Leaked Pentagon video reveals occupation’s brutality in Iraq

It is an absolutely chilling demonstration of cold-blooded murder. A U.S. Apache gunship circles a Baghdad neighborhood looking for “targets” — people to kill. A military video shows the intended targets through superimposed crosshairs: a group of men dressed in civilian clothes, no masks, no apparent weapons, casually sauntering along a street and into a small square.

The film is eerily silent except for staccato radio messages between the helicopter, command headquarters and nearby troops on the ground.

The gunship crew believe they have spotted a weapon being carried by one of the men and ask for clearance to “engage.” Given the go-ahead by their base commander, the gun crew in the helicopter unleash a hail of machinegun and rocket fire, mowing down over a dozen human beings. The helicopter continues to circle, its sights homed in on a wounded man trying to crawl to safety, as the crew wonder aloud whether to kill him or not.

A short time later a civilian van appears on the ground. The gunship excitedly reports that the van is picking up bodies and survivors and asks for clearance to engage. The van is hit with a barrage of machinegun fire and a missile. More people lie dead around the van.

The helicopter advises the ground troops to “look for a pile of dead bodies.” One of the troops on the ground exclaims: “Hey! I think I just ran over a body” and chuckles. However, as they search the destroyed van, the soldiers find, not gun-toting insurgents, but two dead Reuters journalists and two badly wounded children. “Well, they shouldn’t bring their children to the battle,” remarks someone in the gunship. The soldier on the ground agrees.

The video, which was classified, was surreptitiously leaked to and decoded by a website known as WikiLeaks and released on April 5. This means that someone connected to the Pentagon — perhaps a soldier fed up with the U.S. role in Iraq — has put human interests ahead of so-called loyalty to the empire.

The most immediate reaction to the release was hostility from sources as varied as Fox News, the New York Times, and the New York Daily News. CBS News ran a shortened version of the 17-minute film on WikiLeaks, leaving out some of the most egregious comments by the soldiers.

When the Department of Defense investigated the incident, which occurred in 2007, it found “no violations of the rules of engagement.” According to the BBC, the Pentagon is trying to retrieve the original tapes of the film from the crew who were involved.

Most of the recent debate over the release of the video has centered on whether or not the U.S. military was justified in firing at the people on the ground. Apologists for the military claim to see men carrying weapons in the video. Others claim that what is seen is a tripod for a large camera.

Remarkably, none of the critics of the video finds anything unusual or threatening about men walking, not running, and then gathering in a small group in the middle of a street with a military helicopter hovering overhead. One also might wonder what danger is posed by a civilian van trying to pick up dead and wounded people.

But debate over the details misses the main point.

Of course, the behavior and attitudes of the U.S. troops were inexcusable. Many might claim they were “just doing their job.” Their “job,” however, was the completely unjustified occupation of a country and the slaughter of people who never attacked or threatened them in any way. That is the real cause of this atrocity.

The U.S. government and ruling class know very well that a war of occupation inevitably leads to brutalization of the young men and women who are placed in that situation. Ultimately, every man, woman and child in the occupied country becomes an “enemy.”

Progressive people around the world must demand that all U.S. occupations cease and the perpetrators of this and all other U.S. war crimes — not just the individual soldiers but their commanders — be brought to justice before the people of the world.