You need to read and view all the material to see the references. They clearly stated no one in that group was armed in the video.

It wasn't indiscriminate and it wasn't unprovoked. There were armed men in that group and there was a battle near by. No one disputes this. Not even Wikileaks.

You need to read the military report from what they were doing to get more of a picture.

@StG: It wasn't indiscriminate and it wasn't unprovoked.

I don't see that, unless you consider carrying a camera to be provocation. The soldiers mistook the camera for a weapon and as a result killed innocent people. It was an understandable mistake made by young men thinking could be killed at any second, but it was also a mistake with terrible consequences.

That I can accept. Wandering around in a war zone is a dangerous business.

What I can't accept is the military of what is supposed an open society trying to suppress the incident entirely; to pretend it didn't happen. I am sure that would not of happened if the news reporters killed were westerners - but they were Iraqis. So that is OK then?

Consider how it would of been treated if the military had come clean when the incident occurred. It would be yet another friendly fire incident, highly regrettable and certainly worthy of an internal investigation, but probably not much in the way of headlines.

Instead we now have news reporters annoyed by another military cover up, and enraged at their work mates been somehow treated as lesser beings. So WikiLeaks is engaged to do what it was set up to do - put the dirty laundry on display. And a web site created to highlight the injustice of it all.

And regardless of how threatened the soldiers felt, it was an injustice of the worse kind to those innocent men that were killed. Surely the least the military could do is acknowledge and apologise for the mistake, so everyone can get on with their lives.

Dear StG,

You say; “BUT, the use of "indiscriminate" and "unprovoked slaying" of "innocent civilians" turns out to a stretch at best. See this video that contains evidence of at least two being armed.”

But there was no footage of them wanting to engage the allied troops.

A quoted from defensetech.org “I agree with Bill Roggio that there is missing footage as no gunships would be cleared hot to shoot anybody carrying a weapon while just cruising around eastern Baghdad. With all of the many different militia hanging out in the city, good and bad, the often out of uniform Iraqi police, thousands of various security guards and just the average citizen carrying around AKs, half that city would have been mowed down.”
http://defensetech.org/2010/04/06/centcom-releases-report-on-apache-gun-camera-video/#axzz0kVg9KM8R

So there is something we are not seeing but going just on what Wikileaks has provided then what happened was wrong. A mistake was certainly made when the pilot thought the cameraman was armed and preparing to shoot. Take that out of the mix and on the face of it the attack certainly could be considered indiscriminate and unprovoked.

Another quote “There was apparently an extremely permissive ROE in effect during the operation because the statement from one of the Apache pilots says that after the attack that can be seen on the gun camera footage, the pilots spotted an individual(s) carrying an AK-47 enter a 3-story building. The pilots asked for and received clearance to fire and blasted the building with three Hellfire missiles, one in each floor, destroying the building. The statement says between 8 and 11 bodies were subsequently removed from the building.”

I have more reading to do.

Don't forget to search the military report regarding them being in the area and having taken fire from small arms and RPG's. The air wing was called in AFTER for air support. They DID correctly identify individuals with weapons. There is no doubt about that.

Yeah, they incorrectly ID'd the reporters. Never said they didn't. What is the reporter not exposing himself to as he crouches at the corner?. It isn't the choppers. IF it was they would've reacted already.

My issue ISN'T with the content of the video. IMO unarmed people WERE killed. It was unnecessary IMO for the van to be taken out, but what I have issue with is how WikiLeaks misrepresented the facts and totally left most facts out even though they are sitting on their website CLEARLY for everyone to see.

Troops found weapons. Fact.
Allied forces in the area. Fact.
Allied forces took fire from small arms and RPG's. Fact.
ROE's were not broken. Fact.

It's tragic the reporters died, but I'm sure they were WELL aware of the dangers of hanging with armed locals.

My issue is with WikiLeaks integrity on this topic.

So, if I understand you correctly, StG

>>My issue is with WikiLeaks integrity on this topic.<<

You are comfortable with the fact they released this previously suppressed footage of action in Baghdad

You are uncomfortable with their editorialising.

So uncomfortable, in fact, that you conclude that

>>this sets them back to an online conspiracy trash mag for me.<<

I would suggest that this is an overreaction.

We do need to be reminded every so often that engagements like this are nasty, and involve real people, some of whom are indeed "collateral damage".

I'm prepared to cut Wikileaks some slack on their purple prose, simply because I think footage like this *should* be seen.

If the item had been released by, say Al Jazeera, or the New York Times, or Libya's Jamahiriya News Agency, would the commentary have been more, or less emotional?

More to the point, would that commentary have enhanced, or diminished, the value of the information itself?

http://www.truthout.org/iraq-war-vet-we-were-told-just-shoot-people-and-officers-would-take-care-us58378

Having looked at your youtube offering.........