The leaked video footage,(scroll to bottom for links),was recorded by at least one Apache helicopter. Media outlets have reported that US military officials have acknowledged that the material is genuine. According to Wikileaks, several military whistleblowers provided the web site with encrypted video, which its staff was subsequently able to decrypt. The leak will no doubt further fuel military hostility toward Wikileaks. A March 2008 classified Pentagon report (which was itself leaked to the web site) declared that Wikileaks posed a security threat due to published information potentially being of use to “foreign intelligence and security services, foreign military forces, foreign insurgents, and foreign terrorist groups”.
On July 12, 2007, US troops and resistance fighters clashed in Baghdad. Reuters’ employees Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh were investigating when they were seen by US helicopter gunships among a group of about a dozen men, one or two of whom appeared to be carrying rifles. The occupying forces made no attempt to verify whether the men were civilians carrying legally-owned weapons—Iraqi households are allowed to have one registered AK-47 rifle—or establish the identities of the other unarmed men. After radioing a report to their superiors, US gunners received permission to kill everyone in the group.
The incident appeared to be one of several indiscriminate attacks. Ahmad Sahib, an Agence France-Presse photographer who was a few blocks away, has reported: “It looked like the American helicopters were firing against any gathering in the area, because when I got out of my car and started taking pictures, people gathered and an American helicopter fired a few rounds, but they hit the houses nearby and we ran for cover.”
Just before the Reuters’ journalists and the men they were speaking with were shot, the Apache gunners apparently mistook Namir Noor-Eldeen’s camera, which was slung over his shoulder, for a rocket propelled grenade launcher (RPG). After the first burst of gunfire, involving about 300 rounds, the troops congratulate each other: “Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards... Nice... Good shoot... Thank you.”
The video footage then zooms in on Saeed Chmagh, who was badly wounded and slowly crawling to seek assistance. One soldier in the Apache says, “Come on, buddy... All you gotta do is pick up a weapon,” hoping to be able to kill him under military rules of engagement.
Shortly after this, a van stops in the area and unarmed Iraqis get out to help Chmagh and the other wounded, picking them up and trying to move them into their vehicle. It was later reported that the Iraqi driver of the van was a local man who had been taking his children to a tutoring session. After reporting that people were “picking up the bodies,” the Apache gunners received permission to “engage”. Another sustained burst of gunfire followed, killing Chmagh, a man trying to help him, and seriously wounding a boy and girl sitting in the front seat of the vehicle.
When US troops on the ground discover the children, the helicopter gunners respond with indifference. “Well it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle,” one says. Another replies: “That’s right.”
After initially ordering the children to be evacuated to a US military hospital for emergency treatment, the troops on the ground were told to hand them over to Iraqi police who were then to take them to a Baghdad hospital. Despite suffering chest and arm bullet wounds, both children survived. Their mother, however, has reportedly received no compensation for the death of her husband or ongoing medical expenses for her children............ -
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In the American extradition request, WikiLeaks is accused of conspiring with the whistleblower Chelsea Manning to publish a huge trove of military documents in 2010. The documents included the infamous "collateral murder" video filmed from the gunsights of two US Apache helicopters as they opened fire on a group of men in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists, killing them all.
Other documents included the Afghanistan War Logs, the Iraq War Logs, and "CableGate" – a trove of classified diplomatic cables that contained some embarrassingly undiplomatic analysis of world leaders and their countries. So far so newsworthy - Sydney Morning Herald
http://materiaislamica.com/index.php/The_Crazyhorse_Collateral_Murders_(%22Collateral_Murder%22,_2007)
ntroduction:— "Collateral Murder" is a video that was released by "Wikileaks" onto YouTube in
2010,[1]thanks in large parts to the efforts of Bradley Manning (now 'Chelsea Manning').[2] It was
released on April 3rd, and shows Iraqis, Iraqi children and several foreign journalists, being targeted
and murdered[3][4][5] by the US military (who used two "Apache"[6][7] Gunships on July 12th,
2007).[8] Perhaps more problematic was that the US military actively covered up the murders,[9] and
sent a statement published in the "New York Times", disingenuously calling them "insurgents" (they
weren't) and "two civilians" (they allwere).[8][n. 1] The "two" civilians that were murdered were 22 year
old journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen and 40 year old driver Saeed Chmagh.[8] The other victims remain
unknown, but included two children—one of whom who's father was shot to death in a barrage of .30 cal
cannon fire[10]—and one of whom had glass shards embedded in her eyes.[11][12] The incident was
covered up by the US military,[13] and laid to rest for two years[14] before Manning leaked it.[n. 2] One
of the soldiers who participated in the video was later interviewed, who described seeing the top half of
one man's head who's "brains were on the ground".[15]The same soldier described how he saw
the "four year old [girl]" he had picked up have "a wound to [her] stomach...and...blood around her
eyes".[15] The same soldier—who was one of the few good ones in the US military—
was "exhilerated" when it was leaked online, and became public knowledge.[9]
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/12/18307829/mike-pence-trump-wikileaks-rewrite-history
Mike Pence’s defense of Trump’s WikiLeaks comments makes absolutely no sense
The vice president tries to rewrite history.
By Aaron Rupar@atrupar Apr 12, 2019,
CNN
President Donald Trump sure has changed his tune on WikiLeaks — and his vice president is doing his best to make sure everyone forgets that one of his main campaign-closing messages was relentlessly promoting and praising an organization whose founder his administration now wants to extradite back to the US to face criminal charges.
During a CNN interview that aired on Friday, Vice President Mike Pence went so far as to say that Trump’s acclaim for an organization his own administration has identified as a cutout of Russian intelligence services was not actually an “endorsement.”
It’s worth backing up and looking at that supposed non-endorsement: In the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump mentioned WikiLeaks roughly five times a day. He repeatedly praised the organization for the work it was doing publishing emails hacked from the Hillary Clinton campaign, saying things like, “I love WikiLeaks!” and “we’ve learned so much from WikiLeaks.”
Trump’s praise of WikiLeaks raised eyebrows at the time. The organization had a long history of publishing classified information, and the US intelligence community had already traced the emails WikiLeaks published during the 2016 campaign to Russian hackers. Unsurprisingly, after winning the election, Trump and his administration wasted little time pretending as though his campaign’s public embrace of WikiLeaks never happened.
Now, in the aftermath of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s arrest in London on Thursday and possible extradition to the US to face a charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, Pence is going to extreme lengths to downplay Trump’s compliments.
During an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Pence was asked if Trump’s views on WikiLeaks have “changed.” Pence replied by falsifying history.
“Well, I think the president always — as you in the media do — always welcomes information, but that in no way an endorsement of an organization that we now know was involved in disseminating classified information,” Pence said
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