There you go at least you know right and wrong its common sense 101, which we don't see in video
There's much more to the video than just the images. You all might want to read the account of the soldier who was there on that day, the one seen in the video carrying the small girl.
Read up and decide before jumping to conclusions.
U.S. Soldier on 2007 Apache Attack: What I Saw
Ethan McCord had just returned from dropping his children at school earlier this month, when he turned on the TV news to see grainy black-and-white video footage of a soldier running from a bombed-out van with a child in his arms. It was a scene that had played repeatedly in his mind the last three years, and he knew exactly who the soldier was.
In July 2007, McCord, a 33-year-old Army specialist, was engaged in a firefight with insurgents in an Iraqi suburb when his platoon, part of Bravo Company, 2-16 Infantry, got orders to investigate a nearby street. When they arrived, they found a scene of fresh carnage the scattered remains of a group of men, believed to be armed, who had just been gunned down by Apache attack helicopters. They also found 10-year-old Sajad Mutashar and his five-year-old sister Doaha covered in blood in a van. Their 43-year-old father, Saleh, had been driving them to a class when he spotted one of the wounded men moving in the street and drove over to help him, only to become a victim of the Apache guns.
McCord was captured in a video shot from one helicopter as he ran frantically to a military vehicle with Sajad in his arms seeking medical care. That classified video created its own firestorm when the whistleblower site Wikileaks posted it April 5 on a website titled Collateral Murder and asserted that the attack was unprovoked. More than a dozen people were killed in three attacks captured in the video, including two Reuters journalists, one carrying a camera that was apparently mistaken for a weapon.
McCord, who served seven years in the military before leaving in the summer of 2009 due to injuries, recently posted an apologetic letter online with fellow soldier Josh Steiber supporting the release of the video and asking the familys forgiveness. McCord is the father of three children.
Wireds Kim Zetter reached McCord at his home in Kansas. This is his account of what he saw.
Wired.com: At the time you arrived on the scene, you didnt know what had happened, is that right?
Ethan McCord: Right. We were engaged in our own conflict roughly about three or four blocks away. We heard the gunships open up. [Then] we were just told
to move to this [other] location. It was pretty much a shock when we got there to see what had happened, the carnage and everything else.
Wired.com: But you had been in combat before. It shouldnt have surprised you what you saw.
McCord: I have never seen anybody being shot by a 30-millimeter round before. It didnt seem real, in the sense that it didnt look like human beings. They were destroyed.
Wired.com: Was anyone moving when you got there other than the two children?
McCord: There were approximately two to three other people who were moving who were still somewhat alive, and the medics were attending to them.
Wired.com: The first thing you saw was the little girl in the van. She had a stomach wound?
McCord: She had a stomach wound and she had glass in her eyes and in her hair. She was crying. In fact, thats one of the reasons I went to the van immediately, because I could hear her crying. It wasnt like a cry of pain really. It was more of a child who was frightened out of her mind. And the next thing I saw was the boy
. He was kind of sitting on the floorboard of the van, but with his head laying on the bench seat in the front. And then the father, who Im assuming was the father, in the drivers seat slumped over on his side. Just from looking into the van, and the amount of blood that was on the boy and the father, I immediately figured they were dead.
So, the first thing I did was grab the girl. I grabbed the medic and we went into the back. Theres houses behind where the van was. We took her in there and were checking to see if there were any other wounds. You can hear the medic saying on the video, Theres nothing I can do here, she needs to be evacd. He runs the girl to the Bradley. I went back outside to the van, and thats when the boy took, like, a labored, breath. Thats when I started screaming, The boys alive! The boys alive! And I picked him up and started running with him over to the Bradley. He opened his eyes when I was carrying him. I just kept telling him, Dont die; dont die. He looked at me, then his eyes rolled back into this head.
Then I got yelled at by my platoon leader that I needed to stop trying to save these mfn kids and go pull security
. I was told to go pull security on a rooftop. When we were on that roof, we were still taking fire. There were some people taking pot shots, sniper shots, at us on the rooftop. We were probably there on the roof for another four to five hours.
Wired.com: How much sniper fire were you getting?
McCord: It was random sporadic spurts. I did see a guy
moving from a rooftop from one position to another with an AK-47, who was firing at us. He was shot and killed.
After the incident, we went back to the FOB [forward operating base] and thats when I was in my room. I had blood all down the front of me from the children. I was trying to wash it off in my room. I was pretty distraught over the whole situation with the children. So I went to a sergeant and asked to see [the mental health person], because I was having a hard time dealing with it. I was called a pussy and that I needed to suck it up and a lot of other horrible things. I was also told that there would be repercussions if I was to go to mental health.
Wired.com: What did you understand that to mean?
McCord: I would be smoked. Smoked is basically like youre doing pushups a lot, youre doing sit-ups
crunches and flutter kicks. Theyre smoking you, theyre making you tired. I was told that I needed to get the sand out of my vagina
. So I just sucked it up and tried to move on with everything.
Ive lived with seeing the children that way since the incident happened. Ive had nightmares. I was diagnosed with chronic, severe PTSD. [But] I was actually starting to get kind of better.
I wasnt thinking about it as much. [Then I] took my children to school one day and I came home and sat down on the couch and turned on the TV with my coffee, and on the news Im running across the screen with a child. The flood of emotions came back. I know the scene by heart; its burned into my head. I know the van, I know the faces of everybody that was there that day.
Wired.com: Did you try to get information about the two children after the shooting?
McCord: My platoon sergeant knew that I was having a hard time with it and that same night
he came into the room and he told me, hey, just so you know, both of the children survived, so you can suck it up now. I didnt know if he was telling me that just to get me to shut up and to do my job or if he really found something out. I always questioned it in the back of my mind.
I did see a video on YouTube after the Wikileaks [video] came out, of the children being interviewed.
When I saw their faces, I was relieved, but I was just heartbroken. I have a huge place in my heart for children, having some of my own. Knowing that I was part of the system that took their father away from them and made them lose their house
its heartbreaking. And that in turn is what helped me and Josh write the letter, hoping that it would find its way to them to let them know that were sorry. Were sorry for the system that we were involved in that took their fathers life and injured them. If theres anything I can to do help, I would be more than happy to.
Wired.com: Wikileaks presented the incident as though there was no engagement from insurgents. But you guys did have a firefight a couple of blocks away. Was it reasonable for the Apache soldiers to think that maybe the people they attacked were part of that insurgent firefight?
McCord: I doubt that they were a part of that firefight. However, when I did come up on the scene, there was an RPG as well as AK-47s there
. You just dont walk around with an RPG in Iraq, especially three blocks away from a firefight
. Personally, I believe the first attack on the group standing by the wall was appropriate, was warranted by the rules of engagement. They did have weapons there. However, I dont feel that the attack on the [rescue] van was necessary.
Now, as far as rules of engagement, [Iraqis] are not supposed to pick up the wounded. But they could have been easily deterred from doing what they were doing by just firing simply a few warning shots in the direction
. Instead, the Apaches decided to completely obliterate everybody in the van. Thats the hard part to swallow.
And where the soldier said [in the video], Well, you shouldnt take your kids to battle. Well in all actuality, we brought the battle to your kids. Theres no front lines here. This is urban combat and were taking the war to children and women and innocents.
There were plenty of times in the past where other insurgents would come by and pick up the bodies, and then wed have no evidence or anything to what happened, so in looking at it from the Apaches point of view, they were thinking that [someone was] picking up the weapons and bodies; when, in hindsight, clearly they were picking up the wounded man. But youre not supposed to do that in Iraq.
Wired.com: Civilians are supposed to know that theyre not supposed to pick up a wounded person crawling in the road?
McCord: Yeah. This is the problem that were speaking out on as far as the rules of engagement. How is this guy supposed to [decide] should I stop and pick them up, or is the military going to shoot me? If you or I saw someone wounded on the ground what is your first inkling? Im going to help that person.
Wired.com: There was another attack depicted in the video that has received little attention, involving a Hellfire and a building that was fired on.
McCord: I wasnt around that building when it happened. I was up on a rooftop at that time. However, I do know some soldiers went in to clear that building afterwards and there were some people with weapons in there, but there was also a family of four that was killed.
I think that a Hellfire missile is a little much to put into a building
. Theyre trained as soldiers to go into a building and clear a building. I do know that there was a teenage girl [in there], just because I saw the pictures when I was there, that one of the soldiers took.
Wired.com: Have you heard from any other soldiers since the video came out?
McCord: Ive spoken with one of the medics who was there. Hes no longer in the Army. When this video first came out, there was a lot of outrage by the soldiers, just because it depicted us as being callous, cruel, heartless people, and were not that way. The majority of us arent. And so he was pretty upset about the whole thing
. He kept saying,
we were there, we know the truth, theyre saying there was no weapons, there was.
Ive spoken with other soldiers who were there. Some of them [say] I dont care what anybody says
theyre not there.
Theres also some soldiers who joke about it [as a] coping mechanism. Theyre like, oh yeah, were the collateral murder company. I dont think that [the] big picture is whether or not [the Iraqis who were killed] had weapons. I think that the bigger picture is what are we doing there? Weve been there for so long now and it seems like nothing is being accomplished whatsoever, except for were making more people hate us.
Wired.com: Do you support Wikileaks in releasing this video?
McCord: When it was first released I dont think it was done in the best manner that it could have been. They were stating that these people had no weapons whatsoever, that they were just carrying cameras. In the video, you can clearly see that they did have weapons
to the trained eye. You can make out in the video [someone] carrying an AK-47, swinging it down by his legs
.
And as far as the way that the soldiers are speaking in the video, which is pretty callous and joking about whats happened
thats a coping mechanism. Im guilty of it, too, myself. You joke about the situations and whats happened to push away your true feelings of the matter.
Theres no easy way to kill somebody. You dont just take somebodys life and then go on about your business for the rest of the day. That stays with you. And cracking jokes is a way of pushing that stuff down. Thats why so many soldiers come back home and theyre no longer in the situations where they have other things to think about or other people to joke about what happened
and they explode.
I dont say that Wikileaks did a bad thing, because they didnt
. I think it is good that theyre putting this stuff out there. I dont think that people really want to see this, though, because this is war
. Its very disturbing.