I just saw this post on on Pharyngula and I felt the need to share it. It’s very hard to watch, though. This is leaked video of an American helicopter (complete with subtitled dialogue) mistaking a crowd that included two Iraqi Reuters journalists for armed combatants and opening fire on them, and later opening fire on a van that came to rescue the survivors. Inside the van were two children.

Personally, I believe this to be a mistake. From reading the rather creepy dialogue between the airship and their commanders, it seems to me that they legitimately mistook the situation. How that happened I’m not sure, but I can easily understand that it’s not easy to make these kinds of judgements at these moments. The morbidity and bloodthirstiness of the dialogue is also, in my mind, understandable. These are kids being armed with guns and placed in a real life video game, it can’t be easy on the psyche.

My problem ultimately comes from the fact that this unfortunate accident (assuming that is what it is) was then covered up by the Americans. Reuters demanded through the Freedom Of Information Act to see the footage, and did not receive it. This is utterly disgusting, and shows the cowardice of the people who make these calls. You cannot assume that every altercation in a war will go as planned and that every body is an enemy; our military fiction is filled with mistaken murders. Add to that what Roger Waters calls “the bravery of being out of range”, and you have all the potential in the world for these situations to occur. But lying about it afterwards and trying to keep the truth out of the eyes of the public is disgusting.

Whatever your stance on the wars we are fighting, this is a tragedy. My thoughts go out to the families of the dead.

Jim