[8] The video, which WikiLeaks titled Collateral Murder, showed the crew firing on a group of men and killing several of them, then laughing at some of the casualties, all of whom were civilians, including two Reuters journalists. 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. That's not leaking, that's a pure editorial." WikiLeaks stated that the footage shows the "murder of Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists". I think that the people could have been deterred from doing what they were doing in the van by simply firing a few warning shots versus completely obliterating the van and its occupants.[52][53]. "[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. "[90], James Spione made a short documentary film about the airstrikes called Incident in New Baghdad, featuring a first-person account from Ethan McCord. She concluded that command structures need to be in place to identify "combatants with serious psychological problems". She was crying. Josh Stieber was in the same company but was not there that day, though he contributed to the your pain, and the pain of your community on many other occasions. WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. I don't think that people really want to see this, though, because this is war. Gates said that the video provides the public with a view of warfare "as seen through a soda straw". [21], The Air Weapons Team (AWT) of two Apache AH-64s from the 1st Cavalry Division had been requested by the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment (216), 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, before July 12 to support Operation Ilaaj. US Soldiers from Wikileaks Collateral Murder Video Apologize. Instead, the Apaches decided to completely obliterate everybody in the van. 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. [18][25][31] Chmagh was killed[18][25][31] along with three other men, while two children, not known to be in the van to the U.S. forces, were injured. I was told to go pull security on a rooftop. He added, "I think what this video shows is really a case that challenges whether the laws of war are strict enough. From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region. You Cant Trust App Developers Privacy Claims on Google Play, Mozilla researchers found that apps often provide inaccurate data use disclosures, giving people a false sense of security., Batteries Are Ukraines Secret Weapon Against Russia. [88], McCord requested mental health assistance following his experiences on July 12, but was told by his superior officers to "get the sand out of [his] vagina" and to "suck it up and be a soldier". [59], An internal legal review by staff at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in Iraq during July 2007 stated that the helicopters had attacked a number of armed insurgents within the rules of engagement, and that in an apparent case of civilian casualties two reporters working for Reuters had also been killed. McCord: I have never seen anybody being shot by a 30-millimeter round before. They're smoking you, they're making you tired. [68], Stephen Colbert, in an interview with Assange in April 2010, asked him about the title: "You have edited this tape, and you have given it a title called 'Collateral Murder'. That's when I started screaming, "The boy's alive! They heard about something, they came to it and they just wantedfrom everything I've learned since, they were just there to get that side of the story. The event was covered by Al Jazeera English and Reuters,[16] and later by The Washington Post,[82] The New York Times,[2] The Christian Science Monitor,[83] the BBC,[66] and CNN. The men become obscured behind a building as the Apache moves around the group. 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 did see a guy moving from a rooftop from one position to another with an AK-47, who was firing at us. The Push to Ban TikTok in the US Isnt About Privacy. Ethan applied for mental health support following this incident and was denied by his commanding officer. 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. Though we have acted with cold hearts far too many times, we have not forgotten our actions towards you. I think that the bigger picture is what are we doing there? There were some people taking pot shots, sniper shots, at us on the rooftop. [55], Assange stated that the attack on the van was the most damning part of the video: "I'm very sceptical that was done under the rules of engagement; and, if it was legal, the rules of engagement must be changed". Home: Wichita, Kansas, AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE From Current and Former Members of the U.S. Military. McCord, together with another former member of the company, Josh Stieber, have addressed an open "Letter of Reconciliation" to the Iraqi people taking responsibility for their role in this. Home: Laytonsville, Maryland Served in: Baghdad (Rustamiyah) 07-08 Fort Riley, KS 06-07, 08-09, BACKGROUND ON ETHAN MCCORD: Branch of service: United States Army (USA) Unit: 1st ID Rank: Spc. [67], WikiLeaks released a 39-minute version, which shows all three incidents, and a 17-minute version, which shows only the first two incidents. It has also ignored many veterans who have returned physically injured or mentally troubled by what they saw and did in your country. I had blood all down the front of me from the children. [86], Ethan McCord, the soldier seen in the video carrying the injured boy, recalled in an interview on The Marc Steiner Show that on arrival at the scene, "The first thing I did was run up to the van". Their overall mission that day was to protect us, to provide support for us, so I can see where the initial attack on the group of men was warranted. He runs the girl to the Bradley. 2023 Cond Nast. I think it is good that they're putting this stuff out there. 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. The crew then reposition the helicopter and fire two more missiles into the upper floors of the building[44], WikiLeaks said in the preface to one of their videos of the incident that "some of the men appear to have been armed [although] the behavior of nearly everyone was relaxed" in the introductory text of the shorter video. BACKGROUND ON JOSH STIEBER: Branch of service: United States Army (USA) Unit: 1st ID Rank: Spc. So if people have a different opinion, the full material is there for them to analyse and assess. We have been speaking to whoever will listen, telling them that what was shown in the Wikileaks video only begins to depict the suffering we have created. They're like, oh yeah, we're the "collateral murder" company. [19], The team observed several individuals from this group, some possibly wounded, run into a large multistory building. Vehicle; "When I saw those kids, all I could picture was my kids back home". I was diagnosed with chronic, severe PTSD. [57], Reuters reported that it could locate no witnesses who had seen gunmen in the immediate area. "[88] McCord also recalled being ordered to "kill every motherfucker on the street" in the event of an attack on their convoy. The Apache crew saw unarmed[25] men exit the vehicle and move to Chmagh. I always questioned it in the back of my mind. [16][18][30] After the lead helicopter fires, one of the crew shouts "Hahaha. So, the first thing I did was grab the girl. Colbert asked "So 'Collateral Murder' is to get political impact?" 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 . You can see in this particular image he is lying on the ground and the people in the van have been separated, but they still deliberately target him. Wired.com: Did you try to get information about the two children after the shooting? "[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. 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. You are seeing only a very narrow picture of the events". They also found 10-year-old Sajad Mutashar and his five-year-old sister Doaha covered in blood in a van. classified video created its own firestorm. [92][93] The Internet chats between Manning and Lamo were revealed to the public by Wired. 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. It could be that since he and Amelia (Sigrid Thornton) have quit. Soldier Ethan McCord's Eyewitness Story, "Shadowed, Clamoring, Blurry. [18] Al Jazeera stated that the Army had received "reports of small arms fire", but were unable to positively identify the gunmen. [16] The military reported that it could not find its copy of the video. A unit from Bravo Company 216 was within 100 meters of the individuals that were fired upon with 30mm AH-64 Apache cannons. In refusing to recognize this, the US military fails both its own soldiers and their victims. They're trained as soldiers to go into a building and clear a building. [63] The site stated on its Twitter account on January 8, 2010, that it had a copy of gunsight footage of the incidents. "The first thing I thought of was my children at home". [43] It concluded that an investigating officer would want to know how the armed men were identified as combatants from the earlier engagement; would question the nature of the collateral-damage estimate carried out by the crew before the missiles were launched; and would wish to determine whether a missile attack was a proportionate response to the threat. [61], Washington Post reporter David Finkel, who at the time was embedded with Bravo Company 216 Infantry, later covered the incidents of the day in his book, The Good Soldiers. US soldiers Ethan McCord's Eyewitness Story of coming across the aftermath of the infamous Wikileaks Collateral Murder in which over a dozen innocent civilians, 2 of which were Reuters journalists, were killed. [59][16] In a personal statement during her court-martial, Chelsea Manning stated that the military had access to the video, and was actively examining it, yet it told Reuters in response to the FOIA request that the information might no longer exist. soldiers. Highlighted in the 17-minute version of the video are Noor-Eldeen with a camera and Chmagh talking on his mobile phone. WikiLeaks also does not point out that at least one man was carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. [104][105][106][107] Pursuant to a commutation by President Obama, Chelsea Manning was released on May 17, 2017. Two men were identified by Crazyhorse 1/8 as carrying an RPG launcher and an AKM or AK-47. You joke about the situations and what's happened to push away your true feelings of the matter. 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. The soldier, Ethan McCord, has since been discharged from the military and has been an outspoken voice against the Iraq War. So I went to a sergeant and asked to see [the mental health person], because I was having a hard time dealing with it. They did have weapons there. Wired.com: How much sniper fire were you getting? On the same day as the NPR interview, Finkel was asked how he had seen the unedited video and whether WikiLeaks had shown it to him. I wasn't thinking about it as much. [18][25][31] As the U.S. soldiers moved towards the site of the attack, a van stopped near Chmagh. Iraq war veteran Ethan McCord was one of three US soldiers who were on the ground during the Apache helicopter assault on twelve civilians in Baghdad in 2007 that was captured in a video. 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. As the gunner fires the first missile, another man is seen walking along the street in front of the building. 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. Ethan McCord, a former US soldier, has shown great courage and integrity by exposing and condemning US war crimes in Iraq. Our government may ignore you, concerned more with its public image. We were probably there on the roof for another four to five hours. According to Tom Raju, a reporter at CNN, "the soldiers of Bravo Company, 216 Infantry had been under fire all morning from rocket-propelled grenades and small arms on the first day of Operation Ilaaj in Baghdad". 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. McCord: I would be smoked. 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. "[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. Our hearts are open to hearing how we can take any steps to support you through the pain that we have caused. That's a violation of the laws of war and of course what the mainstream media have omitted from their stories is this context. He is seen swinging the weapon below his waist while standing next to the man holding the RPG. He kept saying, we were there, we know the truth, they're saying there was no weapons, there was. [48], In The Independent on April 8, 2010, human rights activist Joan Smith wrote that the engagements were like a game to the helicopter crew. However, personally I don't feel that the attack on the van was warranted. It was a scene that had played repeatedly in his mind the last three [], All the Settings You Should Change on Your New Samsung Phone, Its Time to Fall in Love With Nuclear FusionAgain, Give Your Back a Break With Our Favorite Office Chairs, Fat, Sugar, Salt Youve Been Thinking About Food All Wrong, Apple Users Need to Update iOS Now to Patch Serious Flaws. The majority of us aren't. In 2009, Stieber left the military as a conscientious objector and became a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Major Brent Cummings claimed they took great pains to prevent the loss of innocent civilian lives. [116] The military did not include the attack on the building in their report. Ethan McCord pulled your daughter and son from the van, and when doing so, saw the faces of his own children back home. That stays with you. It claimed reporters' "furtive attempts to photograph the Coalition Ground Forces made them appear as hostile combatants". With such pain, friendship might be too much to ask. She draws parallels with soldiers who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder in earlier wars. Those guys could have just been protecting their area". Now, as far as rules of engagement, [Iraqis] are not supposed to pick up the wounded. Manning's Providence Inquiry", "US military video showing 2007 Apache attack on Iraqi civilians released", "Leaked video shows US military killing of civilians, Reuters staff", "Permission to Engage: WikiLeaks collateral murder footage examined", "US soldier linked to Iraq helicopter video leak charged", "Leaked U.S. video shows deaths of Reuters' Iraqi staffers", "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange tells Colbert permission to engage was given before the word RPG was ever used", "Leaked video reveals chaos of Baghdad attack", Investigation into Civilian Casualties Resulting from an Engagement on 12 July 2007 in the New Baghdad District of Baghdad, Iraq, "Gates said leaked military video of shooting in Iraq doesn't show the broader picture of Americans being fired upon", "Records released to the public, under the FOIA, that are or will likely become the subject of subsequent requests", "July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike transcript", "Video expands notoriety of WikiLeaks site", "WikiLeaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians", "The pictures that prove US helicopter gunships opened fire on Iraqi civilians", "Calls for inquiry into Apache attack on Iraqi civilians", "U.S. Military Releases Redacted Records on 2007 Apache Attack, Questions Linger", "Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians", "Video shows deaths of two Reuters journalists in Iraq in 2007", "Massacre Caught on Tape: US Military Confirms Authenticity of Their Own Chilling Video Showing Killing of Journalists", "Military Raises Questions About Credibility of Leaked Iraq Shooting Video", 'Let Us Shoot': US Troops Fire On Journalists, Legal Glance on the Baghdad Helicopter Shooting | Peanik, "U.S. [64] The footage was released during an April 5 press conference at the US National Press Club, and subsequently on a designated website titled Collateral Murder. The owner told him that three families were living in the building and seven residents had died, including his wife and daughter. I was trying to wash it off in my room. Ethan McCord was a U.S. soldier on patrol in Baghdad in July 2007 when he came upon a scene he says he'd never encountered. He was shot and killed. It was pretty much a shock when we got there to see what had happened, the carnage and everything else. Wired.com: Was anyone moving when you got there other than the two children? "[4] The New York Times wrote that "Critics contend that the shorter video was misleading because it did not make clear that the attacks took place amid clashes in the neighborhood and that one of the men was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade. Ethan was on the ground at the scene of the shooting, and is seen on the video rushing one of the injured children to a U.S. We humbly ask you what we can do to begin to repair the damage we caused. Wired.com: But you had been in combat before. [110], Mark Taylor, an international law expert and a director at the Fafo Institute for International Studies in Norway, told Al Jazeera "there's a case to be made that a war crime may have been committed." In addition to five[98][99] or six[100][101][102] espionage counts, she was also found guilty of five theft specifications, two computer fraud specifications and multiple military infractions. She wrote that the co-pilot urged a dying, unarmed journalist to pick up a weapon as he tried to crawl to safety and that "the Apache crew open[ed] fire on civilians". And cracking jokes is a way of pushing that stuff down. But you guys did have a firefight a couple of blocks away. 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]. 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. [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". Their request was denied at the briefing and they were told to seek access under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. It's painful to see, especially when you learn after the fact what was going on. 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. [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. [42] According to the internal legal review, the helicopters engaged a group of armed insurgents, and that some were seen entering a nearby building. He looked at me, then his eyes rolled back into this head. The soldier in the video said that your husband shouldn't have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighborhood, and to your family. They were stating that these people had no weapons whatsoever, that they were just carrying cameras. Wired.com: There was another attack depicted in the video that has received little attention, involving a Hellfire and a building that was fired on. You can hear the medic saying on the video, "There's nothing I can do here, she needs to be evac'd." [22], In the video on the morning of July 12, 2007, the crews of two United States Army AH-64 Apache helicopters observe a gathering of men near a section of Baghdad in the path of advancing U.S. ground troops, some armed with AKMs and RPGs. When I saw their faces, I was relieved, but I was just heartbroken. Solemnly and Sincerely, Josh Stieber, former specialist, U.S. Army Ethan McCord, former specialist, U.S. Army. The video doesn't show the broader picture of the firing that was going on at American troops. Assange responded:[69][70]. If you or I saw someone wounded on the ground what is your first inkling? When the crew were informed that a child had been injured by their attack, one initially responded, "Ah damn. Wired.com: Civilians are supposed to know that they're not supposed to pick up a wounded person crawling in the road? Knowing that I was part of the system that took their father away from them and made them lose their house it's heartbreaking. I was up on a rooftop at that time. I was also told that there would be repercussions if I was to go to mental health. 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 . 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". Both children were said to have been evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital via Forward Operating Base Loyalty, then transferred to an Iraqi medical facility the next day. "Our forces were engaged in combat all that day with individuals that fit the description of the men in that video. [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. [58] Reuters subsequently asked the U.S. military to probe the deaths. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. In the video, you can clearly see that they did have weapons to the trained eye."

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