VivirLatino

I am not going to frame this video with my response to it–I am only going to say two things:

1. I give a massive trigger warning to all who watch this, in particular war survivors or those connected those who were in war. It is horrifying, disgusting, sickening. But it is essential it is seen. So those who are like me–who abhor violence, but will not be emotionally traumatized as a survivor would–I feel it is a duty to watch it. To see what it is being done in your name. And take responsibility for it.

2. As a US citizen, I forcefully denounce what these soldiers did in the name of the US government. As a child of immigrant parents and a member of the immigrant community, I suggest on the strongest terms possible that the pro-immigration activist community complicate and challenge the prevailing idea that we intend to “march for America” as a way to “win” pro-immigration agenda from the government that committed this horrific atrocities.

That said, please watch this video–if you can’t, please forward it as far and wide as you can.

via Huffington Post

A crewman begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded: “Come on, let us shoot!”

Calling it a case of “collateral murder,” the WikiLeaks Web site today released harrowing until-now secret video of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007 repeatedly opening fire on a group of men that included a Reuters photographer and his driver — and then on a van that stopped to rescue one of the wounded men.

None of the members of the group were taking hostile action, contrary to the Pentagon’s initial cover story; they were milling about on a street corner. One man was evidently carrying a gun, though that was and is hardly an uncommon occurrence in Baghdad.

Reporters working for WikiLeaks determined that the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session. He was killed and his two children were badly injured.

In the video, which Reuters has been asking to see since 2007, crew members can be heard celebrating their kills.

“Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,” says one crewman after multiple rounds of 30mm cannon fire left nearly a dozen bodies littering the street.

A crewman begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded: “Come on, let us shoot!”
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Two crewmen share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses.

And after soldiers on the ground find two small children shot and bleeding in the van, one crewman can be heard saying: “Well, it’s their fault bringing their kids to a battle.”