WikiLeaks posts video of 'US military killings' in Iraq

"Ethan McCord had just returned from dropping his children at school earlier this month, when he turned on the TV news to see a grainy black-and-white video image of a soldier running from a bombed-out van with a child in his arms. It was a scene that had played repeatedly in his mind the last three years, and he knew exactly who the soldier was.

In May 2007, the 33-year-old Army specialist had been engaged in a firefight with insurgents in an Iraqi suburb when his platoon, part of Bravo Company, 2-16 Infantry, got orders to investigate a nearby street. When they arrived, they found a scene of fresh carnage – the scattered remains of a group of men, believed to be armed, who had just been gunned down by Apache attack helicopters. They also found 10-year-old Sajad Mutashar and his five-year-old sister Doaha covered in blood in a van. Their 43-year-old father, Saleh, had been driving them to a class when he spotted one of the wounded man moving in the street and drove over to help him, only to himself become a victim of the Apache guns.

McCord, a father of three children himself, 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. That classified video created its own firestorm when the whistleblower site Wikileaks posted it April 5 on a web site titled “Collateral Murder” and asserted that the Army had fired on unarmed men. More than a dozen people were killed in three attacks captured in the video, including two Reuters journalists, one of whose camera was apparently mistaken for a weapon.

McCord, who served five years in the military before leaving in Nov. 2007 due to injuries, recently posted an apologetic letter online with fellow soldier Josh Steiber supporting the release of the video and asking the family’s forgiveness.

Wired’s Kim Zetter reached McCord at his home in Kansas. This is his account of what he saw.

DR: At the time you arrived on the scene, you didn’t know what had happened, is that right?

EM: Right. We were engaged in our own conflict roughly about three or four blocks away. We heard the gunships open up. [Then] we were just told … to move to this [other] location. It was pretty much a shock when we got there to see what had happened, the carnage and everything else.

DR: But you had been in combat before. It shouldn’t have surprised you what you saw.

EM: I have never seen anybody being shot by a 30-millimeter round before. It didn’t seem real, in the sense that it didn’t look like human beings. They were destroyed.

DR: Was anyone moving when you got there other than the two children?

EM: There were approximately two to three other people who were moving who were still somewhat alive, and the medics were attending to them.

DR: The first thing you saw was the little girl in the van. She had a stomach wound?

EM: She had a stomach wound and she had glass in her eyes and in her hair. She was crying. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I went to the van immediately, because I could hear her crying. It wasn’t like a cry of pain really. It was more of a child who was frightened out of her mind. And the next thing I saw was the boy. … He was kind of sitting on the floorboard of the van, but with his head laying on the bench seat in the front. And then the father, who I’m assuming was the father, in the driver’s seat slumped over on his side. 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.

So the first thing I did was grab the girl. I grabbed the medic and we went into the back. There’s houses behind where the van was. We took her in there and we’re checking to see if there were any other wounds. You can hear the medic saying on the video, “There’s nothing I can do here, she needs to be evac’d.” He runs the girl to the Bradley. I went back outside to the van, and that’s when the boy took, like, a labored, breath … That’s when I started screaming, “The boy’s alive! The boy’s alive!” And I picked him up and started running with him over to the Bradley. He opened his eyes when I was carrying him. I just kept telling him, “Don’t die; don’t die.” He looked at me, then his eyes rolled back into this head.

Then I got yelled at by my platoon leader that I needed to stop trying to save these mf’n kids and go pull security. … I was told to go pull security on a rooftop. When we were on that roof, we were still taking fire. There were some people taking pot shots, sniper shots, at us on the rooftop. We were probably there on the roof for another four to five hours.

DR: How much sniper fire were you getting?

EM: It was random sporadic spurts. I did see a guy … moving from a rooftop from one position to another with an AK-47, who was firing at us. He was shot and killed.

After the incident, we went back to the FOB [forward operating base] and that’s when I was in my room. I had blood all down the front of me from the children. I was trying to wash it off in my room. I was pretty distraught over the whole situation with the children. So I went to a sergeant and asked to see [the mental health person], because I was having a hard time dealing with it. I was called a pussy and that I needed to suck it up and a lot of other horrible things. I was also told that there would be repercussions if I was to go to mental health.

DR: What did you understand that to mean?

EM: I would be smoked. Smoked is basically like you’re doing pushups a lot, you’re doing sit-ups … crunches and flutter kicks. They’re smoking you, they’re making you tired. I was told that I needed to get the sand out of my vagina. … So I just sucked it up and tried to move on with everything.

I’ve lived with seeing the children that way since the incident happened. I’ve had nightmares. I was diagnosed with chronic, severe PTSD. [But] I was actually starting to get kind of better. … I wasn’t thinking about it as much. [Then I] took my children to school one day and I came home and sat down on the couch and turned on the TV with my coffee, and on the news I’m running across the screen with a child. The flood of emotions came back. I know the scene by heart; it’s burned into my head. I know the van, I know the faces of everybody that was there that day.

DR: Did you try to get information about the two children after the shooting?

EM: My platoon sergeant knew that I was having a hard time with it and that same night … he came into the room and he told me, hey, just so you know, both of the children survived, so you can suck it up now. 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. I always questioned it in the back of my mind.

I did see a video on YouTube after the Wikileaks [video] came out, of the children being interviewed. … When I saw their faces, I was relieved, but I was just heartbroken. I have a huge place in my heart for children, having some of my own. Knowing that I was part of the system that took their father away from them and made them lose their house … it’s heartbreaking. And that in turn is what helped me and Josh write the letter, hoping that it would find its way to them to let them know that we’re sorry. We’re sorry for the system that we were involved in that took their father’s life and injured them. If there’s anything I can to do help, I would be more than happy to.

DR: Wikileaks presented the incident as though there was no engagement from insurgents. But you guys did have a firefight a couple of blocks away. Was it reasonable for the Apache soldiers to think that maybe the people they attacked were part of that insurgent firefight?

EM: I doubt that they were a part of that firefight. However, when I did come up on the scene, there was an RPG as well as AK-47s there. … You just don’t walk around with an RPG in Iraq, especially three blocks away from a firefight. … Personally, I believe the first attack on the group standing by the wall was appropriate, was warranted by the rules of engagement. They did have weapons there. However, I don’t feel that the attack on the [rescue] van was necessary.

Now as far as rules of engagement, [Iraqis] are not supposed to pick up the wounded. But they could have been easily deterred from doing what they were doing by just firing simply a few warning shots in the direction. … Instead, the Apaches decided to completely obliterate everybody in the van. That’s the hard part to swallow.

And where the soldier said [in the video], ‘Well, you shouldn’t take your kids to battle’, well in all actuality, we brought the battle to your kids. There’s no front lines here. This is urban combat and we’re taking the war to children and women and innocents.

There were plenty of times in the past where other insurgents would come by and pick up the bodies, and then we’d have no evidence or anything to what happened, so in looking at it from the Apache’s point of view, they were thinking that [someone was] picking up the weapons and bodies; when, in hindsight, clearly they were picking up the wounded man. But you’re not supposed to do that in Iraq.

DR: Civilians are supposed to know that they’re not supposed to pick up a wounded person crawling in the road?

EM: Yeah. This is the problem that we’re speaking out on as far as the rules of engagement. How is this guy supposed to [decide] should I stop and pick them up, or is the military going to shoot me? If you or I saw someone wounded on the ground what is your first inkling? I’m going to help that person. . . .

DR: There was another attack depicted in the video that has received little attention, involving a Hellfire and a building that was fired on.

EM: I wasn’t around that building when it happened. I was up on a rooftop at that time. 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.

I think that a Hellfire missile is a little much to put into a building. . . . They’re trained as soldiers to go into a building and clear a building. 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.

DR: Have you heard from any other soldiers since the video came out?

EM: I’ve spoken with one of the medics who was there. He’s no longer in the Army. 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. The majority of us aren’t. And so he was pretty upset about the whole thing. . . . He kept saying, we were there, we know the truth, they’re saying there was no weapons, there was.

I’ve spoken with other soldiers who were there. Some of them [say] I don’t care what anybody says, … they’re not there. … There’s also some soldiers who joke about it [as a] coping mechanism. They’re like, oh yeah, we’re the “collateral murder” company. I don’t think that [the] big picture is whether or not [the Iraqis who were killed] had weapons. I think that the bigger picture is what are we doing there? 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.

DR: Do you support Wikileaks in releasing this video?

EM: When it was first released I don’t think it was done in the best manner that it could have been. They were stating that these people had no weapons whatsoever, that they were just carrying cameras. In the video you can clearly see that they did have weapons … to the trained eye. You can make out in the video [someone] carrying an AK-47, swinging it down by his legs [...]

And as far as the way that the soldiers are speaking in the video, which is pretty callous and joking about what’s happened … that’s a coping mechanism. I’m guilty of it, too, myself. You joke about the situations and what’s happened to push away your true feelings of the matter.

There’s no easy way to kill somebody. You don’t just take somebody’s life and then go on about your business for the rest of the day. That stays with you. And cracking jokes is a way of pushing that stuff down. 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.

I don’t say that Wikileaks did a bad thing, because they didn’t. … I think it is good that they’re putting this stuff out there. I don’t think that people really want to see this, though, because this is war . … It’s very disturbing."

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/201...een-from-the-ground/#more-23793#ixzz0lg4KTO4w

 

Pwn@g3. That vid was niceeeeeeeeeeeee.

I think I might mount a 30mm machine gun to my window :]

 

It's tough being a civilian over there. The insurgents treat them like human shields.

 

Yes I watched the video, I was the one who started the thread. The end of the video shows an enlarged frame with two blurs. If you go back and watch the video again in real time it's hard to see what is in the van. I don't believe that those in the helicopter knew there were children in that van.

Did you read the interview with the soldier who found the kids in the van? It gives a much more complete and accurate view of what happened.

Again, I feel horrible that those kids were shot. But I honestly feel it was an accident. Our troops did not intend to shoot children and if they knew children were in that van they wouldn't have shot at it.

 

"Warning Shots" isn't like the movies. Their use is strictly regulated, and (at least using Navy Force Protection Rules) this wouldn't qualify for warning shots.

 

I think this is a very warped view.

China would be invading a free country in your scenario. Yet Iraq was hardly free, dominated by a despot dictator, and the people subjected to torture, kidnapping (by the govt.), and worse. If I remember correctly, the coalition of the willing was 40 nations or so, not just the USA.

I would say the people of Iraq have been defined in one of two terms, perhaps. Those who were scared to finger the insurgents, and those who stood in line to join the new army or police force at the risk of being (and often were) bombed to death. Or the higher % than the US population that risked all to go vote.

I think you're very wrong about your response to oldguy.

We easily have the military firepower to have killed every last person in Iraq, hence all the insurgents in the process. There'd be no reason for our troops to be there. Any experienced military person or student of military history will tell you that killing every last enemy was typical of war throughout history.

 

I don't think the US is favored by God or anything like it. Just that we have a big military and have the moral authority to use it to help people using it. Hence the reason we develop smart weapons and use them to not target civilians, for example. Or that we don't invade and occupy other nations to increase some empire, for example.

I do happen to think that Saddam was a bad man and did terrible things to his people. That we helped prop him up over the three decades leading up to taking him out. That Britain and the US had something in common - they instituted and flew the no-fly zones, put in place after Bush I encouraged the Iraqis to rebel but provided no support and Saddam murdered tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of his own people in response.

I think your argument is terribly flawed because it is blindly partisan. Do you not remember Bill Clinton's speeches accusing Iraq of having countless amounts of WMDs in the form of poison gasses and other things? Or do you not remember that he ordered a massive military operation against Iraq at the height of his impeachment ordeal?

That said, my preference in 2004 (the invasion was 2003) to bring all the troops home. The mission was accomplished: Saddam was arrested, his sons dead, and the cruel republican guard disbanded. I voted for Mike Badnarik, who would have brought the troops home in 2004.

Tell me you didn't vote for a guy who had "support for the Iraq War and plans to increase the military budget" - or at least tell me why it's not hypocritical. And tell me you weren't one of the anti-war folk who made hay about former Clinton appointed joint chiefs of staff chairman Shinseki's criticism of the Bush administration for not putting 500,000 troops in Iraq.

Tell me you're not one of those guys who says Afghanistan is the just war. That's a war of revenge against people who are dirt poor and who never had much of a nation. And the revenge is for... a bunch of Saudis who came here and perpetrated 9/11?

I see a huge disconnect. Either... we use our might for good, like stopping the genocide in Rwanda (which we didn't do, but should have, IMO) or we use it for revenge. For good would mean taking out a dictator we propped up, helping the people of Afghanistan so its girls and women can attend schools, stepping in to prevent millions of people from being hacked to death with machetes, and that sort of thing. Or... we use our might for revenge against weak countries.

FWIW, I think Clinton was wrong and right. He was wrong not to intervene in Rwanda, and he was right to go after Bin Laden and his training camps when he ordered the bombing of suspected terrorist camps in Sudan and Afghanistan.

As for coalition of the willing... Bush I was able to build a coalition to push Saddam out of Kuwait, but when it came to finishing the job by going into Iraq (to Baghdad) to remove Saddam from power, countries like Turkey and many others would have left that coalition.