Spare Me

Yesterday was a trip down memory lane as all of the usual left-wing suspects got their outrage on over the video below, released by the website WikiLeaks.org.

The long version is this one:

In the incident from July 12, 2007, two local photographers for Reuters were killed by US helicopters when they attacked a group of suspected insurgents in Baghdad. The original press release at the time from MNF-Iraq is here. 

You can watch the videos yourself and come to your own conclusions, but I watched them both and came to these:

1. As Rob also notes, the short video fails to provide context. Ground troops called in air support because they were taking small arms fire from the area that the men were in. We are missing in both videos the discussions that lead to the incident. 
2.  The helicopter crew may have misidentified a camera as an RPG, or maybe not. Towards the end of the long video, ground troops announce the discovery of an RPG round under one of the dead bodies. Regardless, at least two of the men in the group are armed with rifles, probably AK-47s. Some people have excused that because in Iraq each household is allowed to own one of such a weapon. That's in their house though. Carrying an AK-47 on the streets of Baghdad and not in an official capacity made you a legitimate target in 2007. 
3. Regarding the van with two children in it that was destroyed: It was common practice for insurgents to try to remove the wounded and their weapons before ground forces arrived so both could be used to fight another day. Preventing that was a legitimate use of force against an unmarked vehicle. As for the kids, the helicopter crew was clearly unaware that they were children. If anyone must be blamed for their injuries, it's the asshole who drove kids into the middle of a skirmish. Seriously, what the hell is up with that?
4. If one wants to look for violations of the Geneva Conventions, how about taking a look at the requirement for combatants to dress in a manner that clearly distinguishes them from the civilian population?  

That last point is the most galling to me. All through the Iraq War we got a lot of selective outrage at alleged incidents by Coalition Forces and absolute dead silence at the brutal war crimes of the insurgents, unless it was to blame the US for not providing security. What we are getting here is much the same reflexive anti-American crap. This was not murder by a long shot. I'm not even sure it was a mistake, though I'm sure that killing two journalists was unintended. If you hang out with insurgents who dress like civilians, making you indistinguishable from them, it's only a matter of time before your luck runs out. I don't mean that to sound as callous as it does, but there's a certain inevitability there that just is a fact.

Update: Case Closed. There's some context there that should pretty much show you that WikiLeaks has morphed into a bunch of hacks. Too bad.