04/07/10 – New updates below
And those reporters paid the price for their ignorance.
What unbelievable knuckleheads the left and the MSM are.
Making the rounds over the last few days is this video in which Wikileaks says there were unarmed civilian reporters who were killed for no other reason than they had cameras.
Complete and utter bulls&%t.
This was 2007 people. There was still a war going on. And it sucks that the reporters deemed it necessary to embed themselves with the enemy, but they knew full well what the results might be.
Rusty at The Jawa Report has screen shots of the video clearly showing that the men they were milling about with were armed, that there was in fact RPG’s amongst them and that they appeared about to engage American troops. If you’re a civilian and you stick around with that crowd you will pay the price, and that’s what happened here.
On top of this the lefties and the media are up in arms about the van that came to pick up the wounded.
But you drive your van into an active military engagement? What the hell were you thinking?
You are stupid. Innocent, but stupid. You’re asking to be killed.
And if you brought children into the midsts of an ongoing military engagement that makes you more than stupid: it makes you criminally negligent.
“It’s their fault for bringing their kids to a battle,” says one of the Americans on the video. Indeed it is.
People, this is war. This happens in war. It can’t be avoided. If you want to end civilian casualties then end war. Start by asking armed Islamists to put down their weapons. But you won’t do that because your real objection isn’t war, it’s America. Which is why anti-war activists around the globe never protest al-Qaeda, only America.
They’re not anti-war, they’re anti-American.
Again, watch it. It’s tragic, yes. War is tragic.
…the video clearly shows that the vehicle in question bore no markings of a rescue vehicle at all, and the men who ran out of the van to grab the wounded man wore no uniforms identifying themselves as such. Under any rules of engagement, and especially in a terrorist hot zone like Baghdad in 2007, that vehicle would properly be seen as support for the terrorists that had just been engaged and a legitimate target for US forces. While they didn’t grab weapons before getting shot, the truth is that the gunships didn’t give them the chance to try, either — which is exactly what they’re trained to do. They don’t need to wait until someone gets hold of the RPG launcher and fires it at the gunship or at the reinforcements that had already begun to approach the scene. The gunships acted to protect the approaching patrol, which is again the very reason we had them in the air over Baghdad.
Baghdad in July 2007 was a very violent place, and the neighborhoods of Sadr City and New Baghdad were breeding grounds for the Mahdi Army and associated Iranian-backed Shia terror groups. The city was a war zone. To describe the attack you see in the video as “murder” is a sensationalist gimmick that succeeded in driving tons of media attention and traffic to Wikileaks’ website.
Couple lessons here.
The left will believe anything that makes Americans and it’s heroes appear like bloodlusting murderers. Case in point, Haditha.
The other two lessons is for future reporters and “rescuers”
Number 1, don’t embed with RPG toting terrorists and you won’t be fired upon by gunships. Number 2, if you’re gonna drive a vehicle into a combat scene to save the day, put something on the vehicle that would identify you as a rescuer.
Nuff’ said.
UPDATE
Doug Ross posts on the video with some great still shots clearly showing the weapons mentioned earlier. Check it out here:
Yes, there was a huge cover-up, which is why CENTCOM released the results of the entire freaking investigation, only to have it cleverly edited into an infomercial and fundraising vehicle for the enemies of America.
UPDATE
A spokesman for U.S. Central Command was interviewed by Fox:
The problem, according to many who have viewed the video, is that WikiLeaks appears to have done selective editing that tells only half the story. For instance, the Web site takes special care to slow down the video and identify the two photographers and the cameras they are carrying.
However, the Web site does not slow down the video to show that at least one man in that group was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a clearly visible weapon that runs nearly two-thirds the length of his body.
WikiLeaks also does not point out that at least one man was carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. He is seen swinging the weapon below his waist while standing next to the man holding the RPG.
“It gives you a limited perspective,” said Capt. Jack Hanzlik, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command. “The video only tells you a portion of the activity that was happening that day. Just from watching that video, people cannot understand the complex battles that occurred. You are seeing only a very narrow picture of the events.”
Hanzlik said images gathered during a military investigation of the incident show multiple weapons around the dead bodies in the courtyard, including at least three RPGs.
“Our forces were engaged in combat all that day with individuals that fit the description of the men in that video. Their age, their weapons, and the fact that they were within the distance of the forces that had been engaged made it apparent these guys were potentially a threat,” Hanzlik said.
Military officials have also pointed out that the men in the video are the only people visible on those streets. That indicated something was going on and that these individuals still felt they could walk freely, one official told Fox News.
And now the Wikileaks editor and founder admits that yeah, maybe their were weapons but they were just protecting their area by firing upon US soldiers:
Julian Assange, a WikiLeaks editor, acknowledged to Fox News in an interview Tuesday evening that “it’s likely some of the individuals seen in the video were carrying weapons.”
Assange said his suspicions about the weapons were so strong that a draft version of the video they produced made specific reference to the AK-47s and RPGs. Ultimately, Assange said, WikiLeaks became “unsure” about the weapons. He claimed the RPG could have been a camera tripod, so editors decided not to point it out.
“Based upon visual evidence I suspect there probably were AKs and an RPG, but I’m not sure that means anything,” Assange said. Nearly every Iraqi household has a rifle or an AK. Those guys could have just been protecting their area.”
Oh, and lets take a look at this Julian Assange, courtesy of The Jawa Report:
An email from armaros points out that Wiki Leak founder Julian Assange likes to hang out on Truther websites and give them interviews.
He claims to defend citizens privacy against state surveillance but publishes personal SMS messages from 911 victims and their families.
And he writes for the antii-American far Left Counterpunch.
See author page