Chelsea Manning and "Collateral Murder" video

by Debra Sweet     It's been 5 years since the video “Collateral Murder” hit.  Curt Wechsler writes  “Collateral Murder” occasioned vigorous government suppression of independent investigative reporting on the massacre of innocents.  The “random American bombardment” report by Iraqi police on the July 12, 2007 airstrike contradicts the official Army narrative that U.S. forces were being attacked. Witnesses at the scene told a different story. According to Karim Shindakh, ”The aircraft began striking randomly and people were wounded. A Kia [mini-van] arrived to take them away. They hit the Kia and killed … the two journalists." Leaked video footage documents 18 dead from 3 separate airstrikes.  read more

What's happened since April 5, 2010?

Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning was arrested, held in tortuous conditions, and eventually tried and convicted by the U.S. military in 2013 of 21 charges. She was not convicted of the most serious charge of aiding the enemy, but was sentenced to 35 years in military prison. Today, she is tweeting at @xychelsea, occasionally publishing thoughtful articles, and pursuing an appeal of the conviction.

In 2013, Manning made a voluntary declaration about leaking what came to be known as “Collateral Murder” to Wikileaks:

“...The fact neither CENTCOM or Multi National Forces Iraq or MNF-I would not voluntarily release the video troubled me further. It was clear to me that the event happened because the aerial weapons team mistakenly identified Reuters employees as a potential threat and that the people in the bongo truck were merely attempting to assist the wounded. The people in the van were not a threat but merely ‘good samaritans’. The most alarming aspect of the video to me, however, was the seemly delightful bloodlust they appeared to have...”

Julian Assange of Wikileaks is presumably still the target of a high level U.S. investigation for violating the Espionage Act of 1917, and remains in political asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Ethan McCord, who publicly identified himself as the soldier in Collateral Murder who pulled two children out of the vehicle destroyed by the U.S. Apache helicopter after killing the journalists and others, went on to speak out against the war.

Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen & his assistant Saeed Chmagh died in the Collateral Murder incident, July 12, 2007.

And what about the people in Iraq?

The destruction of Iraq by CENTCOM and the multinational forces, which was at its height during the “surge” of 2007, brought about the death of one million people and the displacement of 5 million. The “Collateral Murder” incident was but one piece of a war crime carried out by the U.S. — the ultimate crime against humanity, an aggressive war against a country which had not attacked it.

A country that carry out these kinds of crimes over and over again?
What can we possibly say — but it's definitely not fit to run the world.