Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Reuters photographer, staff and civillians murdered by US forces in Iraq


This is a must read/watch:


5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

Watch the footage here: http://collateralmurder.com
(It is graphic)



They were apparently in possession of weapons... one camera.

Wow... I'm speechless - Just crazy...

The video is saddening since it is obvious that they are not militia. They also only saw 2 people with possible weapons and somehow also saw an RPG pop out of no where.

What's worse is how CNN covered this up (see below link). I hope more people see both sides of this story so you can see how twisted it all is.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/04/05/iraq.photographers.killed/index.html

That's crazy.
One of my old professors works for Reuters

Comment from the pilot/ gunner: "Come on, let me shoot"

This tells the whole story. Sad.

This is very sad

I checked the cnn story this evening and they edited it at 3:00 pm. It now shows the full video. Looks like they got caught hiding the facts.

cnn hiding facts - what else is new?

Sad indeed. Listening to the gunner in the chopper made him sound pretty trigger happy.

While no kind of war is a good thing, today's high-tech warfare makes it less personal and way too easy (for lack of a better word) when you can kill your potential adversaries from the comfort of a tv monitor just like playing an arcade game.

20/20 had an episode where they interviewed a drone pilot who flies a drone in the middle east from his home base in Texas (?) and can attack enemies without even being there.

Makes me wonder if people had to go back to swords and horses, if wars would be different.

wars are never different, blood is the same any way. If you have seen the ads from Canadian forces on TV, you'd understand how young "clueless" people go to the army. Nobody ever tells you'll have to kill someone.

Doesn't matter how war is fought. Wars will continue to be waged as long as humans are alive.

But it does matter how war is fought - had the American men been on the ground (outside of a tank or anything) they would have been able to tell that they were carrying a camera, not a gun, and they may have been at least a bit pickier in their targets as their lives would have been more in danger. I think the men in the video would still be alive had they been on the ground rather than in a helicopter.
Being able to just watch people you're shooting on a video whether in the air or from Texas encourages a sense of detachment.. it encourages it to be viewed as a video game.. and you can hear in the dialogue and in their voices how the Americans were viewing it exactly as such.

I'm talking about the big picture.

In my opinion (and in respect to others here) I don' think what happened has anything to do with the pilot being able to detach himself by looking through a gun camera. After the Gulf War and 911 the US political machine has done it's best to demonized these people. My impression from listening to the audio is this soldier is he is acting out the hate he feels. It's as if this group of people have done something personally to him. I believe if this soldier was on the ground he is the same type that would rough up a civilian given the chance.

I would argue that it is not war which is the problem. The problem is we as a people are not thinking critically about situations. We too easily believe what we are told and do not seek out the answers on our own. After all this is what lead to acts of hate on citizens at home and sending our military forces into combat. I believe it is through promoting cynicism via the media that these types of acts will continue to happen.

As much as people try to separate the two, this war is very much akin to the Vietnam conflict. One of the reasons why soldiers feel this "hatred" that you remark upon, is it seems to them like the regular citizenry are out to kill them. Their enemies hide in plain sight, among the populace, generally only becoming visible when one of their friends is injured or killed.

This is the reason why anyone who is unidentified and carrying a weapon (and i did see at least one weapon in that video) is generally considered to be a hostile. I don't say this to excuse, but rather to explain.

We see in the 2nd half of the long vid, the guy with a weapon, but we don't know what happened before the action at the start of the vid. Did they just have an action against an actual armed group just prior, so were "hyped" into seeing something slung over the shoulder as a weapon? In the 2nd action I could ID the AK, but without knowing the first group had cameras, I couldn't ID them positively as cameras...but couldn't ID them as long guns either.

The Apache could of just acted as surveillance and waited for ground troops to investigate.

When the van moved in there was no need to shoot at it since there were no obvious combatants. The van could of been followed if they were concerned if they were militia.

Also gun or no gun if a malicious act is not being carried out then no force should of been used till the situation was confirmed. Also an RPG is not a guided rocket so it does not threaten the Apache .... it is used to take out stationary vehicles like personnel carriers.

In the Vietnam war a fairly large percentage of aircraft fell to small arms fire and attacks by weapons like the RPG. Helicopters are pretty vulnerable when it comes to that sort of thing.

I would normally agree to this concern but that was back in 1970. The Apache in question was quite distant from the subjects it was observing. You can tell the distance by how long it took for the 30mm canons bullets took to hit the target. Also the Apache is no slouch .. it moves quickly and has anti missles systems. The Apache is also heavily armored compared to the Huey. The Apache was circling so it could not be easily targeted unless the missiles being fired had some sort of heat seeking capability.

3 words to counter your comment: "Black Hawk Down"

Outside of that, don't ever ... EVER consider what CNN pushes as news. Most of the major media outlets, both in the US and here are heavily influenced by political interests. This is why so many BBC investigative reports never make on TV here ... we're kept in the dark because of the tax dollars that are needed fund those political agendas.

I was told abou this documentary when helping my neighbor (who is politically active) with raising awareness to pressure the Canadian government help his sister and family get out of Lebanon a few years back ... in understanding the a different view of Israel. As a note, I am against certain governing styles not the citizens of any one nation and this is what this story is about:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=746557429802139093#docid=1259454859593416473

Yes, I definitely agree with you. There are certainly political mechanisms in place to define the people of the Middle East as the 'other' and as criminals. The technology just enables one to detach oneself that much more and further dehumanize the people they are shooting.

I'm not saying that it is not impossible to take an Apache down with an AK-47 or RPG but it is highly un-likly under these circumstances. Also noticed that the alleged combatants were out in the open when they circled the second time before firing. So if they saw the Apache to fire on they would of scattered.

Also posting a response with "3 words Black Hawk down" sounds quite ignorant and dis-respectful. The situations are not the same for obvious reasons. But like anything else you are entitled to your opinion.

In war you make no assumptions regarding the capabilities of your enemy, nor your own vulnerability. While no AH-64 Apaches have been lost to enemy fire, to date, two UH-60 helicopters have been; one to RPG fire and another to a combination of small arms and RPG fire. SEVEN CH-47 Chinook lift choppers have been shot down; the majority by small arms or RPG fire.

You see, this is why unidentified persons carrying weapons are presumed to be hostile. The danger to Coalition personnel is very real. Apache crews aren't necessarily acting to preserve their own safety, but rather that of other crews and ground forces. They are hunter/killers in function.

And to add to Rob's comments, you can clearly see the attitude of the chopper's crew, they are eager to engage ... so it is extremely dangerous to travel without clear identification. Now having said this, I still find the video quite disturbing and it just shows how sad it is for the citizens of that country. As usual, the US continues to botch this up ... but then again, they were never truly there to help them ... only to secure leverage in the region for obvious reasons.

Chinooks and Blackhawks are not armoured (not talking about Pavelows)and can be taken down with small arms. We all know it was an Apache that was involved so why even talk about these other helis? RPGs can take down Cessnas, want to throw that into the mix?

I explained that.

just plain frightening

I can't imagine what it must be like being over there as a soldier, but the cavalier with which they easily kill over a dozen people and could have killed those two children is just sickening

then the hummer runs over one of the bodies and one soldier in the heli laughs about it

sickening

You never hear about any Americans charged with war crimes...

War is hell, what can you do.

This is why I only take pictures in inner-city abandoned Detroit.