c


 
 




c cWe begin today with a ÷

exclusive.
As the US Central Command says it has no plans to reopen an
investigation into the July 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen
people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff, we¶ll play never-
before-seen eyewitness interviews filmed the day after the attack.

Military lawyers have reportedly been reviewing the classified video of

the air strikes released by the website WikiLeaks on Monday. But Rear
Admiral Hal Pittman, director of communications at Central Command,
which oversees the war in Iraq, said in a statement to Reuters, quote,
³Central Command has no current plans to reinvestigate or review this
combat action.´

However, CENTCOM did make public a redacted series of records on

the case, including investigations days after the attack by the air
cavalry and infantry units that were involved in the incident. According
to an investigation by the 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, the military
concluded the aircrew, quote, ³accurately assessed that the criteria to
find and terminate the threat to friendly forces were met in accordance
with the law of armed conflict and rules of engagement.´

The chilling video footage taken from the US military helicopter shows
US forces indiscriminately firing on Iraqis in the New Baghdad
neighborhood of the Iraqi capital. The dead included two employees of
the Reuters news agency: photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver
Saeed Chmagh.


c
 cBefore we go to the exclusive interviews with
eyewitnesses to the attack, I want to play a short clip from that video
released by WikiLeaks. This is the moment the US forces first open fire
from a helicopter.

c
c c cThere, one o¶clock. Haven¶t seen anything since

then.
c c cJust [expletive]. Once you get on,
 dust open up.
c c cI am.
c c cI
see your element, got about four Humvees, out along this²

c c cYou¶re clear.
c c cAlright,
firing.
c c cLet me know when you¶ve got them.

c c cLet¶s shoot. Light µem all up.
c
c cCome on, fire!
c c cKeep shootin¶.
Keep shootin¶. Keep shootin¶. Keep shootin¶.
c c c
Hotel, Bushmaster two-six, Bushmaster two-six, we need to
move, time now!
c c cAlright, we dust engaged
all eight individuals.


c
 cMinutes later, the video shows US forces watching
as a van pulls up to evacuate the wounded. They again open fire from
the helicopter, killing several more people and wounding two children
inside the van.

c
c c cWhere¶s that van at?
c c cRight

down there by the bodies.
c c cOK, yeah.

c c cBushmaster, Crazy Horse. We have
individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly picking up
bodies and weapons.
c c cLet me engage. Can I
shoot?
c c cRoger. Break. Crazy Horse one-
eight, request permission to engage.
c c c
Picking up the wounded?
c c cYeah, we¶re trying
to get permission to engage. Come on, let us shoot!
c
c cBushmaster, Crazy Horse one-eight.
c
c cThey¶re taking him.
c c c
Bushmaster, Crazy Horse one-eight.
c c cThis is
Bushmaster seven, go ahead.
c c cRoger. We
have a black SUV²or Bongo truck picking up the bodies.
Request permission to engage.
c c cBushmaster
seven, roger. This is Bushmaster seven, roger. Engage.
c
c cOne-eight, engage. Clear.
c c c
Come on!
c c cClear. Clear.
c c c
We¶re engaging.
c c cComing around. Clear.

c c cRoger. Trying to²
c c c
Clear.
c c cI hear µem²I lost ¶em in the dust.

c c cI got ¶em.
c c cShould have
a van in the middle of the road with about twelve to fifteen
bodies.
c c cOh yeah, look at that. Right
through the windshield! Ha ha!

c
 cThe video is from the July 12th, 2007 attack on
Iraqi civilians by US troops, released Monday by the website
WikiLeaks.org.

Well, independent dournalists Rick Rowley and David Enders were on

the scene the very next day in 2007 and filed this exclusive report for
÷


c c cWe came to the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad one

day after a US attack helicopter strike that killed twelve Iraqis,
including a dournalist and a driver working with Reuters. The US
military claimed that they were under attack from rocket-
propelled grenades and small-arms fire and that all of the dead,
except for the two Reuters employees, were insurgents. But local
residents showed us the remains of a burnt-out van spattered
with blood and told us a different story.  c c
[translated] The helicopter came yesterday from there and
hovered around. Then it came right here where a group of
people were standing. They didn¶t have any weapons or arms of
any sort. This area doesn¶t have armed insurgents. They
destroyed the place and shot at people, and they didn¶t let
anyone help the wounded.  c c[translated] I swear
to God it was helicopters that attacked us. These people are all
witnesses. They attacked us twice, not once. c
 cAnother resident went on to describe what happened
to the man who tried to help the wounded.  c c
[translated] The driver went to carry the indured, who had been
shot in front of his eyes. While he was going to pick them up, the
pilot of the helicopter kept flying above, watching the scene.
They started firing at the wounded and the dead. The driver and
the two children were also there. The helicopter continued
shooting until none of the bodies were moving. c
 cWe asked the crowd of people what might have
prompted the attack, and they said that when the dournalist
arrived, residents quickly gathered around him.  c
 c[translated] The group of civilians had gathered here because
people need cooking oil and gas. They wanted to demonstrate in
front of the media and show that they need things like oil, gas,
water and electricity. The situation here is dramatically
deteriorating. The dournalists were walking around, and then the
Americans started shooting. They started shooting randomly and
targeted peaceful civilians from the neighborhood.
  c c[translated] There were children in the car.
Were they carrying weapons? There were two children.
 c c[translated] Do we help the wounded or kill
them? They killed all the wounded and drove over their bodies.
Everyone witnessed it. And the dournalist was among those who
was indured, and the armored vehicle drove over his body.
 c c[translated] The US forces, who call
themselves ³friendly´ forces, were telling us on speakers that
they were here to protect and help us. We heard those words
very clearly. But what we saw was the opposite of that. We
demand the American Congress and President Bush supervise
their soldiers¶ actions in Iraq. c cFor
÷

, this is Rick Rowley and Dave Enders with Big
Noise Films.


c
 cSpecial thanks to Alaa Madeed for assisting with the
translation of that piece.

Rick Rowley, doining us now in our studio, independent dournalist with

Big Noise Films, he¶s traveled to Iraq frequently as an unembedded
dournalist since the 2003 invasion.

So describe when you saw this WikiLeaks footage. You were there the
next day in 2007.

c cI saw²I first saw the story at midnight and realized

that we had been there, and the next morning rushed to check the
footage and found that, in fact, it was the same event.

But when we went out there that day, Dave and I, we weren¶t looking
to document an American massacre. We went to this neighborhood
because this is a neighborhood full of refugees. And as soon as we
arrived and got out of our car²you know, an experience that will be
common to all unembedded dournalists²we were instantly surrounded
by a crowd of people who took us to where the attack happened and
started telling their stories.

c cSo, in other words, when you went there, there

hadn¶t even been a military or public announcement of what had
happened the day before?

c cThere was a²Reuters had reported it, that it had

happened somewhere, but we didn¶t know the details, and we certainly
weren¶t looking for it. We were unembedded doing a story on refugees
and happened upon this neighborhood.

c cBut the military initially claimed that it was all

insurgents that had died, but obviously, as we have now seen, as the
world has now seen from the video, the soldiers in the helicopter
realized that children had been killed almost immediately.

c cYeah, I mean, the children were indured. They didn¶t

actually die.

c cI¶m sorry, indured.

c cBut yeah. I mean, the thing that was most chilling to
me about this, as an independent dournalist who works unembedded
often, is that when the reports came out²the military investigations
came out a few days later, you can read them all on the internet
now²and they basically²I mean, essentially they blamed the
reporters for causing this. They say they did three things wrong. First,
they failed to identify themselves to a helicopter gunship flying, I don¶t
know, hundreds of feet above their heads. Second, their proximity to
armed insurgents was reason for them to be killed. And third, their
furtive attempt to take a photograph of American troops.

I mean, so, first of all, there is no reason at all to believe or to

conclude that any of the people in that picture are armed insurgents. I
mean, you can see two men with Kalashnikovs, but this is 2007 in
Baghdad. This is the height of the civil war, when dozens of bodies a
day were being picked up from the street, when sectarian militias filled
the Iraqi security forces, the police and the army. Every neighborhood
in Baghdad organized its own protection force. And it was legal at the
time for every household to own a Kalashnikov in Iraq, and every
household I ever went to did. So the presence of two men, dangling at
their sides Kalashnikovs, in a crowd of civilians who have no weapons
at all, I mean, is absolutely no²I mean, it¶s²the whole thing is
ridiculous.


c
 cI want to play, Rick, another clip from the US
helicopter footage. Here, the voices in the cockpit laugh as a Bradley
tank drives over a body of one of the Iraqi victims.

c
c c cI think they dust drove over a body.
c

c cDid he?
c c cYeah!

c
 cThat is from the military¶s own footage. Again, this
is military footage from the Apache helicopter with those radio
transmissions of the soldiers speaking to each other. What did the
residents say about that body?

c cYeah, now, I mean, I¶m a dournalist, and I go and talk

to people and report what they said. And these residents came and
told me that the man who they drove over was alive, that he had
crawled out of the van that had been shot to pieces and that he was
still alive when the Americans drove over him and cut him in half,
basically, with a Bradley or tank or whatever armored vehicle they
were driving in.


c
 cWell, we¶re going to link to both the Army
documents of their initial investigation, as well as your piece and the
WikiLeaks.org footage. WikiLeaks says they got this footage from
someone within the military who wanted this information out. Thanks
very much, Rick Rowley.

c cThank you.


c
 cRick Rowley, independent dournalist with Big Noise
Films, who has traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan frequently as an
unembedded dournalist. He was at the site of the 2007 attack the next
day.