WikiLeaks video: 'Collateral murder' in Iraq, published by The Sunshine Press (17:47)

Playing secret games

It is a great achievement of WikiLeaks to obtain and to transmit this valuable video material and to show it to the world. This shooting footage from Iraq 12 July 2007, was not released through the Freedom of Information Act, that Reuters has requested after the two Reuters journalists were targeted (or practically silenced), including many other civilians.

WikiLeaks acquired this encrypted video from military whistleblowers and had been able to investigate it after breaking the encryption code. It was important to publish this material not only because the Pentagon, the CIA and the White House are playing secret games in the dirty war – and very often perpetrating atrocities abroad –, but because it is necessary to expose, that this document is one of so many, and that this same American murder is happening right now in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc., (through drones, missiles, helicopters and fighter jets) and nobody gets to know anything, except that the official information in the corporate media is that “all were bastard insurgents”. 99% of what occurs in this video has been commonplace, since the invasion in Iraq. This kind of cases only come to light when the press finds some evidence or when it leaks, as in this case.

An intelligence agency for humanity

In general, all criminal information committed by the US military is hidden information and the soldiers are cleared of any wrongdoing (They are champions on impunity and creating smokescreens.) WikiLeaks.org was founded in 2007 and is described by its members as “an intelligence agency of the people.” They are pushing for information transparency and publishing from anonymously sourced, often classified documents from governments, corporations, and other powerful organizations. Investigative journalism is their greater priority, in the sense that the world should not end up in a global totalitarian military dictatorship by the USA. And you don’t have to be a Taliban or belong to Al Qaida to understand the phenomena. The White House affairs are not ruled by the presidency, but by the Pentagon (and the industrial military complex), the CIA, the AIPAC and other powerful interest groups, who´s imperative is to maintain the imperial system.

The human hunting game

The pictures in this video, the language used in the audio track and the attitude of the soldiers are very disturbing and shocking. It seems as if the soldiers were technically trained to kill at every price. According to some deserters, the language they use in this audio is relatively mild in relation to the language the masters use during the training process. This video shows soldiers with a full emotional persistence to pull the trigger (maybe out of paranoia or out of fears for not doing a “good job”.) The soldiers are showing, an urgent desire to kill, as kids in a video game – or as in action films. (Check out the open dialogue in the Apache helicopter between the gunner and pilot, cleared by the ground commander. You will find depravation while shooting with an M230 30MM Apache Cannon.): “Light ´em up”, “Look at those dead bastards”, “Nice”, “All right, hahaha, I hit ’em ...”, “Yeah, we got one guy crawling around down there. ...” “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle,” these are some of the words they exchanged.

A deathly chain of command

The rules of engagement (ROE) in a battle for the Americans are “engage and destroy” or “shoot first, ask after”, but here was not a battle; there was not a hostile fire; the helicopter was not attacked or targeted, opposing the report of the US Lieutenant Colonel Scott Bleichwehl in 2007. The local police described this attack as “random American Bombardment”.

Then, what motivated these pilots to require permission for killing these people? It seems as if their job there was to shoot whatever moves. You must be either paranoid or crazy enough to believe that those individuals moving down there from quite a distance, purely visual, and not sharp enough to distinguish or identify civilians from insurgents or an AK-47s (or a RPG) from camera equipment. It seems as if these pilots were looking for an excuse to kill and “keep busy” out of boredom.

The controversy is focused on the gratuitous animosity and the state of mind of the soldiers when they made macabre funny jokes. This was not a mistaking identity, but a flagrant and an indiscriminate massacre and the culpability lays in the whole chain of command, in special, the commander in chief. This command system that promote war and death, creates this monsters, in which the soldiers itself (potential conscientious objectors) are victims.

How the US machinery of killing works

This video in the Apache Helicopter reflects the American administration’s mindset as a culture of death. In extension, this is the typical Americans’ inhuman behavior in the tradition of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. (Not to mention the Native American people, before they became a nation, and the indiscriminate bombardment of German cities and civilians in WW II.) They think to have the privilege and right to kill, intimidating the whole world. They don’t hesitate to say and show what they are capable of doing. But, they are incapable on keeping track of their own records in history.

In their “war against evil” (terror) they are insisting stubbornly into something impossible. They must kill almost 99 % of the world population to really get rid of it, because generically, every human being can be a potential terrorist, if that is the case. The classification of “terrorist” – beside being racist and one-sided – is a rather fuzzy idea. The USA itself is a loose state terrorist, practicing terrorism openly, and playing military superpower. The resulting equation is this: Terror + terror = more terror. It seems as if producing terror is a good business for the US industry of order and security abroad. There is a big question in the air: How illegal is the fighting of the “unlawful combatants” against occupiers and against an invasion that was clearly illegal?

Today we witness that 90% of drone casualties in "targeted" strikes in Pakistan have been innocent civilians and in Afghanistan the civil population is being bombarded using the same old euphemism: “collateral damage” or “the enemy combatants are using civilian shields”. For how long the world has to tolerate this abusive superpower who is always distorting the understanding?

The USA should unconditionally retreat back to the place where they belong and the whole war projects of the USA abroad should be considered war crimes.



Parliament of Dreamers


To watch the complete version (uncatted), published by Al Jazeera (38:05), click here.

Video 2 (38:05)





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