The second strike, also using 30mm rounds, was directed at a van whose driver, Saleh Matasher Tomal, appeared to happen to drive by and who proceeded to help the wounded Chmagh. The editors asked to see the remaining footage so Reuters could check whether it had been edited or manipulated. And cracking jokes is a way of pushing that stuff down. In 2009, Stieber left the military as a conscientious objector and became a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Soldier on 2007 Apache Attack: What I Saw, Ethan McCord had just returned from dropping his children at school earlier this month, when he turned on the TV news to see grainy black-and-white video footage of a soldier running from a bombed-out van with a child in his arms. [61] The longer video shows the third attack, in which Hellfire missiles were fired into a building.[43]. On June 7, 2010, The New Yorker reported that Kristinn Hrafnsson, an investigative reporter who worked on the Collateral Murder video and later became a spokesman for WikiLeaks,[54] said he had found the owner of the building involved in the incident. The review was not released in full until 2010, after the video of the incident had been released by WikiLeaks. I did see a guy moving from a rooftop from one position to another with an AK-47, who was firing at us. I think that the people could have been deterred from doing what they were doing in the van by simply firing a few warning shots versus completely obliterating the van and its occupants.[52][53]. We are both soldiers who occupied your neighborhood for 14 months. [18][25][31] The Apache crew requested permission to engage, stating it "looks like [the men] possibly, picking up bodies and weapons" from the scene,[33] and repeated their request to shoot,[7][34][35][36][37] before they received permission to begin firing on the van and its occupants. McCord: I would be smoked. When Bravo Company arrived at the scene, they reported finding two RPGs and an AK-47 or AKM. Daniel Ellsberg, a former United States military analyst who was known for having leaked the Pentagon Papers to the media, said of the airstrike: It would be interesting to have someone speculate or tell us exactly what context would lead to justifying the killing that we see on the screen. It claimed reporters' "furtive attempts to photograph the Coalition Ground Forces made them appear as hostile combatants". When the crew were informed that a child had been injured by their attack, one initially responded, "Ah damn. As Russia has accelerated its cyberattacks on its neighbor, it's barraged the country with an unprecedented volume of different data-destroying programs. Some of them [say] I don't care what anybody says they're not there. That's the hard part to swallow. From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region. Iraq war veteran Ethan McCord was one of three US soldiers who were on the ground during the Apache helicopter assault on twelve civilians in Baghdad in 2007 that was captured in a video. Captain James Hall stated they couldn't drive in Bradleys in fear of running over bodies. These people were operating in split second situations.". We did unto you what we would not want done to us. He is seen swinging the weapon below his waist while standing next to the man holding the RPG". This is his account of what he saw. WikiLeaks stated that "some of the men appear to have been armed [although] the behavior of nearly everyone was relaxed" in the introductory text of the shorter video. I was also told that there would be repercussions if I was to go to mental health. Ethan McCord: From Atrocities in Iraq to Resisting U.S. Wars Tweet This interview was done by and first appeared in Revolution newspaper Revolution: In the attack shown in the WikiLeaks video, you were part of the unit that was at the scene, on the ground. The Web site does not slow down the video to show that at least one man in that group was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a clearly visible weapon that runs nearly two-thirds the length of his body. You joke about the situations and what's happened to push away your true feelings of the matter. Wired.com: Do you support Wikileaks in releasing this video? [25] Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com said that "the vast majority of the men were clearly unarmed". New details reveal that Beijing-backed hackers targeted the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, adding to a string of attacks in the region. [18][24][25][26][27] While the two are carrying media cards, a military officer claimed they were not wearing distinctive clothing identifying themselves as such. It was pretty much a shock when we got there to see what had happened, the carnage and everything else. One second later he screams, "He's got an RPG!" [43] He walks into a building which has been identified as the source of fire at U.S. ground troops. Their request was denied at the briefing and they were told to seek access under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Home: Wichita, Kansas, AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE From Current and Former Members of the U.S. Military. More than a dozen people were killed in three attacks captured in the video, including two Reuters journalists, one carrying a camera that was apparently mistaken for a weapon. [64] The footage was released during an April 5 press conference at the US National Press Club, and subsequently on a designated website titled Collateral Murder. We are both soldiers who occupied your neighborhood for 14 months. Soldier Ethan McCord's Eyewitness Story, "Shadowed, Clamoring, Blurry. That's why so many soldiers come back home and they're no longer in the situations where they have other things to think about or other people to joke about what happened and they explode. Highlighted in the 17-minute version of the video are Noor-Eldeen with a camera and Chmagh talking on his mobile phone. There is no bringing back all that was lost. Their overall mission that day was to protect us, to provide support for us, so I can see where the initial attack on the group of men was warranted. I was pretty distraught over the whole situation with the children. ", "Hudson Institute > Warfare Through 'a Soda Straw', "Gates assails Internet group over attack video", "WikiLeaks releases video depicting US forces killing of two Reuters journalists in Iraq", "Leaked Video Depicts Civilian Deaths In Iraq", "Video shows death of 2 Reuters employees in Baghdad attack", "WaPo denies allegation it sat on WikiLeaks video", "Two members of the company in the WikiLeaks video speak out", "US soldier in WikiLeaks massacre video: 'I relive this every day', "Former US soldier speaks (interview transcript)", "US intelligence analyst arrested over security leaks", "U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in WikiLeaks Video Probe", "Report: Soldier arrested for allegedly leaking 'Collateral Murder' helicopter video to WikiLeaks", "Bradley Manning pleads guilty to some Wikileaks charges", "Bradley Manning Found Guilty of 19 Counts, Not Guilty of Aiding The Enemy", "Bradley Manning Found Not Guilty of Aiding the Enemy", "Army Pfc. I wasn't thinking about it as much. "[4] The New York Times wrote that "Critics contend that the shorter video was misleading because it did not make clear that the attacks took place amid clashes in the neighborhood and that one of the men was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade. The men become obscured behind a building as the Apache moves around the group. It could be that since he and Amelia (Sigrid Thornton) have quit. The Washington Post has denied having any copy of the unedited video prior to WikiLeaks release of their edited version, and Finkel (who was on book leave from The Washington Post at the time) said that he has never made any statement about his sources for the story, except that it was "sourced from unclassified information and my presence in the area that day". He added, "I think what this video shows is really a case that challenges whether the laws of war are strict enough. Among the group were two Iraqi war correspondents working for Reuters, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. There's no front lines here. I did see a video on YouTube after the Wikileaks [ video ] came out, of the children being interviewed. But the video and accompanying audio make clear that the soldiers in the helicopter said they spotted 'weapons' among those in the grouplater identified by an internal army investigator as an AK-47 and an RPG. I didn't know if he was telling me that just to get me to shut up and to do my job or if he really found something out. And I picked him up and started running with him over to the Bradley. Seven men were killed, including Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh, with three others being wounded. [But] I was actually starting to get kind of better. "Our forces were engaged in combat all that day with individuals that fit the description of the men in that video. When this video first came out, there was a lot of outrage by the soldiers, just because it depicted us as being callous, cruel, heartless people, and we're not that way. I would like the American people and the whole world to understand what happened here in Iraq. I've spoken with other soldiers who were there. [92], On February 28, 2013, Manning pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 specified charges. I was told to go pull security on a rooftop. Josh . On July 12, 2007, a series of air-to-ground attacks were conducted by a team of two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, New Baghdad, during the Iraqi insurgency which followed the invasion of Iraq. Wired.com: The first thing you saw was the little girl in the van. Wired.com: There was another attack depicted in the video that has received little attention, involving a Hellfire and a building that was fired on. Ethan McCord was a U.S. soldier on patrol in Baghdad in July 2007 when he came upon a scene he says he'd never encountered. "[32], The Guardian stated "It is unclear if some of the men are armed but Noor-Eldeen can be seen with a camera". He was shot and killed. Two former soldiers from the Army unit responsible for the Wikileaks "Collateral Murder" incident have written an open-letter of "Reconciliation and Responsibility" to those injured in the July 2007 attack, in which U.S. forces wounded two children and killed over a dozen people, including the father of those children and two Reuters employees. They're like, oh yeah, we're the "collateral murder" company. They were stating that these people had no weapons whatsoever, that they were just carrying cameras. I grabbed the medic and we went into the back. Though we have acted with cold hearts far too many times, we have not forgotten our actions towards you. [89], When interviewed by Wired, McCord stated that he supported WikiLeaks in releasing the video, with some qualifications: "When it was first released I don't think it was done in the best manner that it could have been. She continued, "the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are inflicting huge psychological damage on combatants". The Wikileaks videos also do not reveal the hundreds upon hundreds of cases in which American forces refrain from attacking targets precisely because civilians are in harm's way.[80]. The flood of emotions came back. McCord: Yeah. [21][79], The New Yorker praised its release, calling it "a striking artifactan unmediated representation of the ambiguities and cruelties of modern warfare".[3]. The breakthroughs and innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking, new connections, and new industries. [65][66] [62] At a February 2013 pretrial hearing, Manning stated that Finkel "was quoting, I feel in verbatim, the audio communications of the aerial weapons team crew". 2023 Cond Nast. Fox News later stated that "although it could be argued AK-47 rifles are common household items, RPGs are not". When a congressman tried to jail him for his actions that day he . This is urban combat and we're taking the war to children and women and innocents. [47] The Australian newspaper said the group was displaying "no obvious hostile action". He later sought help for psychological trauma, but was ridiculed by his NCO and told that if he were to go to the mental health officer, "there would be repercussions". I had blood all down the front of me from the children. Was it reasonable for the Apache soldiers to think that maybe the people they attacked were part of that insurgent firefight? We're sorry for the system that we were involved in that took their father's life and injured them. McCord's courage and integrity has nothing to do with his US army training. We were probably there on the roof for another four to five hours. I don't think that [the] big picture is whether or not [the Iraqis who were killed] had weapons. [18][25][31] As the U.S. soldiers moved towards the site of the attack, a van stopped near Chmagh. Josh Stieber was in the same company but was not there that day, though he contributed to the your pain, and the pain of your community on many other occasions. They arrived on station in New Baghdad at 9:53a.m., where sporadic attacks on coalition forces continued. WikiLeaks identified the leak's source as "a number of military whistleblowers". However, I do know some soldiers went in to clear that building afterwards and there were some people with weapons in there, but there was also a family of four that was killed. Two men were identified by Crazyhorse 1/8 as carrying an RPG launcher and an AKM or AK-47. (quote begins at 5:15)", "Soldiers in 'Collateral Murder' video apologise", "Meet The New Public Face Of WikiLeaks: Kristinn Hrafnsson Forbes", "2 Iraqi Journalists Killed as U.S. [20] According to a military review, soldiers in that company "had been under sporadic small arms and rocket propelled grenade fire since" the operationdescribed as "clearing their sector and looking for weapons caches"began. [43] It concluded that an investigating officer would want to know how the armed men were identified as combatants from the earlier engagement; would question the nature of the collateral-damage estimate carried out by the crew before the missiles were launched; and would wish to determine whether a missile attack was a proportionate response to the threat. The Apache crew then alerted the ground troops that they believed that they could see an injured child moving around inside the destroyed van. We've been there for so long now and it seems like nothing is being accomplished whatsoever, except for we're making more people hate us. We were engaged in our own conflict roughly about three or four blocks away. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. It has also ignored many veterans who have returned physically injured or mentally troubled by what they saw and did in your country. There's houses behind where the van was. [85] Our heavy hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny. Reuters responded, "It is absolutely untrue that this story was spiked. But the time is long overdue that we say that the value of our nation's leaders no longer represent us. [110], Mark Taylor, an international law expert and a director at the Fafo Institute for International Studies in Norway, told Al Jazeera "there's a case to be made that a war crime may have been committed." [115], While the Air Weapons Team was providing support at the first engagement area they were informed by ground troops that they were receiving small arms fire from the south/southwest. [118][119], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}331849N 443043E / 33.3137N 44.512E / 33.3137; 44.512 (Airstrike of 2007-07-12). Wired's Kim Zetter reached McCord at his home in Kansas. [45][114], "Cameramen and armed insurgents" (all captions from the Army report), "Cameraman peering around corner of wall", "Pictures taken by ground forces after reaching the site". There's no easy way to kill somebody. After the incident, we went back to the FOB [forward operating base] and that's when I was in my room. Wired.com: What did you understand that to mean? [16] The military reported that it could not find its copy of the video. Ethan McCord who says he scooped up the children and at least one of his comrades say the incident revealed the bankrupt brutality of the war. She concluded that command structures need to be in place to identify "combatants with serious psychological problems". The crew then reposition the helicopter and fire two more missiles into the upper floors of the building[44], WikiLeaks said in the preface to one of their videos of the incident that "some of the men appear to have been armed [although] the behavior of nearly everyone was relaxed" in the introductory text of the shorter video. Killing of Reuters Employees", "Dealing With Assange and the WikiLeaks Secrets", "Iraq war files: Apache Hellfire victims", "US soldier on aftermath of WikiLeaks Apache attack", Leaked U.S. video shows deaths of Reuters' Iraqi staffers, "Notes from the Courtroom: Alexa O'Brien's Transcript of Pfc. Just from looking into the van, and the amount of blood that was on the boy and the father, I immediately figured they were dead. But for Army veteran Ethan McCord, it was just another day on duty. [32] The Apache crew alerted the ground troops of the van and requested permission to engage the vehicle before the ground troops arrived. McCord was captured in a video shot from one helicopter as he ran frantically to a military vehicle with Sajad in his arms seeking medical care. [50] In a later interview on the World Socialist Web Site, Stieber said that the attack "exposes so clearly the fallacy of using war as a tool of foreign policy or as a way to supposedly spread 'freedom and democracy' around the world".[51]. [59][16] In a personal statement during her court-martial, Chelsea Manning stated that the military had access to the video, and was actively examining it, yet it told Reuters in response to the FOIA request that the information might no longer exist. The report concludes that the Reuters employees were in the company of armed insurgents. When we were on that roof, we were still taking fire. According to the U.S. Army investigation report released by the United States Central Command, the engagement started at 10:20 Iraqi local time and ended at 10:41. [58], On July 25, 2007, during an off-the-record briefing in Baghdad by the U.S. military, two Reuters editors were shown "less than three minutes of video from the Apaches gun camera, up to the exact moment it opened fire the first time." The crew for Crazyhorse 1/8 then located multiple individuals with weapons about 400 meters east of coalition forces and was given clearance to engage the targets. Noor-Eldeen fails to photograph the Apache but three pictures of the U.S. Humvee appear on his camera's memory card when it was recovered by U.S. soldiers. I don't think that people really want to see this, though, because this is war. You can see in this particular image he is lying on the ground and the people in the van have been separated, but they still deliberately target him. In refusing to recognize this, the US military fails both its own soldiers and their victims. "[60], Early in 2010, the Internet whistleblower site WikiLeaks made a public request for assistance in decrypting a video it described as "US bomb strikes on civilians", specifically requesting access to supercomputer time. I know the scene by heart; it's burned into my head. McCord: There were approximately two to three other people who were moving who were still somewhat alive, and the medics were attending to them. Our government may ignore you, concerned more with its public image. "[90], James Spione made a short documentary film about the airstrikes called Incident in New Baghdad, featuring a first-person account from Ethan McCord. What was shown in the Wikileaks video only begins to depict the suffering we have created. "Reading his account," she explained, "one would believe the engagement was somehow justified as 'payback' for an earlier attack that led to the death of a soldier. Those guys could have just been protecting their area". How to Make Sure Youre Not Accidentally Sharing Your Location, Security News This Week: Sensitive US Military Emails Exposed. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C 107. So, the first thing I did was grab the girl. The majority of us aren't. In addition to five[98][99] or six[100][101][102] espionage counts, she was also found guilty of five theft specifications, two computer fraud specifications and multiple military infractions. They heard about something, they came to it and they just wantedfrom everything I've learned since, they were just there to get that side of the story. I do know that there was a teenage girl [in there], just because I saw the pictures when I was there, that one of the soldiers took. [92][93] The Internet chats between Manning and Lamo were revealed to the public by Wired. Wired.com: How much sniper fire were you getting? Josh states that these casualties demonstrate the impact of U.S. military policy on both the civilians and the soldiers on the ground. "[111] An article at Gawker stated that Reuters reporter Luke Baker had written an article claiming that the airstrikes may have been war crimes, but Reuters refused to run the story. [97] On July 30, Manning was acquitted of the most serious charge, that of aiding the enemy, for giving secrets to WikiLeaks. The ground troops that secured the site of the first two strikes then receive small arms fire from nearby buildings. And With Reason", July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike radio traffic, US intelligence analyst arrested over Wikileaks video, WikiLeaks editor on Apache combat video: No excuse for US killing civilians, Families of Victims of 2007 US Helicopter Killing React to Leaked Video, Ethan McCord Describes Emotional Toll of Witnessing Killings, 'Collateral Murder' in Baghdad Anything But, Use of white phosphorus by the United States, United States and the International Criminal Court, A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, "The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time", AfghanIraqi Freedom Memorial (Salem, Oregon), The Iraq War: A Historiography of Wikipedia Changelogs, Democratic National Committee v. Russian Federation, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstrike&oldid=1140602029, Articles with dead external links from May 2019, Articles with permanently dead external links, Articles with dead external links from July 2022, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Press reports of the number killed vary from 12, Representation (including audio) by Banksy, October 9, 2013.

Shoppers Drug Mart Lottery Tickets Covid, Bob Bondurant Stroke, Police Activity Alexandria, Va Today, Worcester Summer Basketball League, Control Streamlabs From Another Computer, Articles W