"US shouldn’t fight leaked video
AMERICANS ARE properly scornful when governments in China, Iran, or Zimbabwe try to protect secrets by censoring the press or Internet. That scorn is rooted in a well-founded belief that governments are best able to correct their mistakes when the public knows what is being done in its name.
The editorials are always filled with such reprehensible garbage readers it makes it difficult to comment. This is a newspaper that specializes in all those things it is decrying.
Accordingly, no branch of the US government should be trying to punish the organization that posted online a hard-to-watch video of innocent civilians being cut down by a US helicopter gunship in Baghdad in 2007.
The classified video was shot from an Apache helicopter. It is accompanied by the voices of soldiers misinterpreting what they see on the ground and seeking and receiving permission to fire at unsuspecting civilians. The soldiers mistake a video camera for a weapon, and among those they kill are two Reuters journalists.
Reuters tried unsuccessfully to get the video released through a Freedom of Information request. It went viral on the Internet after being leaked to WikiLeaks.org, a nonprofit that invites whistleblowers to disclose secrets that governments and corporations around the world want to keep hidden.
Notice they did NOT go to NOR was it FIRST DIVULGED by the GOVERNMENT and CORPORATE MEDIA of AmeriKa!?
Ironically, a classified US Army counter-intelligence document analyzing WikiLeaks and proposing ways to disable it was also leaked to that organization. With no sense of irony, the army analyst observed that “several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the WikiLeaks.org website.’’ This fact alone ought to make decision makers in this country think twice about trying to block the site.
Hard as it may be to watch innocent civilians being killed by American fire power, this is a price worth paying to have an informed citizenry, the bedrock of democracy.
Yeah, just as long it doesn't show you Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
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I must confess to you, dear readers, that after a while it gets very difficult to read such Zionist slop.
No wonder I have quit reading the paper when I hit the editorial and opinion page these days. Sick of rot-gut slop.... like this:
"Video shows ’07 US air attack that killed news photographer, driver in Iraq" by New York Times | April 6, 2010
WASHINGTON — The website WikiLeaks.org released a graphic video yesterday showing an American helicopter shooting and killing a Reuters photographer and driver in a July 2007 attack in Baghdad.
A senior American military official confirmed that the video was authentic.
Reuters had long pressed for the release of the video, which consists of 17 minutes of black-and-white aerial video and conversations between pilots in two Apache helicopters as they open fire on people on a street in Baghdad. The attack killed 12, among them Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40.
At a news conference at the National Press Club, WikiLeaks said it had acquired the video from whistle-blowers in the military and was able to view it after breaking the encryption code.
David Schlesinger, editor in chief of Reuters news, said in a statement that the video was “graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result.’’
Then you shouldn't have brought it to us with your lies.
On the day of the attack, US military officials in Baghdad said the helicopters had been called in to help American troops who had been exposed to small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades during a raid. “There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,’’ Lieutenant Colonel Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad, said at the time. But the video does not show hostile action.
That's why if it comes from the military's mouth you know it's a lie.
Instead, it begins with a group of people milling around on a street, among them, according to WikiLeaks, Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh. The pilots believe them to be insurgents, and mistake Noor-Eldeen’s camera for a weapon. They aim and fire at the group, then revel in their kills.
“Look at those dead bastards,’’ one pilot says. “Nice,’’ the other responds.
Doing it with drones in Pakistan right now.
A wounded man can be seen crawling and the pilots impatiently hope that he will try to fire at them so that under the rules of engagement they can shoot him again. “All you gotta do is pick up a weapon,’’ one pilot says.
A short time later, a van arrives to pick up the wounded and the pilots open fire on it, wounding two children inside. “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle,’’ one pilot says.
Yeah, this is why I no longer shed tears for AmeriKa and its war dead.
Fuck 'em.
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Watch for yourself: Collateral Murder
I'm just wondering when reporters are going to get it through their heads that they are nothing but tools to their editorial bosses.
Yup, it's a one-day opine and BACK to the WARS, 'eh, Globe?
