Yesterday, Wikileaks, a website dedicated to publishing classified documents and films, released a video showing the murder and wounding of Iraqis including two Reuters news workers who were murdered and two children who were wounded. Altogether, some twelve people died in the incident.
The film clearly shows Iraqis being blasted by machine-canon fire from a helicopter gunship. While arms are mentioned there is little indication that they were armed. Certainly after the initial attack, when a van appeared to take away the wounded, there was no sign of any arms yet the gung-ho American murderers decided to open fire on them anyway and then laughed after. Later, an American tank arrives on the scene and blithely drives over one of the dead Iraqis.
Despite the clearly murderous intent of the Americans operating the guns who can be heard almost pleading for permission to open fire on a clearly badly wounded Iraqi and the van that had arrived to evacuate him, Weekly Standard propagandist, Bill Roggio, attempts to spin the murders as being a legitimate action claiming that everything that happened was within the military’s Rules of Engagement and that the attack on the van that arrived to rescue the injured Iraqi was legitimate on account of it not being marked as an ambulance. But what is really disgusting about Roggio’s attempt to spin the incident is the way he accuses Wikileaks of merely sensationalising the event in order to attract media attention and internet traffic to their website.
Watch the video, read Roggio’s pathetic propaganda piece and weep.
These people want the world to be like them.
UPDATE
New York Times writers Noam Cohen and Brian Stelter must have read the Weekly Standard piece by Roggio as well. Cohen and Stelter have authored an article in today’s NYT entitled ‘Iraq Video Brings Notice to a Web Site’.
Their article is both a classic piece of distractive propaganda with a dash of sour grapes thrown in. Rather than talk about the horrendous crime that has been committed, the writers attempt to shoot the messenger - in this case Wikileaks - by suggesting that Wikileaks is merely attempting to big-note itself by releasing the film.
I say; 'Good on 'em!' If the mainstream media won't report important stuff like this, then let Wikileaks do it for them.
AUSTRALIANS AT WAR
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5 comments:
This footage was on the telly last night here in Australia.
One struggles to find appropriate words to express oneself at this monstrous behaviour and the inevitable mitigation campaign which has already started, which has begun as I feared it would.
I recall the M242 chain gun on the AH-64 is a 30mm gun with a firing rate over 600 rounds/minute. (if I recall my aviation details correctly).
So, these aren't just mere machine gun bullets of 5.56mm or the older 7.62mm, but 30mm is well over an inch in diameter, with horrific effects on the human frame when just one round strikes.
The kind of mentality displayed by the yanks is akin to that of dehumanised monsters, typical of military that is out of control and falling apart, hence the vindictiveness of the yanks because things aren't going their way and the resistance is winning.
When soldiers are imbued with drugs ('go' and 'slow')before and after combat and where alcoholism and illegal drug taking is the norm by the majority in off hours, its a clear sign of a wider malaise such that this sort of monstrous behaviour reveals that the 'wheels have fallen off' .
I recall my mates here in the Army who tell me that our soldiers in Afghanistan are alcohol sodden wreaks and druggies too (where the yanks supply our soldiers with drugs too).
Tell that to Rudd or any politician and you'll be ignored or abused as we can't reveal the truth of the iconic Aussie digger can we!.
Perhaps this footage will make more people question just what other horrors are occurring now and how this misbegotten 'alliance' fetish we have here is holding us back.
Nylon Shirt
I saw this on Sky News and blogged about it. It is outrageous, so cold hearted and the decision to open fire seemed to be taken so lightly and without any checking just who the men were ans what they were actually carrying.
It makes me angry and i'm English so heaven knows how the Iraqis must feel when they see us acting like this with no regard to them whatsoever.
It isn't the first time we have seen scenes like this either.
You wait, Rudd will come out with some pro-American garbage shortly, just to show how, like Howard, he just 'lurves' Americans and claiming they can do no wrong or the video has been misinterpreted!
This video condemns America, the world's major warmonger, clearly and absolutely.
The American Empire must be stopped otherwise moronic people like those in the Apache helicopter will be running our world!
Hanz. I don't mind you taking all my Special Links and making them your own but do you think you could learn that 'it's' is an abbreviation for it is as in 'It's a nice day.'
Its is a possessive pronoun and is used as in 'The colour is its worst feature'.
Totally, utterly ghastly - and murdering.
There are two things to note; one is a technical point on the piloting aspect, since the area in the gun sights is seen to rotate and the elevation seems constant, I assume that what we're seeing is a variation of the 'pylon turn' 1st deployed by US gunships in Vietnam. All it means is that the guns are 'ranged,' and only v.small 'aiming' corrections need be made. The nav-system probably has a menu item, and the pilot does next to nothing but watch the horror. The hapless victims seem unaware of their murderers' presence, about all that might've been visible to them was the gun sight/camera mounted above the rotors and little else. The discussion is of '30mm cannon,' another presumption I make is exploding projectiles (one can see some flashes.)
The 2nd and far more important point is that this video is by no means an exception; reports of that sort of murdering would be commonplace to us - if our media was a) honest and b) comprehensive (Of course, we know they're not, including the AusBC - spit!). More 'talk' is of 100s of 1000s if not 1.3+million dead Iraqis; the video shows how some (lots?) got killed = murdered. Here is a description of how bad things actually are:
The US War against Iraq
The Destruction of a Civilization
August 21, 2009
«The US imperial conquest of Iraq is built on the destruction of a modern secular republic...»
[ICH/James Petras]
Comment: Chilling. The above article describes what is left after the US criminals 'pacify' a country. (AfPak next, Iran 'queued.')
There seems to be a broad consensus on this horrible video internationally.
To correct myself from the other day and to shed light for our mate IDHolm, the Apache gun is indeed a 30mm M230 chain gun (not the smaller 25mm M242 as I recalled).
I consulted one of my old aircraft books and looked up the AH-64 helicopter and yes the gun fires at over 600 rounds per minute and fired many types of shells including with exploding rounds and armour piercing etc.
Not designed for shooting at people, so the results are horrific.
For IDHolm, mate, the Apache has its sensors in the nose section and he gun is steered by a helmet mounted sight, such that with the gun follows the head movements via imagery displayed and the TV or infra-red sensors have magnetically dampened 'bearings' to remove as much jitter as possible.
Thus as the helicopter loiters about, the imagery can remain good while the helicopter moves as the pilots can lock their sensors via helmet and by extension gun on the target via simply looking at the scene.
It actually diminishes the 'fog of war' argument as the imagery is so good that the pilots even though quite far away, can seem close due to magnified optics (which may explain why the poor sods on the ground weren't too fussed until the shooting started).
It seems the yanks knew what they were doing, could see all they needed to see, but exaggerated the situation and let their own paranoia and thirst for blood dictate their 'thinking' and what they told their bosses on the radio.
I repeat, this behaviour by the yanks, suggests they are mere dehumanised monsters, savages with an ease and means to kill unchecked.
The old philosophers from yesteryear were right in their fears for the future of man...... 'a savage possessed by machines, a number possessed by numbers.....'.
All the best,
Nylon Shirt
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