The credibility of the US military has been severely tarnished by the release of a leaked videotape by the website, WikiLeaks, which showed a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad which resulted in the slaughter of Iraqi civilians. The victims included Reuter’s news agency, photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh. Several children were amongst the wounded. The videotape provides conclusive evidence of the culpability of the helicopter pilots who provided false data to the ground crew to justify their attacks.
The footage, which includes audio of the helicopter pilots, showed the light-hearted banter that accompanied these brutal killings. The recordings are extremely disturbing and clearly show the video game mentality that has developed by many aerial pilots. Saeed, who was badly wounded by the initial attack, was seeking safety when he was fatally gunned down by one of the Apache’s gunners.
Tragically, the mayhem captured on the leaked videotape, was not an isolated incident, but a disturbing pattern of civilian deaths which have been ignored or quashed by the U.S. military. Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer and blogger for Salon.com, commented that the conduct of the pilots shown in the video was not an aberration but occurs virtually every day in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict.
If the Pentagon continues to provide blanket immunity to the perpetrators of these war crimes, the rage against the US will only intensify.
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