard.

US SOLDIER 1: Yeah, roger. I just estimate there’s probably about twenty of them. There’s one, yeah.

US SOLDIER 2: Oh, yeah.

US SOLDIER 1: I don’t know if that’s—

US SOLDIER 3: Hey Bushmaster element, Copperhead one-six.

US SOLDIER 2: That’s a weapon.

US SOLDIER 1: Yeah. Hotel two-six, Crazy Horse one-eight .

US SOLDIER 4: Copperhead one-six, Bushmaster six-Romeo. Roger.

US SOLDIER 1: Have individuals with weapons. Yep, he’s got a weapon, too. Hotel two-six, Crazy Horse one-eight. Have five to six individuals with AK-47s. Request permission to engage .

US SOLDIER 5: Roger that. We have no personnel east of our position. So you are free to engage. Over.

US SOLDIER 2: All right, we’ll be engaging.

US SOLDIER 1: Roger, go ahead. I’m gonna—I cant get ‘em now, because they’re behind that building.

US SOLDIER 3: Hey Bushmaster element, Copperhead one-six.

US SOLDIER 1: He’s got an RPG!

US SOLDIER 2: Alright, we got a guy with an RPG.

US SOLDIER 1: I’m gonna fire. OK.

US SOLDIER 2: No, hold on. Let’s come around.

US SOLDIER 1: Behind building right now from our point of view.

US SOLDIER 2: OK, we’re going to come around.

US SOLDIER 1: Hotel two-six, I have eyes on individual with RPG, getting ready to fire. We won’t—yeah, we got a guy shooting, and now he’s behind the building. God damn it!

US SOLDIER 5: Uh, negative. He was right in front of the Brad, about there, one o’clock. Haven’t seen anything since then.

US SOLDIER 2: Just [expletive]. Once you get on, just open up.

US SOLDIER 1: I am.

US SOLDIER 4: I see your element, got about four Humvees, out along this—

US SOLDIER 2: You’re clear.

US SOLDIER 1: Alright, firing.

US SOLDIER 4: Let me know when you’ve got them.

US SOLDIER 2: Let’s shoot. Light ‘em all up.

US SOLDIER 1: Come on, fire!

US SOLDIER 2: Keep shootin’. Keep shootin’. Keep shootin’. Keep shootin’.

US SOLDIER 6: Hotel, Bushmaster two-six, Bushmaster two-six, we need to move, time now!

US SOLDIER 2: Alright, we just engaged all eight individuals.

AMY GOODMAN: The video now shows around eight Iraqis lying on the ground, dead or badly wounded. The soldiers again claim the victims have weapons and now laugh about the shooting.

US SOLDIER 1: We saw two birds. We’re still firing.

US SOLDIER 2: Roger.

US SOLDIER 1: I got ‘em.

US SOLDIER 3: Two-six, this is two-six, we’re mobile.

US SOLDIER 2: Oops, I’m sorry. What was going on?

US SOLDIER 1: God damn it, Kyle.

US SOLDIER 2: Sorry, hahaha, I hit ‘em—Roger. Currently engaging approximately eight individuals, KIA, RPGs and AK-47s. Hotel two-six, Crazy Horse one-eight.

US SOLDIER 1: Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards.

US SOLDIER 2: Nice. Good shootin’.

US SOLDIER 1: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Reuters driver Saeed Chmagh survived the initial attack. Here he’s seen trying to crawl away as the helicopter flies overhead. A voice from the cockpit hopes that Saeed brandishes a weapon to justify more shooting.

US SOLDIER 2: One individual appears to be wounded, trying to crawl away.

US SOLDIER 3: Roger, we’re going to move down there.

US SOLDIER 2: Roger, we’ll cease fire.

US SOLDIER 1: Yeah, we won’t shoot anymore. He’s getting up.

US SOLDIER 2: If he has a weapon, though, in his hand?

US SOLDIER 1: No, I haven’t seen one yet. I see you guys got that guy crawling right now on the curb. Yeah, I got him. I put two rounds near him, and you guys were shooting over there, too, so we’ll see.

US SOLDIER 3: Yeah, roger that.

US SOLDIER 4: Bushmaster three-six Element, this is Hotel two-seven. Over.

US SOLDIER 3: Hotel Two-Seven, Bushmaster Seven. Go ahead.

US SOLDIER 4: Roger. I’m just trying to make sure that you guys have my turf. Over.

US SOLDIER 3: Roger, we got your turf.

US SOLDIER 2: Come on, buddy. All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.

AMY GOODMAN: The US forces notice a van pulling up to evacuate the wounded. They again open fire, killing several more people and wounding two children inside the van.

US SOLDIER 1: Where’s that van at?

US SOLDIER 2: Right down there by the bodies.

US SOLDIER 1: OK, yeah.

US SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse. We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly picking up bodies and weapons.

US SOLDIER 1: Let me engage. Can I shoot?

US SOLDIER 2: Roger. Break. Crazy Horse one-eight, request permission to engage.

US SOLDIER 3: Picking up the wounded?

US SOLDIER 1: Yeah, we’re trying to get permission to engage. Come on, let us shoot!

US SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse one-eight.

US SOLDIER 1: They’re taking him.

US SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse one-eight.

US SOLDIER 4: This is Bushmaster seven, go ahead.

US SOLDIER 2: Roger. We have a black SUV—or Bongo truck picking up the bodies. Request permission to engage.

US SOLDIER 4: Bushmaster seven, roger. This is Bushmaster seven, roger. Engage.

US SOLDIER 2: One-eight, engage. Clear.

US SOLDIER 1: Come on!

US SOLDIER 2: Clear. Clear.

US SOLDIER 1: We’re engaging.

US SOLDIER 2: Coming around. Clear.

US SOLDIER 1: Roger. Trying to—

US SOLDIER 2: Clear.

US SOLDIER 1: I hear ‘em—I lost ’em in the dust.

US SOLDIER 3: I got ’em.

US SOLDIER 2: Should have a van in the middle of the road with about twelve to fifteen bodies.

US SOLDIER 1: Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Ha ha!

AMY GOODMAN: Video footage from a July 2007 attack on Iraqi civilians by US troops, released Monday by the website WikiLeaks.org.

Well, we’re joined now by two guests. Julian Assange is the co-founder of WikiLeaks.org, oversaw the release of this top-secret US military footage. He’s joining us from Washington, DC. And by video stream from Brazil, we’re joined by Glenn Greenwald, the constitutional law attorney and blogger for Salon.com. We called the Pentagon and the US Army, but they didn’t respond to our request for them to be on the broadcast.

Julian Assange, tell us how you got this footage.

JULIAN ASSANGE: We got this footage sometime last year. We don’t disclose precise times for reasons of source protection. When we first got it, we were told that it was important and that it showed the killing of journalists, but we didn’t have any other context, and we spent quite some months after breaking the decryption looking closely into this. And the more we looked, the more disturbing it became.

This is a sequence which has a lot of detail and, I think, in some ways covers most of the bad aspects of the aerial war in Iraq and what we must be able to infer is going on in Afghanistan. So we see not only this initial opening shot on a crowd, which is clearly mostly unarmed. There may be some confusion as to whether two people are armed or whether there’s a camera or arm, but it’s clear that the majority of the people are in fact unarmed. And as it later turns out, two of those people are simply holding cameras. But we go on from there into seeing the shooting of people rescuing a wounded man, and none of those people are armed.

What’s important to remember is that every step that the Apache takes in opening fire is authorized. It does pause before shooting. It explains the situation, sometimes exaggerating a little to its commanders, and gets authorized permission.

These are not bad apples. This is standard practice. You can hear it from the tones of the voices of the pilots that this is in fact another day at the office. These pilots have evidently and gunners have evidently become so corrupted, morally corrupted, by the war that they are looking for excuses to kill. That is why you hear this segment, “Come on, buddy! Just pick up a weapon,” when Saeed, one of the Reuters employees, is crawling on the curb. They don’t want him for intelligence value to understand the situation. The man is clearly of no threat whatsoever. He’s prostate on the ground. Everyone else has been killed. They just want an excuse to kill. And it’s some kind of—appears to me to be some kind of video game mentality where they just want to get a high score, get their kill count up. And later on you’ll hear them proudly proclaiming how they killed twelve to fifteen people.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian, how has the Pentagon responded to this footage?

JULIAN ASSANGE: It’s very interesting. So yesterday, the Pentagon stated that the original investigation that it did into whether the acts broke the rules of engagement, the rules that soldiers must obey before shooting, they came to the conclusion then that there was no violation of those rules, that all the pilots, in fact, acted properly, and gunners. They reiterated that last night, that in fact it was their view that that original investigation came to the right conclusion and that they would not be reopening the investigation. However, we hear that that may be about to change. That hasn’t been confirmed yet, but our sources in CENTCOM say that there may be a change.

Also, late last night, the Pentagon suddenly decided it liked the Freedom of Information Act, after all. Reuters put in the Freedom of Information request for this video in August 2007 and did not receive any response whatsoever for over a year and never has received, to our knowledge, the video. But yesterday, the Pentagon released on the CENTCOM website six files relating to this event. There is one that is the most important, which is the investigative report into whether this action broke the rules of engagement, really quite a telling report. So the tone and language is all about trying to find an excuse for the activity. I mean, this as if your own lawyer wrote a report for you to submit to the court. It’s very clear that that is the approach, to try and find any mechanism to excuse the behavior, and that is what ended up happening.

Something that has been missed in some of the press reportage about this is that there is a third attack, just twenty minutes later, by the same crew, involving three Hellfire missiles fired onto an apartment complex where the roof was still under construction. We have fresh evidence from Baghdad that there were three families living in that apartment complex, many of whom were killed, including women. And we sent a team down there to collect that evidence. So that is in the full video we released, not in the shortened one, because we didn’t yet have that additional evidence. Innocent bystanders walking down the street are also killed in that attack.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you know who these Apache helicopter teams—what this unit is?

JULIAN ASSANGE: We don’t have the names of the teams. However, we have details about the unit, and there was a chapter, or half-chapter, in a book called The Good Soldiers by a Washington Post reporter released late last year that does cover the ground unit that moved in to collect the bodies and was the unit who also called in the Apaches to that area.

Important thing that we know from classified documentation is that there were reports of small arms fire in the general vicinity. This was not an ongoing battle. The Pentagon released statements implying that this was a firefight and the Apaches were called in, into the middle of a firefight, and the journalists walked into this firefight. That is simply a lie. At 9:50 a.m. Baghdad time, Pentagon—sorry, US military documentation states that there was small arms fire in the general vicinity, in the suburb somewhere of New Baghdad, and that there was no PID, there was no positive identification of who the shooter was. So, in other words, some bullets were received in a general area, no US troops were killed, or they were heard, could have even been cars backfiring. There was no positive identification of where those shots were coming from. And the Apaches were sent up to scout out the general region, and they saw this group of men milling around in a square, showing the Reuters photographer something interesting to photograph. So the claim that this was a battle and the Reuters guys were sort of caught in the crossfire, or it was some kind of active attack that it needed an immediate response by the Apaches, is simply a lie.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to come back to this discussion and, well, what’s happening to WikiLeaks.org, not only as a result of releasing this, but other sensitive documents. Julian Assange is our guest, co-founder of WikiLeaks. Also Glenn Greenwald will join us, who has been writing about this. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. Back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, has just posted on WikiLeaks.org this 2007 footage from the helicopter gunships that opened fire on Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

I want to play another clip, this the voices of the cockpit laughing as a Bradley tank drives over the dead body of one of the Iraqi victims.

US SOLDIER 1: I think they just drove over a body.

US SOLDIER 2: Did he?

US SOLDIER 1: Yeah!

AMY GOODMAN: And here the cockpit learns from soldiers on the ground that the victims include children. One voice says, “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids to battle.”

US SOLDIER 3: I’ve got eleven Iraqi KIAs . One small child wounded. Over.

US SOLDIER 1: Roger. Ah, damn. Oh, well.

US SOLDIER 3: Roger, we need—we need a—to evac this child. She’s got a wound to the belly. I can’t do anything here. She needs to get evaced. Over.

US SOLDIER 1: Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.

US SOLDIER 2: That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: After discovering the wounded children, a soldier on the ground says they should be taken to a nearby US military hospital, but an order comes in to instead first hand the children over to Iraqi police, possibly delaying their treatment.

US SOLDIER 3: Negative on evac of the two civilian kids to Rusty. They’re going to have the IPs link up with us over here. Break. IPs will take them up to a local hospital. Over.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, explain what happened to the children, the children that you show in the video footage by circling their heads, that they are in the van.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah, something important to remember is that the video we obtained and released is of substantially lower quality than what the pilots saw. This is because it was converted through many stages to digital. But even so, we can just see that there are in fact two children sitting in the front seat of that van. And subsequent witness reports also confirm that.

So those children were extremely lucky to survive. The Apache helicopter was firing thirty-millimeter shells. That’s shells this wide, normally used for armor piercing, and they shoot straight through buildings.

Those children—the medic on the scene wanted to evacuate those children to the US military base at Rustamiyah, approximately eight kilometers away from the scene. The base has excellent medical facilities. Higher command denied that. We don’t know the reason. Perhaps there was a legitimate reason, but it seems like the medic would be the person best placed to know what to do. Instead, he is told to meet up and hand the children over to local police.

We don’t know what happens then. But our team that was in Baghdad, we partnered with the Icelandic state broadcasting service, RÚV, found the children over the weekend, this weekend, and interviewed them and took their hospital records, and we have photographs of the scars of the stomach wounds and the chest wounds and arm wounds for those children. The boy, in particular, was extremely lucky to survive. He had a wound that came from the top of his body down his stomach, so very, very, very lucky.

The mother says that she has been offered no compensation for the death of her husband, who was the driver of that van, and no assistance with the medical expenses of her children. And she says that there are ongoing medical expenses related to the daughter.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, what is happening now to WikiLeaks.org? What kind of response have you gotten? Can you talk about surveillance or possibly attempting to shut you down?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, a few weeks ago, we released a 2008 counterintelligence report from the United States Army, thirty-two pages, that assessed quite a few articles that I had written and some of the other material we had released—so that includes the main manuals for Guantánamo Bay, which revealed falsification of records there and deliberate hiding of people from the Red Cross, a breach of the Geneva Conventions, and psychological torture, many other things, and a report we released on the battle of Fallujah, once again a classified US military report into what happened there—and clearly concerned that we were causing embarrassment to the US military by exposing human rights abuses and some concern—doesn’t seem to be legitimate, but some concerns that the fine details of some material that we were releasing could, in theory, when combined with other detail, pose a threat to soldiers if insurgents got hold of that information. So that report sort of looks at different ways to destroy WikiLeaks.org or fatally marginalize it.

And because our primary asset is the trust, that sources have enough—we have a reputation for having never had a source publicly exposed, and as far as I know, that reputation is true—it looks to see whether they can publicly expose some of our sources, prosecute US military whistleblowers—and, in fact, it uses the phrase “whistleblowers,” not people who are leaking indiscriminately—but prosecute US military whistleblowers in order to destabilize us and destroy what it calls our “center of gravity,” the trust that the public and sources have in us.

It also looks at some other methods—again, it’s careful to fine-tune the language, but says that perhaps we could be hacked into and destabilized that way, or perhaps we could be fed information that was fraudulent, and therefore our reputation for integrity could be destroyed. The report is careful on these last two to suggest that maybe other governments could do this. It seems like it’s some kind of license for their claims. They speak about how Iran has blocked us on the internet and China has blocked us on the internet and other governments of a similar type have condemned us, and it lists Israel. And it also lists the case that we had against a Swiss bank in San Francisco in February 2008, a case which we conclusively won.

But in the production of this video in Iceland, where most of the team was over the last month, we did get a number of very unusual surveillance events. So we—I personally had people filming me covertly in cafes, who, when confronted, run off so scared that they even drop their cash, and not Icelanders, outsiders, although there also was some surveillance from Iceland.

Our feeling is now that that surveillance may not have been related to this video. It may more likely have been related to leaks from the US embassy in Iceland that we released. We’re not sure of that. But there was—appears to have been a following of me on an Icelandic air flight out of Iceland to an investigative journalism conference in Norway. We’re not sure that—there are records of two State Department employees on that plane with no luggage. Our suspicion is these are probably the Diplomatic Security Service investigating a leak at the embassy.

We did have a volunteer arrested for some other reason and asked questions in Iceland about WikiLeaks, but there are now two sides to this story. So our volunteer says that they asked questions about WikiLeaks, and the police say that they asked questions about WikiLeaks, but the police say this was because of a sticker on a laptop. Volunteer says that this wasn’t true. And at the moment, we’re unable to confirm whether the police had inside information about the video or whether the volunteer is not telling the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined, Julian Assange, by Glenn Greenwald, blogger for Salon.com. He’s a constitutional lawyer. Glenn, the significance of what this videotape is showing, from the helicopter gunship, of the helicopter gunship opening fire on Iraqi civilians?

GLENN GREENWALD: I think, in one sense, that WikiLeaks has done an extraordinarily valuable service, because it has exposed what it is that war actually is, what we’re actually doing in Afghanistan and Iraq on a day-to-day basis.

My concern with the discussions that have been triggered, though, is that there seems to be the suggestion, in many circles—not, of course, by Julian—that this is some sort of extreme event, or this is some sort of aberration, and that’s the reason why we’re all talking about it and are horrified about it. In fact, it’s anything but rare. The only thing that’s rare about this is that we happen to know about it and are seeing it take place on video. This is something that takes place on a virtually daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places where we invade and bomb and occupy. And the reason why there are hundreds of thousands of dead in Iraq and thousands of dead in Afghanistan is because this is what happens constantly when we are engaged in warfare in those countries.

And you see that, as Julian said, in the fact that every step of the way they got formal approval for what they wanted to do. And if you read the Defense Department investigations, which cleared the individuals involved, in every sense, and said that they acted complete [no audio]—

AMY GOODMAN: We may have just lost—

GLENN GREENWALD: —operating procedure.

AMY GOODMAN: There it is. Go ahead.

GLENN GREENWALD: And you see that this is standard operating procedure. The military was not at all concerned about what took place. They didn’t even think there were remedial steps needed to prevent a future reoccurrence. They concluded definitively that the members of the military involved did exactly the right thing.

This is what war is. This is what the United States does in these countries. And that, I think, is the crucial point to note, along with the fact that the military fought tooth and nail to prevent this video from surfacing, precisely because they knew that it would shed light on what their actual behavior is during war, and instead of the propaganda to which we’re typically subjected.

AMY GOODMAN: And then the attacks on WikiLeaks, the surveillance of WikiLeaks, Glenn?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, the problem, of course, is that there are very few entities left that actually provide any meaningful checks or oversight on what the military and intelligence communities do. The media has fallen down almost completely. There’s occasional investigative reports and journalism that expose what they do, but media outlets, for a variety of reasons, including resource constraints, are hardly ever able to perform these kind of functions, even when they’re willing. Congress, of course, which has principal oversight responsibility to ensure things like this don’t happen, and that they see the light of day when they do, is almost completely impotent, by virtue of their own choices and desires and as well as by a whole variety of constraints, institutional and otherwise.

And so, there are very few mechanisms left for figuring out and understanding as citizens what it is that our government and our military and our intelligence community do. And unauthorized leaks and whistleblowing is one of the very few outlets left, and WikiLeaks is providing a safe haven for people who want to expose serious corruption and wrongdoing. And so, of course the Pentagon and the CIA sees them as an enemy and something to be targeted and shut down, because it’s one of the few avenues that we have left for meaningful accountability and disclosure.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, you have video of Afghanistan that you have yet to release?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yes, that’s correct. We have a video of a May 2009 attack which killed ninety-seven in Afghanistan. We are still analyzing and assessing that information. We—

AMY GOODMAN: Last comments, Julian? Go ahead.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yes. I must agree with Glenn, and I’d also like to speak a little bit about the media focus on this. We have seen some straw manning in relation to this event. So quite a few people have simply focused on the initial attack on Namir, the Reuters photographer, and Saeed, the other one, this initial crowd scene, and gone, “Well, you know, camera, RPG, it can look a bit similar. And there do appear to be two other—two people in that crowd having weapons. A heat-of-the-moment situation. Even if the descriptions were false previously, maybe there’s some excuse for this. I mean, it’s bad, but maybe there’s some excuse.” This is clearly a straw man. We can see, over these three events—the initial attack on the crowd; the attack on the people rescuing a completely unarmed man, themselves completely unarmed; to the Hellfire missile attack on an apartment complex, which killed families—all in the course of one hour, that something is wrong.

And the tone of the pilots is another day at the office. This is not, as Glenn said, an extraordinary event. This outlines that this is an everyday event. It’s another day at the office. They get clearance for everything that they do from higher command before they do it.

There was an investigative report in response to Reuters, so it’s not a minor incident. There was pressure from Reuters to produce an investigative report. There was an investigative report. It cleared everyone of wrongdoing. You can read that report that was released. It is clearly designed to come to a particular conclusion, the suppression of the FOI material, non-response to Reuters. And now we hear yesterday from the Pentagon an attempt to keep the same line, that everything was done correctly.

I don’t think that can hold, but I think it gives important lessons as to what you can believe. Even the number—everyone was described initially as insurgents, except for the two wounded children. A blanket description. It was only from pressure from the press that changed that number to there being civilians amongst the crowd. But we also see that the total death count is wrong. There were people killed in the buildings next to this event who were just there living in their houses. There were additional bystanders killed in the Hellfire missile attack, and those people weren’t even counted, let alone counted as insurgents. So you cannot believe these statements from the military about number of people who were killed, whether people are insurgents, whether an investigation into rules of engagement was correct. They simply cannot be believed and cannot be trusted.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, after the footage was released, Nabil Noor-Eldeen, the brother of the slain Reuters cameraman Namir Noor-Eldeen, spoke out in an interview with Al Jazeera.

NABIL NOOR-ELDEEN: Is this the democracy and freedom that they claim have brought to Iraq? What Namir was doing was a patriotic work. He was trying to cover the violations of the Americans against the Iraqi people. He was only twenty-one years old. Other innocent colleagues and other innocent people, who were just standing out of curiosity when they see a journalist in a scene, and they were all killed. This is another crime that should be added to the record of American crimes in Iraq and the world. Is the pilot that stupid, he cannot distinguish between an RPG and a camera? They claim he was carrying an RPG. When was the RPG this small, small as a camera? He was carrying a small camera. An RPG is more than one meter long. Yes, it was an RPG because it shows the acts against Iraq and its people that still suffer from their crimes. We demand the international organizations to help us sue those people responsible for the killings of our sons and our people.

AMY GOODMAN: Nabil Noor-Eldeen is the brother of the photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen—and his driver Saeed Chmagh, they both worked for Reuters news agency. The overwhelmingly sad tributes to them online are very important. I want to thank Julian Assange, co-founder ofWikiLeaks.org. Glenn Greenwald, stay with us, because we want to go quickly to that story on Afghanistan, which we will also talk about tomorrow.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. And we’ll talk about the worst mining disaster in twenty-five years, in West Virginia. Stay with us.

Photo  by flickr user Espenmoe

TRUTHOUT– On Monday, April 5, Wikileaks.org posted video footage from Iraq, taken from a US military Apache helicopter in July 2007 as soldiers aboard it killed 12 people and wounded two children. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency: photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh.

(Scroll Down for Video)

HUFFINGTON POST– Calling it a case of “collateral murder,” the WikiLeaks Web site today released harrowing video of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007 repeatedly opening fire on a group of men that included a Reuters photographer and his driver – and then on a van that stopped to rescue one of the wounded men.

None of the members of the group were taking hostile action, contrary to the Pentagon’s initial cover story; they were milling about on a street corner. One man was evidently carrying a gun, though that was and is hardly an uncommon occurrence in Baghdad.

Reporters working for WikiLeaks determined that the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session. He was killed and his two children were badly injured.

In the video, which Reuters has been asking to see since 2007, crew members can be heard celebrating their kills.

“Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,” says one crewman after multiple rounds of 30mm cannon fire left nearly a dozen bodies littering the street.

A crewman begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded: “Come on, let us shoot!”

Two crewmen share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses.

And after soldiers on the ground find two small children shot and bleeding in the van, one crewman can be heard saying: “Well, it’s their fault bringing their kids to a battle.”

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 shooting, which killed Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, took place on July 12, 2007, in a southeastern neighborhood of Baghdad.

Continue reading about the Wikileaks Massacre Video.

Dan Froomkin is senior Washington correspondent for the Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail, bookmark his page; subscribe to RSS feed, follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and/or become a fan and get e-mail alerts when he writes.

© HUFFINGTON POST, 2010