WikiLeaks posts 'killing' video

WikiLeaks has posted a video on its website which it claims shows the killing of civilians by the US military in Baghdad in 2007.

The website's organisers say they were given the footage, which they say comes from cameras on US Apache helicopters. The video, released on Monday, is of high quality and appears to be authentic, the BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington says.

The video shows a street in Baghdad and a group of about eight people, whom the helicopter pilots deem to be insurgents. It then shows the individuals on the street being shot dead with the Apache's cannon.

Then, a van drives onto the scene, and its occupants appear to start picking up the wounded. It, too, is fired upon. Altogether, around 12 people die. Two children appear to be injured.

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8603938.stm

Watch it here

if innocent people are being killed, then yes i agree this is a horrible act.

but also in the BBC piece i see that

"WikiLeaks organisers complained recently of coming under surveillance by the US government, and of harassment by other governments, ostensibly for their role in posting leaked documents on sensitive subjects. "

If that means anything about the video being authentic or not

I'd say it pretty much confirms it's authentic.

ok, i guess i was thinking the other direction(they are making stuff up). but i don't know for sure either way.

This is disturbing.

https://wikileaks.org/

It's also sad to see US forces making no effort whatsoever to identify combatants versus civilians. Mistaking a camera for an RPG and a tripod for an AK-47?

Even worse than that is the fact that US forces have no problem whatsoever opening fire on a pair of civilians driving along in a van with children who stop to try to help a man dying on the side of the road.

I'm sure they saw the children in the van before they opened fire.

"War is hell" doesn't justify attacking and killing a group of unarmed civilians not doing anything wrong.

And it sure as f*** doesn't justify attacking and killing a few civilians in a van trying to provide aid to the wounded.

What the US forces did here was absolutely wrong and completely unjustifiable.

There were no armed men there. The article says that the gunship identified the men as carrying guns. They weren't. They were carrying cameras and tripods, not guns.

I'm not saying the US forces intentionally killed children or even intentionally killed unarmed civilians. I'm saying that they did a disgustingly, pathetically bad job identifying a bunch of unarmed, innocent photographers as armed insurgents.

The incident with the van is more disturbing. It seems that the US forces were just in killing mode and just didn't care whether or not the people aiding the wounded were insurgents or not.

Look, the facts are that the US engaged and killed a group of unarmed photographers because they failed to exercise proper care identifying people before shooting them. Then, the US engaged and killed some civilians providing aid to another wounded civilian because, at the very least, they failed to exercise proper care identifying people before shooting them.

Those are facts. The US engaged and killed a group of unarmed, innocent photographers. Sure, "war is hell" and other s*** like that. But the US f***ed up big time and the f***up resulted in a lot of innocent dead bodies.