Yesterday, I read an Alternet article about how Wikileaks planned to release a video today (April 5^th) that shows innocent civilians being killed by our military in Baghdad. They even held a press conference with the National Press Club this morning about the releasing of this video. Through a Twitter search, I finally found the full version of this video this morning on YouTube.

This video, on its own, may or may not be as damning as the hype that has surrounded it. I say may or may not because there is much room to dispute just what’s happening on the ground. Nevertheless, at least one analysis I’ve come across has identified two of the men that are fired upon by the gunner as Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh, whose deaths Reuters has been trying to investigate since 2007. Reuters has also written about the release of this video.

But again, this video doesn’t show an indiscriminate slaying as the site Collateral Murder claims, a site Wikileaks made for the releasing of this video. After viewing this full video at least twice, it really does look like the gunner and pilot of the Apache helicopter had legitimate reasons for fearing that they or their accompanying units were in danger.

Before I go further, I should admit that I’m no military expert. Studying this video has helped me to learn more about combat/military jargon and operations, and I admit to being quite the novice on these subjects. I will explain what I gather from this footage as clearly as I can and base my descriptions on the descriptions of events given by the personnel in the video. So if this sounds like my first analysis of combat footage, that’s because it is.

Essentially, this video begins with two Apache helicopter operators, a pilot and a gunman, identified by the call sign Crazyhorse One Eight circling around a group of men on the ground who they spot carrying weapons. From 1:43 to 2:03, you can certainly tell that some of them are carrying weapons. However, some of the men carry what look like weapons at first glance, but are clearly bags. In fact, one of them is carrying something that looks a lot like a camera. The men carrying those bags have been identified by numerous media outlets as the Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his assistant Saeed Chmagh.

At 2:06, Crazyhorse One Eight requests permission to engage their targets and it is granted by their commander with the call sign Hotel Two Six. Where things get quite confusing is at 2:32, where the Apache gunner spots a man crouching behind a wall carrying what very convincingly looks like an RPG, who truly appears to be part of the group of men on the ground. It is this suspicious looking activity that eventually prompt Crazyhorse One Eight to shoot all the men in that group. Before they shoot, Crazyhorse One Eight’s pilot (it sounds like) says Yeah, we had a guy shooting— and now he’s behind the building. It is not clear from the video if there was any firing in that area, but later, when a commander asks who called in the strike, Hotel Two Six responds I believe that was me. They had AK-47s and were to our east, where we were taking small arms fire again suggesting that there was a firefight of some kind during the strike on the group of men. A little before that at 11:33, Hotel Two Six mentions how there were men with AK-47s near a dirt pile break and how men with RPGs were recently killed. It is not totally clear whether or not he is referring to the men killed by Crazyhorse One Eight or a previous incident.

To make matters more confusing, Crazy Horse One Eight spots a van with men who are picking up the bodies. According to Michael Collins of the Daily Censored, Recent investigation in Baghdad by WikiLeaks and their Icelandic media partners confirmed that the van was driven by the father of two taking his children to tutoring. Unfortunately, at 8:21, Crazyhorse One Eight requests permission to engage the van, and shortly after it’s granted, they engage it and all of the people in and around it.

At 17:09, Bravo 7 (which is probably Bushmaster 7) reports that there are eleven Iraqi KIA and one small child wounded. The operators of Crazyhorse One Eight make very disparaging comments about this revelation, which certainly fuels views of them firing indiscriminately, but hardly validates it. Later at 27:30, Bushmaster 6 reports that there are two civilian children casualties

The last combat event in this video is of Crazyhorse One Eight firing missiles (with permission) into a building where they spotted armed men entering, close to where they had previously engaged. At 31:10, you can see men carrying what appear to be assault rifles. Before this, at 30:30, Bushmaster 4 tells Crazyhorse One Eight, I can hear small arms fire from your engagement area at [coordinates], suggesting that these missiles were in response to that fire.

It is no good at all that this is our only window to this event. If there was more transparency here, then it would be easier to tell just what mistakes were made. From the video, it strongly looks like mistakes were made, I’d even venture to say, by both the men on the ground (if the Reuters journalists were indeed among them, which, sadly, I’m starting to suspect they were) as well as by the military. The gentleman at 2:32 with the RPG very understandably alarms the men in the helicopter. Based on the intelligence that it seems they were provided with, firing on the men on the ground seemed well within their protocols. Why was that man crouching behind a wall with such a weapon? They had to have known the helicopter was above them and that such a combat ready position would inspire them to protect themselves and their unit.

In addition, the military should have known that Reuters reporters were there. It appears that there was a lack of communication regarding that crucial piece of intelligence, and the lack of it caused the gunner and his pilot to assume the worst. I would not be surprised if that event indeed inspired greater communication between the media and the military. Based on such limited information, I couldn’ possibly solely attribute blame to anyone. My main point is that this video does not show indiscriminate killings. The group fired upon were discriminated by the weapons they carried (but some were actually bags and not weapons) and the frightening movements of the gentleman with the RPG. The military doesn’t make the situation any better by holding off their investigation of this matter, which obviously prompted Wikileaks to leak the video eventually. The harassment that Wikileaks has experienced since it was learned they had the video does not help our government’s case in the slightest, but I am quite eager to hear their side of the story.

In a little, I will add below a list of what I believe are places of great interest in this video, provided that it remains on YouTube. Please let me know your thoughts.