Showing posts with label Collateral Damage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Collateral Damage. Show all posts

Monday, October 05, 2015

Syria and Collateral Damage


THE ABSURD TIMES






Illustration: Obama explains terrorism to Putin.  (Not sure where this image originated)


Syria and Collateral Damage
            by
Clarence Darrow

Lately we bombed a hospital of Doctors without Borders.  We have called it "Collateral Damage".



Our 2nd Amendment freaks seem to think that anyone has a right to bear as many arms of whatever kind they want as they guy in Oregon, Mercer, had 14 automatic weapons.  The killings as schools, movie theaters, and churches  are simply "Collateral Damage."



We don't like the Russians defending Syria's official government.  After all, it gives Russia a "foothold" in the Mid-East.  Nothing worse than a foothold, you know.  Nothing collateral about it.  And bombing CIA trained opposition troops, no fair.  



Soon we will put up the Palestinian speech at the U.N., but while we are in the area, Rashid Khalidi now holds the Edward Said Chair at Columbia University.  He helped Obama get elected, but was not invited to the inauguration.  Edward Said was opposed to Oslo in the first place, but that has been over since Arafat and Rabin were murdered. 


Here he is on Syria:


THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2015

Rashid Khalidi on Syria: The Beginning of This Mess was the 2003 U.S. Invasion of Iraq

Russia has launched airstrikes in Syria for a second day, becoming the latest foreign government to intervene in a war that has already killed over 240,000 people and displaced millions. The move sparked concern from U.S. officials, who say the Russian attacks did not hit ISIL targets but instead struck rebel groups fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including at least one group trained by the CIA. The United States and Russia have long disagreed about strategy in Syria, with Washington calling for Assad's departure and Moscow backing the Syrian president. Earlier today, the Kremlin said Russia is coordinating with the Syrian military to hit ISIL targets as well as other militant organizations. Russia is at least the 10th foreign government to launch airstrikes in Syria this year. Other countries include the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Australia, Turkey, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. We speak to Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Russia has launched airstrikes in Syria for a second day, becoming the latest foreign government to intervene in a war that has already killed over 240,000 people and displaced millions. The move sparked concern from U.S. officials, who say the Russian attacks did not hit ISIL targets but instead struck rebel groups fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including at least one group trained by the CIA. The U.S. and Russia have long disagreed about strategy in Syria, with Washington calling for Assad's departure and Moscow backing the Syrian president.
Earlier today, the Kremlin said Russia is coordinating with the Syrian military to hitISIL targets as well as other militant organizations. Russia is at least the 10th foreign government to launch airstrikes in Syria this year. Other countries include the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Australia, Turkey, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. The U.S. and Russian military plan to hold talks as soon as today to avoid clashing in Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry met his Russian counterpart Wednesday to discuss military coordination between the two countries. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke after their meeting.
FOREIGN MINISTER SERGEY LAVROV: We devoted our meeting to the follow-up of what our presidents agreed when they met here on the 28th of September. The first instruction to us was to make sure that the military of the United States, the coalition led by the United States, on the one hand, and the military of the Russian Federation, who now engage in some operations in Syria at the request of the Syrian government, get in touch and establish channels of communications to avoid any unintended incidents. And we agreed that the military should get into contact with each other very soon. Number two, we also discussed what the presidents told us about the promoting political process. We all want Syria democratic, united, secular; Syria, which is a home for all ethnic and confessional groups, whose rights are guaranteed. But we have some differences as for the details on how to get there.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would welcome, quote, "any genuine effort" by Moscow to target the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, but he criticized Wednesday's airstrikes on other rebel groups fighting President Assad.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: I relayed and reiterated the concerns that I expressed in the course of the U.N. Security Council meeting, which was led by Russia today, concerns that we have, obviously, about the nature of the targets, the type of targets and the need for clarity with respect to them. And it is one thing, obviously, to be targeting ISIL. We're concerned, obviously, if that is not what is happening.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about Syria and then Palestine, we're joined by Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. He's the author of a number of books, including his latest, Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East.
Professor Khalidi, welcome back to Democracy Now!
RASHID KHALIDI: Thanks, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what's happening right now in Syria. What's Russia doing? What's the United States doing?
RASHID KHALIDI: Well, what we have now is a civil war that's developed into a quite massive proxy war. As you mentioned, 10 countries have launched airstrikes. Others are engaged in backing different factions in the Syrian civil war. And it has become a much more complex conflict as result of this external intervention. In fact, to some extent, it has become more of a proxy war than a civil war.
And I think that—I think that we have all kinds of dangers as a result of this, not just of this latest Russian escalation, but of the fact that parties on the other side—Saudi Arabia, Turkey and so forth—are likely to up their backing for their favorite faction. So, I think we're going to see an increasingly grim phase of the war instead of a move toward some kind of political solution, which is the only way to end this. There's no military solution to this—in the short run, anyway.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Rashid Khalidi, Saudi Arabia, you mentioned, is one of the countries fighting this proxy war in Syria, and they've come out very strongly condemning Russian attacks. Could you talk about what Saudi Arabia's interests are in Syria and who they have been backing?
RASHID KHALIDI: Well, Saudi Arabia and the countries of the Gulf have been involved for a very long time in what I would call a regional cold war with Iran. And this has a power aspect, and it has a sectarian aspect. They've been backing Sunni groups in Iraq. They've been backing the Sunni opposition in—primarily Sunni opposition in Syria. And they have also been backing—or at least people in these countries, countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, individuals, wealthy individuals in these countries, have also been backing some of the most extreme groups in the region—al-Qaeda itself, the Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra, another—an al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Syria. These groups have their own sources of funding within these countries, especially the Islamic State in Iraq. They control resources. But they get hundreds of millions of dollars from donors in the Gulf countries, and this money is largely unimpeded. So, Saudi Arabia, its nationals and the nationals of other Gulf countries are actually supporting some of the most extreme groups around, partly as a means of supporting Sunnis, as they see it, against Shia, and partly as a way of opposing the Syrian regime and the Iraqi government, both of which they see as aligned with Iran.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who appeared on 60 Minutes and talked about his policy in Syria.
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] We support the legitimate government of Syria. And it's my deep belief that any actions to the contrary, in order to destroy the legitimate government, will create a situation which you can witness now in the other countries of the region or in other regions—for instance, in Libya, where all the state institutions are disintegrated. We see a similar situation in Iraq. And there's no other solution to the Syrian crisis than strengthening the effective government structures and rendering them help in fighting terrorism, but at the same time urging them to engage in positive dialogue with the rational opposition and conduct reform.
AMY GOODMAN: So, in this extended interview with Charlie Rose, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said, yes, he supports Assad in Syria, that he believes, though, that he has the same goal not to have an al-Qaeda or ISIS takeover of Syria, and feels that keeping Assad in will do that, and used the example of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, that he was taken out and then look what happened, also talked about Libya. Can you talk about these examples?
RASHID KHALIDI: Well, I mean, the overthrow of those two dictators in Libya and in Iraq, which in both cases was done in a completely heedless manner as to what would follow, certainly has created two of the worst situations in modern Middle Eastern history. There's no question of that.
But just to speak to what the Russian president said, the part of the problem he's not talking about is the sectarian part of the problem, the fact that the Syrian regime has disadvantaged Sunnis, the fact that the Syrian regime's dictatorship, its brutality and so on and forth, is what provoked the uprising in the first place. And so, he throws in, in his interview, a word about reforms. The problem is a political problem, it's not a military problem. And a core part of the problem is the nature of that dictatorship. And so, what one has to do to resolve this is to square that circle, to get a new formula whereby you will not have a sectarian-dominated government in Damascus, and at the same time to prevent this—to fill this vacuum with a government that has some kind of support, so as to prevent groups like the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front from taking over, which is the way things are going. The United States and others talk about a moderate opposition. The overwhelmingly dominant forces in Syria in the opposition are hard-line radical Islamist groups, whether they are the Islamic State or Jabhat al-Nusra or others. And that's the trend. Things are going much more in that direction as far as the opposition is concerned.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Rashid Khalidi, could you give us some sense of what accounts for the increased sectarianism that you pointed to in Syria as well as in Iraq?
RASHID KHALIDI: Well, in a certain sense, both of these regimes, the Baath regime of Saddam Hussein and the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, had a sectarian core to them, although they were nominally secular regimes. But I think that the beginning of the story has to be the destruction of the government in Iraq and its replacement by the United States occupation—not just taking the top of the pyramid off, but completely removing everybody who had any knowledge of how to govern in Iraq. Anyone who was connected to the Baath Party was, in the de-Baathification process, removed. In doing that, the state, that had been built up over more than a century, was basically removed. And the people who came in were almost entirely sectarian themselves, the people who came in with the occupation forces. And so, a Shia-dominated government, which basically did not know how to run the country and which has proven to be endlessly corrupt, was put in place. And that triggered a sectarian reaction among the Sunnis of Iraq. And that's where the Islamic State started. And that then spread to Syria, where a similar analogous sectarian process has developed against the Alawi-dominated regime of Bashar al-Assad. So, part of this is the ripples from the Iraqi invasion. Nobody in this country seems to want to talk about that. This really is the beginning of this mess, is 2003, 12 years ago.
AMY GOODMAN: Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warned Russia's strategy in Syria was doomed to fail, speaking Wednesday. This is part of what Carter said.
DEFENSE SECRETARY ASHTON CARTER: There is a logical contradiction in the Russian position—and now its actions—in Syria. Russia states an intent to fight ISIL, on one hand, and to support Bashar al-Assad and his regime, on the other. Fighting ISIL without pursuing a parallel political transition only risks escalating the civil war in Syria—and, with it, the very extremism and instability that Moscow claims to be concerned about and aspire to fighting. So this approach—that approach is tantamount, as I said then, to pouring gasoline on the fire.
In contrast, our position is clear, that a lasting defeat of ISIL and extremism in Syria can only be achieved in parallel with a political transition in Syria. And we will continue to insist on the importance of simultaneously pursuing these two objectives. Now, I would hope that Russia would join us in pursuing these objectives—which they claim to share—in parallel, rather than in a sequence that cannot succeed.
AMY GOODMAN: That is Ash Carter, the defense secretary. Speaking Wednesday, Republican Senator John McCain blasted Obama's Syria policy.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Russia's intervention in Syria will prolong and complicate this horrific war, and the main beneficiary will be ISIL, which has fed off the ethnic and sectarian divisions fostered by the Assad regime. It is tragic. It is tragic, my fellow Americans, that we have reached this point—a Syrian conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people, created the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II, spawned a terrorist army of tens of thousands and now created a platform for a Russian autocrat to join with an Iranian theocrat to prop up a Syrian dictator. It did not have to be this way. But this is the inevitable consequence of hollow words, red lines crossed, tarnished moral influence, leading from behind and a total lack of American leadership.
AMY GOODMAN: Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, respond to Senator McCain and to the defense secretary, Ash Carter.
RASHID KHALIDI: Well, there's so much to say. I think American policy in Syria has been an absolute mess. But I think that the thing that the United States had to do, at the same time as it should have been trying to deal directly with both the Iranians and the Russians over Syria, would be to rein in its own allies. A large part of the problem has been Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries pouring support into the most extreme forces in Syria.
I would also say, in response to what Secretary of Defense Carter said, that it is in fact true that what the Russians are doing is not directed at the Islamic State. The Islamic State's fiefdom is far to the east of the areas that the Russians have been launching airstrikes against in the last two days. What they are doing is backing, shoring up the Syrian regime in the backbone area of central Syria, the area between Damascus, Homs, Hama and the coast, which is the only area that the regime controls and which is an area which ISIL is not very near. So, it is a right mess.
I think American policy has been appallingly confused. I think that it has been confused in different directions than Senator McCain seems to be suggesting. Really, you need to cut a deal, and you need to knock heads together. The United States needs to knock the heads of its own allies together—Saudi Arabia, which is out of control in Yemen and is acting in a very unrestrained manner in Syria, as are a number of American allies, and Iran and the Soviet—and Russia—there's a slip for you—Iran and Russia, both of which are just backing the Assad regime to the hilt, and, in fact—I agree with Secretary Carter—are helping to increase sectarian tensions. Every external party is responsible in some measure for this incredible mess—the 10 countries that are bombing Syria, or have been bombing Syria, and the countries that have been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into some of the most extreme groups on Earth in the Syrian opposition.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the single most important thing you think the U.S. should be doing right now in regards to Syria?
RASHID KHALIDI: A deal has to be cut. Some means of ending this war as quickly as possible has to be found. This involves bringing all of the external parties to a certain kind of understanding—which will not be easy. It may take a very, very long time. It will be very, very hard. And I think finding the way to do that will actually be harder than finding a formula for Syria itself. In other words, reconciling the completely contradictory objectives and aims of these eight or 10 countries that are engaged in a proxy war in Syria is going to be the hardest thing to do.


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Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Collateral Damage]

THE ABSURD TIMES





This is a transcript of a video taken by our armed forces.  What is particularly offensive is that this is the sort of thing that goes on regularly.  The link is provided in the second sentence so you can see the entire thing if you are up to it.  I see no need to comment further other than it exposes lies that we have known were lies.  It is just more graphic this way.

AMY GOODMAN: The US military has confirmed the authenticity of newly released video showing US forces indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians. On Monday, the website WikiLeaks.org posted footage taken from a US military helicopter in July 2007 as it killed twelve people and wounded two children.

The voices on the tape appear to believe their targets are carrying weapons, but the footage unmistakably shows some of the victims holding camera equipment. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency, photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh.

The Pentagon has never publicly released the footage and has previously cleared those involved of wrongdoing. WikiLeaks says it managed to de-encrypt the tape after receiving it from a confidential source inside the military who wanted the story to be known.

In a moment, we’re going to hear from WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, who oversaw the video’s release. But first we turn to the footage itself. For our television audiences, some may find these images disturbing. This clip captures the moments leading up to when US forces first opened fire.

    US SOLDIER 1: See all those people standing down there? US SOLDIER 2: Stay firm. And open the courtyard. US SOLDIER 1: Yeah, roger. I just estimate there’s probably about twenty of them. There’s one, yeah. US SOLDIER 2: Oh, yeah. US SOLDIER 1: I don’t know if that’s— US SOLDIER 3: Hey Bushmaster element, Copperhead one-six. US SOLDIER 2: That’s a weapon. US SOLDIER 1: Yeah. Hotel two-six, Crazy Horse one-eight . US SOLDIER 4: Copperhead one-six, Bushmaster six-Romeo. Roger. US SOLDIER 1: Have individuals with weapons. Yep, he’s got a weapon, too. Hotel two-six, Crazy Horse one-eight. Have five to six individuals with AK-47s. Request permission to engage . US SOLDIER 5: Roger that. We have no personnel east of our position. So you are free to engage. Over. US SOLDIER 2: All right, we’ll be engaging. US SOLDIER 1: Roger, go ahead. I’m gonna—I cant get ‘em now, because they’re behind that building. US SOLDIER 3: Hey Bushmaster element, Copperhead one-six. US SOLDIER 1: He’s got an RPG! US SOLDIER 2: Alright, we got a guy with an RPG. US SOLDIER 1: I’m gonna fire. OK. US SOLDIER 2: No, hold on. Let’s come around. US SOLDIER 1: Behind building right now from our point of view. US SOLDIER 2: OK, we’re going to come around. US SOLDIER 1: Hotel two-six, I have eyes on individual with RPG, getting ready to fire. We won’t—yeah, we got a guy shooting, and now he’s behind the building. God damn it! US SOLDIER 5: Uh, negative. He was right in front of the Brad, about there, one o’clock. Haven’t seen anything since then. US SOLDIER 2: Just [expletive]. Once you get on, just open up. US SOLDIER 1: I am. US SOLDIER 4: I see your element, got about four Humvees, out along this— US SOLDIER 2: You’re clear. US SOLDIER 1: Alright, firing. US SOLDIER 4: Let me know when you’ve got them. US SOLDIER 2: Let’s shoot. Light ‘em all up. US SOLDIER 1: Come on, fire! US SOLDIER 2: Keep shootin’. Keep shootin’. Keep shootin’. Keep shootin’. US SOLDIER 6: Hotel, Bushmaster two-six, Bushmaster two-six, we need to move, time now! US SOLDIER 2: Alright, we just engaged all eight individuals.

AMY GOODMAN: The video now shows around eight Iraqis lying on the ground, dead or badly wounded. The soldiers again claim the victims have weapons and now laugh about the shooting.

    US SOLDIER 1: We saw two birds. We’re still firing. US SOLDIER 2: Roger. US SOLDIER 1: I got ‘em. US SOLDIER 3: Two-six, this is two-six, we’re mobile. US SOLDIER 2: Oops, I’m sorry. What was going on? US SOLDIER 1: God damn it, Kyle. US SOLDIER 2: Sorry, hahaha, I hit ‘em—Roger. Currently engaging approximately eight individuals, KIA, RPGs and AK-47s. Hotel two-six, Crazy Horse one-eight. US SOLDIER 1: Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards. US SOLDIER 2: Nice. Good shootin’. US SOLDIER 1: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Reuters driver Saeed Chmagh survived the initial attack. Here he’s seen trying to crawl away as the helicopter flies overhead. A voice from the cockpit hopes that Saeed brandishes a weapon to justify more shooting.

    US SOLDIER 2: One individual appears to be wounded, trying to crawl away. US SOLDIER 3: Roger, we’re going to move down there. US SOLDIER 2: Roger, we’ll cease fire. US SOLDIER 1: Yeah, we won’t shoot anymore. He’s getting up. US SOLDIER 2: If he has a weapon, though, in his hand? US SOLDIER 1: No, I haven’t seen one yet. I see you guys got that guy crawling right now on the curb. Yeah, I got him. I put two rounds near him, and you guys were shooting over there, too, so we’ll see. US SOLDIER 3: Yeah, roger that. US SOLDIER 4: Bushmaster three-six Element, this is Hotel two-seven. Over. US SOLDIER 3: Hotel Two-Seven, Bushmaster Seven. Go ahead. US SOLDIER 4: Roger. I’m just trying to make sure that you guys have my turf. Over. US SOLDIER 3: Roger, we got your turf. US SOLDIER 2: Come on, buddy. All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.

AMY GOODMAN: The US forces notice a van pulling up to evacuate the wounded. They again open fire, killing several more people and wounding two children inside the van.

    US SOLDIER 1: Where’s that van at? US SOLDIER 2: Right down there by the bodies. US SOLDIER 1: OK, yeah. US SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse. We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly picking up bodies and weapons. US SOLDIER 1: Let me engage. Can I shoot? US SOLDIER 2: Roger. Break. Crazy Horse one-eight, request permission to engage. US SOLDIER 3: Picking up the wounded? US SOLDIER 1: Yeah, we’re trying to get permission to engage. Come on, let us shoot! US SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse one-eight. US SOLDIER 1: They’re taking him. US SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse one-eight. US SOLDIER 4: This is Bushmaster seven, go ahead. US SOLDIER 2: Roger. We have a black SUV—or Bongo truck picking up the bodies. Request permission to engage. US SOLDIER 4: Bushmaster seven, roger. This is Bushmaster seven, roger. Engage. US SOLDIER 2: One-eight, engage. Clear. US SOLDIER 1: Come on! US SOLDIER 2: Clear. Clear. US SOLDIER 1: We’re engaging. US SOLDIER 2: Coming around. Clear. US SOLDIER 1: Roger. Trying to— US SOLDIER 2: Clear. US SOLDIER 1: I hear ‘em—I lost ’em in the dust. US SOLDIER 3: I got ’em. US SOLDIER 2: Should have a van in the middle of the road with about twelve to fifteen bodies. US SOLDIER 1: Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Ha ha!

AMY GOODMAN: Video footage from a July 2007 attack on Iraqi civilians by US troops, released Monday by the website WikiLeaks.org.

Well, we’re joined now by two guests. Julian Assange is the co-founder of WikiLeaks.org, oversaw the release of this top-secret US military footage. He’s joining us from Washington, DC. And by video stream from Brazil, we’re joined by Glenn Greenwald, the constitutional law attorney and blogger for Salon.com. We called the Pentagon and the US Army, but they didn’t respond to our request for them to be on the broadcast.

Julian Assange, tell us how you got this footage.

JULIAN ASSANGE: We got this footage sometime last year. We don’t disclose precise times for reasons of source protection. When we first got it, we were told that it was important and that it showed the killing of journalists, but we didn’t have any other context, and we spent quite some months after breaking the decryption looking closely into this. And the more we looked, the more disturbing it became.

This is a sequence which has a lot of detail and, I think, in some ways covers most of the bad aspects of the aerial war in Iraq and what we must be able to infer is going on in Afghanistan. So we see not only this initial opening shot on a crowd, which is clearly mostly unarmed. There may be some confusion as to whether two people are armed or whether there’s a camera or arm, but it’s clear that the majority of the people are in fact unarmed. And as it later turns out, two of those people are simply holding cameras. But we go on from there into seeing the shooting of people rescuing a wounded man, and none of those people are armed.

What’s important to remember is that every step that the Apache takes in opening fire is authorized. It does pause before shooting. It explains the situation, sometimes exaggerating a little to its commanders, and gets authorized permission.

These are not bad apples. This is standard practice. You can hear it from the tones of the voices of the pilots that this is in fact another day at the office. These pilots have evidently and gunners have evidently become so corrupted, morally corrupted, by the war that they are looking for excuses to kill. That is why you hear this segment, “Come on, buddy! Just pick up a weapon,” when Saeed, one of the Reuters employees, is crawling on the curb. They don’t want him for intelligence value to understand the situation. The man is clearly of no threat whatsoever. He’s prostate on the ground. Everyone else has been killed. They just want an excuse to kill. And it’s some kind of—appears to me to be some kind of video game mentality where they just want to get a high score, get their kill count up. And later on you’ll hear them proudly proclaiming how they killed twelve to fifteen people.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian, how has the Pentagon responded to this footage?

JULIAN ASSANGE: It’s very interesting. So yesterday, the Pentagon stated that the original investigation that it did into whether the acts broke the rules of engagement, the rules that soldiers must obey before shooting, they came to the conclusion then that there was no violation of those rules, that all the pilots, in fact, acted properly, and gunners. They reiterated that last night, that in fact it was their view that that original investigation came to the right conclusion and that they would not be reopening the investigation. However, we hear that that may be about to change. That hasn’t been confirmed yet, but our sources in CENTCOM say that there may be a change.

Also, late last night, the Pentagon suddenly decided it liked the Freedom of Information Act, after all. Reuters put in the Freedom of Information request for this video in August 2007 and did not receive any response whatsoever for over a year and never has received, to our knowledge, the video. But yesterday, the Pentagon released on the CENTCOM website six files relating to this event. There is one that is the most important, which is the investigative report into whether this action broke the rules of engagement, really quite a telling report. So the tone and language is all about trying to find an excuse for the activity. I mean, this as if your own lawyer wrote a report for you to submit to the court. It’s very clear that that is the approach, to try and find any mechanism to excuse the behavior, and that is what ended up happening.

Something that has been missed in some of the press reportage about this is that there is a third attack, just twenty minutes later, by the same crew, involving three Hellfire missiles fired onto an apartment complex where the roof was still under construction. We have fresh evidence from Baghdad that there were three families living in that apartment complex, many of whom were killed, including women. And we sent a team down there to collect that evidence. So that is in the full video we released, not in the shortened one, because we didn’t yet have that additional evidence. Innocent bystanders walking down the street are also killed in that attack.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you know who these Apache helicopter teams—what this unit is?

JULIAN ASSANGE: We don’t have the names of the teams. However, we have details about the unit, and there was a chapter, or half-chapter, in a book called The Good Soldiers by a Washington Post reporter released late last year that does cover the ground unit that moved in to collect the bodies and was the unit who also called in the Apaches to that area.

Important thing that we know from classified documentation is that there were reports of small arms fire in the general vicinity. This was not an ongoing battle. The Pentagon released statements implying that this was a firefight and the Apaches were called in, into the middle of a firefight, and the journalists walked into this firefight. That is simply a lie. At 9:50 a.m. Baghdad time, Pentagon—sorry, US military documentation states that there was small arms fire in the general vicinity, in the suburb somewhere of New Baghdad, and that there was no PID, there was no positive identification of who the shooter was. So, in other words, some bullets were received in a general area, no US troops were killed, or they were heard, could have even been cars backfiring. There was no positive identification of where those shots were coming from. And the Apaches were sent up to scout out the general region, and they saw this group of men milling around in a square, showing the Reuters photographer something interesting to photograph. So the claim that this was a battle and the Reuters guys were sort of caught in the crossfire, or it was some kind of active attack that it needed an immediate response by the Apaches, is simply a lie.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to come back to this discussion and, well, what’s happening to WikiLeaks.org, not only as a result of releasing this, but other sensitive documents. Julian Assange is our guest, co-founder of WikiLeaks. Also Glenn Greenwald will join us, who has been writing about this. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. Back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, has just posted on WikiLeaks.org this 2007 footage from the helicopter gunships that opened fire on Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

I want to play another clip, this the voices of the cockpit laughing as a Bradley tank drives over the dead body of one of the Iraqi victims.

    US SOLDIER 1: I think they just drove over a body. US SOLDIER 2: Did he? US SOLDIER 1: Yeah!

AMY GOODMAN: And here the cockpit learns from soldiers on the ground that the victims include children. One voice says, “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids to battle.”

    US SOLDIER 3: I’ve got eleven Iraqi KIAs . One small child wounded. Over. US SOLDIER 1: Roger. Ah, damn. Oh, well. US SOLDIER 3: Roger, we need—we need a—to evac this child. She’s got a wound to the belly. I can’t do anything here. She needs to get evaced. Over. US SOLDIER 1: Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle. US SOLDIER 2: That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: After discovering the wounded children, a soldier on the ground says they should be taken to a nearby US military hospital, but an order comes in to instead first hand the children over to Iraqi police, possibly delaying their treatment.

    US SOLDIER 3: Negative on evac of the two civilian kids to Rusty. They’re going to have the IPs link up with us over here. Break. IPs will take them up to a local hospital. Over.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, explain what happened to the children, the children that you show in the video footage by circling their heads, that they are in the van.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah, something important to remember is that the video we obtained and released is of substantially lower quality than what the pilots saw. This is because it was converted through many stages to digital. But even so, we can just see that there are in fact two children sitting in the front seat of that van. And subsequent witness reports also confirm that.

So those children were extremely lucky to survive. The Apache helicopter was firing thirty-millimeter shells. That’s shells this wide, normally used for armor piercing, and they shoot straight through buildings.

Those children—the medic on the scene wanted to evacuate those children to the US military base at Rustamiyah, approximately eight kilometers away from the scene. The base has excellent medical facilities. Higher command denied that. We don’t know the reason. Perhaps there was a legitimate reason, but it seems like the medic would be the person best placed to know what to do. Instead, he is told to meet up and hand the children over to local police.

We don’t know what happens then. But our team that was in Baghdad, we partnered with the Icelandic state broadcasting service, RÚV, found the children over the weekend, this weekend, and interviewed them and took their hospital records, and we have photographs of the scars of the stomach wounds and the chest wounds and arm wounds for those children. The boy, in particular, was extremely lucky to survive. He had a wound that came from the top of his body down his stomach, so very, very, very lucky.

The mother says that she has been offered no compensation for the death of her husband, who was the driver of that van, and no assistance with the medical expenses of her children. And she says that there are ongoing medical expenses related to the daughter.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, what is happening now to WikiLeaks.org? What kind of response have you gotten? Can you talk about surveillance or possibly attempting to shut you down?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, a few weeks ago, we released a 2008 counterintelligence report from the United States Army, thirty-two pages, that assessed quite a few articles that I had written and some of the other material we had released—so that includes the main manuals for Guantánamo Bay, which revealed falsification of records there and deliberate hiding of people from the Red Cross, a breach of the Geneva Conventions, and psychological torture, many other things, and a report we released on the battle of Fallujah, once again a classified US military report into what happened there—and clearly concerned that we were causing embarrassment to the US military by exposing human rights abuses and some concern—doesn’t seem to be legitimate, but some concerns that the fine details of some material that we were releasing could, in theory, when combined with other detail, pose a threat to soldiers if insurgents got hold of that information. So that report sort of looks at different ways to destroy WikiLeaks.org or fatally marginalize it.

And because our primary asset is the trust, that sources have enough—we have a reputation for having never had a source publicly exposed, and as far as I know, that reputation is true—it looks to see whether they can publicly expose some of our sources, prosecute US military whistleblowers—and, in fact, it uses the phrase “whistleblowers,” not people who are leaking indiscriminately—but prosecute US military whistleblowers in order to destabilize us and destroy what it calls our “center of gravity,” the trust that the public and sources have in us.

It also looks at some other methods—again, it’s careful to fine-tune the language, but says that perhaps we could be hacked into and destabilized that way, or perhaps we could be fed information that was fraudulent, and therefore our reputation for integrity could be destroyed. The report is careful on these last two to suggest that maybe other governments could do this. It seems like it’s some kind of license for their claims. They speak about how Iran has blocked us on the internet and China has blocked us on the internet and other governments of a similar type have condemned us, and it lists Israel. And it also lists the case that we had against a Swiss bank in San Francisco in February 2008, a case which we conclusively won.

But in the production of this video in Iceland, where most of the team was over the last month, we did get a number of very unusual surveillance events. So we—I personally had people filming me covertly in cafes, who, when confronted, run off so scared that they even drop their cash, and not Icelanders, outsiders, although there also was some surveillance from Iceland.

Our feeling is now that that surveillance may not have been related to this video. It may more likely have been related to leaks from the US embassy in Iceland that we released. We’re not sure of that. But there was—appears to have been a following of me on an Icelandic air flight out of Iceland to an investigative journalism conference in Norway. We’re not sure that—there are records of two State Department employees on that plane with no luggage. Our suspicion is these are probably the Diplomatic Security Service investigating a leak at the embassy.

We did have a volunteer arrested for some other reason and asked questions in Iceland about WikiLeaks, but there are now two sides to this story. So our volunteer says that they asked questions about WikiLeaks, and the police say that they asked questions about WikiLeaks, but the police say this was because of a sticker on a laptop. Volunteer says that this wasn’t true. And at the moment, we’re unable to confirm whether the police had inside information about the video or whether the volunteer is not telling the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined, Julian Assange, by Glenn Greenwald, blogger for Salon.com. He’s a constitutional lawyer. Glenn, the significance of what this videotape is showing, from the helicopter gunship, of the helicopter gunship opening fire on Iraqi civilians?

GLENN GREENWALD: I think, in one sense, that WikiLeaks has done an extraordinarily valuable service, because it has exposed what it is that war actually is, what we’re actually doing in Afghanistan and Iraq on a day-to-day basis.

My concern with the discussions that have been triggered, though, is that there seems to be the suggestion, in many circles—not, of course, by Julian—that this is some sort of extreme event, or this is some sort of aberration, and that’s the reason why we’re all talking about it and are horrified about it. In fact, it’s anything but rare. The only thing that’s rare about this is that we happen to know about it and are seeing it take place on video. This is something that takes place on a virtually daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places where we invade and bomb and occupy. And the reason why there are hundreds of thousands of dead in Iraq and thousands of dead in Afghanistan is because this is what happens constantly when we are engaged in warfare in those countries.

And you see that, as Julian said, in the fact that every step of the way they got formal approval for what they wanted to do. And if you read the Defense Department investigations, which cleared the individuals involved, in every sense, and said that they acted complete [no audio]—

AMY GOODMAN: We may have just lost—

GLENN GREENWALD: —operating procedure.

AMY GOODMAN: There it is. Go ahead.

GLENN GREENWALD: And you see that this is standard operating procedure. The military was not at all concerned about what took place. They didn’t even think there were remedial steps needed to prevent a future reoccurrence. They concluded definitively that the members of the military involved did exactly the right thing.

This is what war is. This is what the United States does in these countries. And that, I think, is the crucial point to note, along with the fact that the military fought tooth and nail to prevent this video from surfacing, precisely because they knew that it would shed light on what their actual behavior is during war, and instead of the propaganda to which we’re typically subjected.

AMY GOODMAN: And then the attacks on WikiLeaks, the surveillance of WikiLeaks, Glenn?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, the problem, of course, is that there are very few entities left that actually provide any meaningful checks or oversight on what the military and intelligence communities do. The media has fallen down almost completely. There’s occasional investigative reports and journalism that expose what they do, but media outlets, for a variety of reasons, including resource constraints, are hardly ever able to perform these kind of functions, even when they’re willing. Congress, of course, which has principal oversight responsibility to ensure things like this don’t happen, and that they see the light of day when they do, is almost completely impotent, by virtue of their own choices and desires and as well as by a whole variety of constraints, institutional and otherwise.

And so, there are very few mechanisms left for figuring out and understanding as citizens what it is that our government and our military and our intelligence community do. And unauthorized leaks and whistleblowing is one of the very few outlets left, and WikiLeaks is providing a safe haven for people who want to expose serious corruption and wrongdoing. And so, of course the Pentagon and the CIA sees them as an enemy and something to be targeted and shut down, because it’s one of the few avenues that we have left for meaningful accountability and disclosure.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, you have video of Afghanistan that you have yet to release?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yes, that’s correct. We have a video of a May 2009 attack which killed ninety-seven in Afghanistan. We are still analyzing and assessing that information. We—

AMY GOODMAN: Last comments, Julian? Go ahead.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yes. I must agree with Glenn, and I’d also like to speak a little bit about the media focus on this. We have seen some straw manning in relation to this event. So quite a few people have simply focused on the initial attack on Namir, the Reuters photographer, and Saeed, the other one, this initial crowd scene, and gone, “Well, you know, camera, RPG, it can look a bit similar. And there do appear to be two other—two people in that crowd having weapons. A heat-of-the-moment situation. Even if the descriptions were false previously, maybe there’s some excuse for this. I mean, it’s bad, but maybe there’s some excuse.” This is clearly a straw man. We can see, over these three events—the initial attack on the crowd; the attack on the people rescuing a completely unarmed man, themselves completely unarmed; to the Hellfire missile attack on an apartment complex, which killed families—all in the course of one hour, that something is wrong.

And the tone of the pilots is another day at the office. This is not, as Glenn said, an extraordinary event. This outlines that this is an everyday event. It’s another day at the office. They get clearance for everything that they do from higher command before they do it.

There was an investigative report in response to Reuters, so it’s not a minor incident. There was pressure from Reuters to produce an investigative report. There was an investigative report. It cleared everyone of wrongdoing. You can read that report that was released. It is clearly designed to come to a particular conclusion, the suppression of the FOI material, non-response to Reuters. And now we hear yesterday from the Pentagon an attempt to keep the same line, that everything was done correctly.

I don’t think that can hold, but I think it gives important lessons as to what you can believe. Even the number—everyone was described initially as insurgents, except for the two wounded children. A blanket description. It was only from pressure from the press that changed that number to there being civilians amongst the crowd. But we also see that the total death count is wrong. There were people killed in the buildings next to this event who were just there living in their houses. There were additional bystanders killed in the Hellfire missile attack, and those people weren’t even counted, let alone counted as insurgents. So you cannot believe these statements from the military about number of people who were killed, whether people are insurgents, whether an investigation into rules of engagement was correct. They simply cannot be believed and cannot be trusted.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, after the footage was released, Nabil Noor-Eldeen, the brother of the slain Reuters cameraman Namir Noor-Eldeen, spoke out in an interview with Al Jazeera.

    NABIL NOOR-ELDEEN: Is this the democracy and freedom that they claim have brought to Iraq? What Namir was doing was a patriotic work. He was trying to cover the violations of the Americans against the Iraqi people. He was only twenty-one years old. Other innocent colleagues and other innocent people, who were just standing out of curiosity when they see a journalist in a scene, and they were all killed. This is another crime that should be added to the record of American crimes in Iraq and the world. Is the pilot that stupid, he cannot distinguish between an RPG and a camera? They claim he was carrying an RPG. When was the RPG this small, small as a camera? He was carrying a small camera. An RPG is more than one meter long. Yes, it was an RPG because it shows the acts against Iraq and its people that still suffer from their crimes. We demand the international organizations to help us sue those people responsible for the killings of our sons and our people.

AMY GOODMAN: Nabil Noor-Eldeen is the brother of the photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen—and his driver Saeed Chmagh, they both worked for Reuters news agency. The overwhelmingly sad tributes to them online are very important. I want to thank Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks.org. Glenn Greenwald, stay with us, because we want to go quickly to that story on Afghanistan, which we will also talk about tomorrow.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. And we’ll talk about the worst mining disaster in twenty-five years, in West Virginia. Stay with us.

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