Apache helicopters were called in by a soldier in the Humvee (Hotel 26) under attack from the same position used by Namir Noor-Eldeen to photograph the vehicle. [Then] we were just told to move to this [other] location. [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. Fox News reported in 2010 that the rules of engagement in Iraq had not been changed since the incident occurred. 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. But for Army veteran Ethan McCord, it was just another day on duty. WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. "[32], The Guardian stated "It is unclear if some of the men are armed but Noor-Eldeen can be seen with a camera". Ahlam Abdelhussein Tuman, the widow of the man who had been driving the van, and the mother of the children McCord had carried out, responded to the open letter in 2010:[75]. The video makes plain that in this incident, as in almost all military encounters in both Iraq and Afghanistan, our soldiers are up against forces that do not wear uniformsa violation of international law precisely because it places innocent civilians in jeopardy. That classified video created its own firestorm when the whistleblower site Wikileaks posted it April 5 on a website titled "Collateral Murder" and asserted that the attack was unprovoked. 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". The owner told him that three families were living in the building and seven residents had died, including his wife and daughter. Ethan McCord was a member of the military unit in "Collateral Murder" - the Wikileaks video showing 12 Iraqis being killed from a US helicopter.He rescued the two children severely wounded in the attack and is now speaking out to corroborate the Collateral Murder video. Wired's Kim Zetter reached McCord at his home in Kansas. Eamonn McCann Mon Aug 19 2013 - 20:49 Bradley Manning was scheduled to speak yesterday at the sentencing phase of his trial for having leaked 750,000 pages of classified documents and videos to. McCord: When it was first released I don't think it was done in the best manner that it could have been. Just over a year ago, WikiLeaks released footage from a gunsight camera of an Apache helicopter engaged in an attack that killed two journalists and eight ci. Now, as far as rules of engagement, [Iraqis] are not supposed to pick up the wounded. The military said that the van was "fair game under Army rules" , because it had no visible markings to suggest it was an ambulance or a protected vehicle. [28] Noor-Eldeen has a camera and Chmagh is talking on his mobile phone. Plus: Irans secret torture black sites, hacking a bank account with AI-generated voice, and Lance Bass unhinged encounter in Russia. [25] Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com said that "the vast majority of the men were clearly unarmed". Reuters responded, "It is absolutely untrue that this story was spiked. The ground troops that secured the site of the first two strikes then receive small arms fire from nearby buildings. These people were operating in split second situations.". "[88] In this interview, McCord reports that repercussions for seeking mental health help could include being labeled as a "malingerer", a crime under U.S. military law. McCord: I've spoken with one of the medics who was there. 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. Wired.com: How much sniper fire were you getting? She draws parallels with soldiers who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder in earlier wars. Ethan McCord was a member of the military unit in "Collateral Murder" - the Wikileaks video showing 12 Iraqis being killed from a US helicopter.He rescued the two children severely wounded in the attack and is now speaking out to corroborate the Collateral Murder video. McCord: I wasn't around that building when it happened. There were some people taking pot shots, sniper shots, at us on the rooftop. http://www.mediasanctuary.orghttp://www.wikileaks.org U.S. He is seen swinging the weapon below his waist while standing next to the man holding the RPG. [84], Finkel had reported the day in his book The Good Soldiers,[62] including conversations which closely matched the subsequently leaked video footage. They arrived on station in New Baghdad at 9:53a.m., where sporadic attacks on coalition forces continued. However, according to the co-pilot for Crazyhorse 1/8 they failed to positively identify the occupants as combatants and returned to the previous engagement area. On April 5, 2010, the attacks received worldwide coverage and controversy following the release of 39 minutes of gunsight footage by the Internet whistleblower website WikiLeaks. I did see a guy moving from a rooftop from one position to another with an AK-47, who was firing at us. McCord: There were approximately two to three other people who were moving who were still somewhat alive, and the medics were attending to them. Part of Banksy's, This page was last edited on 20 February 2023, at 21:26. We did unto you what we would not want done to us.". They also found 10-year-old Sajad Mutashar and his five-year-old sister Doaha covered in blood in a van. The breakthroughs and innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking, new connections, and new industries. The story was then overtaken by a more updated one out of Washington that incorporated reporting from the original piece. It also states that "The cameras could easily be mistaken for slung AK-47 or AKM rifles, especially since neither cameraman is wearing anything that identifies him as media or press". Gates said that the video provides the public with a view of warfare "as seen through a soda straw". "[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. "[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. [81], Publicity of the incident ballooned following the release of the footage. [43] The report stated that the helicopter crew did not know how many people were in the building when they destroyed it with missiles, and that "there is evidence that unarmed people have both entered and are nearby". [2][22] Pentagon officials told the Reuters news agency that U.S. military lawyers were reviewing the video and could reopen an investigation into the incident,[67] but a spokesperson later said that there were no plans to reopen the investigation. soldiers. That's when I started screaming, "The boy's alive! This is why we called it Collateral Murder. They're like, oh yeah, we're the "collateral murder" company. I can accept their apology, because they saved my children, and if it were not for them, maybe my two little children would be dead. But this particular eventthis is clearly murder. [38] The children, a girl and boy, suffered injuries. He looked at me, then his eyes rolled back into this head. Seven men (including Noor-Eldeen) were killed during this first strike; Saeed Chmagh, who was injured, later died in a hospital. "[112], On April 5, 2010, the same day as the release of the video footage by WikiLeaks, the United States Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, released a collection of documents including two investigative reports. An Apache maneuvered around a building to get a clear field of fire and shot all nine men, killing eight. McCord admits that she was sad to go because she had been there for a decade and a half, but that "it wasn't the end of the world" and that she wasn't worried for "a nanosecond" that . Among the group were two Iraqi war correspondents working for Reuters, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. 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. Assange responded: Yes, absolutely Our promise to the public is that we will release the full source material. 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". [17], In an interview with Fox News Assange said that "it's likely some of the individuals seen in the video were carrying weapons" and "based upon visual evidence I suspect there probably were AKs and an RPG, but I'm not sure that means anything. The missile hits the building, and the man is caught in the explosion. I went back outside to the van, and that's when the boy took, like, a labored, breath. Some of them [say] I don't care what anybody says they're not there. [19], The events between the attack on the van and the attack on the building (approximately 30 minutes) were not captured on the leaked video footage. I was up on a rooftop at that time. [16][18][30] After the lead helicopter fires, one of the crew shouts "Hahaha. Many soldiers felt threatened just by the fact that you were looking at them, so they fired their weapons on anybody that was looking at them because they (I . 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. Describing doubts over his initial enthusiasm in Iraq, McCord said that "I didnt understand why people were throwing rocks at us, why I was being shot at and why we're being blown up, when I have it in my head that I was here to help these people. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. Towards the end of the show, the star actor became an active member of the Screen Actors Guild and after he left "Adam-12." I have a huge place in my heart for children, having some of my own. So if people have a different opinion, the full material is there for them to analyse and assess. In 2009, Stieber left the military as a conscientious objector and became a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Assange responded:[69][70]. 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. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. "[31], In May 2011 the Barcelona Human Rights Film Festival awarded the investigative film Collateral murder, Hellfire, done by Kristinn Hrafnsson, WikiLeaks spokesperson, and Ingi Ingason, with the award for International Journalism and Human Rights. They were stating that these people had no weapons whatsoever, that they were just carrying cameras. [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". [81] [87], McCord discussed his experience in the battle in an interview with the World Socialist Web Site on April 28, 2010, stating, "What happened then was not an isolated incident. It wasnt like a cry of pain really. [18][19] The crew estimates the group is twenty men. [43] He walks into a building which has been identified as the source of fire at U.S. ground troops. [49], On Democracy Now!, Josh Stieber, who was at the time assigned to Bravo Company 216, said that although it's natural to "judge or criticize the soldiers", in fact "this is how [they] were trained to act". 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. 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. The soldier, Ethan McCord, has since been discharged from the military and has been an outspoken voice against the Iraq War. I've had nightmares. [18] A long shadow cast on the ground by a telephoto lens on Noor-Eldeen's camera is misidentified by the pilot as an additional RPG aimed at him and a U.S. Army Humvee directly below his aircraft. The footage was portrayed as classified,[7] but the individual who leaked it, U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning,[a] testified in 2013 that the video was not classified. 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