July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike

On July 12, 2007, a series of air-to-ground attacks were conducted by a team of two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, New Baghdad, during the Iraqi insurgency which followed the invasion of Iraq. On April 5, 2010, the attacks received worldwide coverage and controversy following the release of 39 minutes of gunsight footage by the Internet whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The footage was portrayed as classified,Leaked U.S. video shows deaths of Reuters' Iraqi staffers
. Reuters. but the individual who leaked it, U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning, testified in 2013 that the video was not classified. The video, which WikiLeaks titled ''Collateral Murder'', showed the crew firing on a group of men and killing several of them, then laughing at some of the casualties, all of whom were civilians, including two Reuters journalists. An anonymous U.S. military official confirmed the authenticity of the footage, which provoked global discussion on the legality and morality of the attacks.

In the first strike, the crews of two Apaches directed 30 mm cannon fire at a group of ten Iraqi men, including some armed, standing less than 100 meters away from U.S. ground troops at a location where insurgents earlier that day had attacked an American Humvee with small arms fire. Among the group were two Iraqi war correspondents working for Reuters, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. Seven men (including Noor-Eldeen) were killed during this first strike; Saeed Chmagh, who was injured, later died in a hospital.

The second strike, also using 30 mm rounds, was directed at a van whose driver, Saleh Matasher Tomal, appeared to happen to drive by and who proceeded to help the wounded Chmagh. However, the long version of the video shows that this van had already been targeted by one Apache (Crazyhorse 1/8), prior to the second strike, as it traveled south toward the Reuters employees who were simultaneously targeted by the other Apache (Crazyhorse 1/9) as they walked with the group of men north on the same road toward the van. Minutes after the first engagement ended, the van returned traveling in an opposite direction (north) once again on this same road. Two men assisting in the rescue effort were from a group of five standing at an intersection – seen in the upper right corner of the video when the Reuters employees arrive in the courtyard – reported to Apaches as being a second position combatants were using to attack the Humvee. Both of these men, Chmagh and Tomal, were killed in the second strike, and two of Tomal's children were badly wounded.

In a third strike, Apache pilots watched people, including some armed men, run into a building and engaged that building with several AGM-114 Hellfire missiles.

Context

According to Tom Raju, a reporter at CNN, "the soldiers of Bravo Company, 2–16 Infantry had been under fire all morning from rocket-propelled grenades and small arms on the first day of Operation Ilaaj in Baghdad". Al Jazeera stated that the Army had received "reports of small arms fire", but were unable to positively identify the gunmen. Apache helicopters were called in by a soldier in the Humvee (Hotel 2–6) under attack from the same position used by Namir Noor-Eldeen to photograph the vehicle. According to a military review, soldiers in that company "had been under sporadic small arms and rocket propelled grenade fire since" the operation—described as "clearing their sector and looking for weapons caches"—began.

The Air Weapons Team (AWT) of two Apache AH-64s from the 1st Cavalry Division had been requested by the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment (2–16), 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, before July 12 to support Operation Ilaaj. Tasked to conduct escort, armed reconnaissance patrols, and counter-IED and counter-mortar operations, the two helicopters left Camp Taji at 9:24 a.m. They arrived on station in New Baghdad at 9:53 a.m., where sporadic attacks on coalition forces continued.

Incidents

Attack on personnel

In the video on the morning of July 12, 2007, the crews of two United States Army AH-64 Apache helicopters observe a gathering of men near a section of Baghdad in the path of advancing U.S. ground troops, some armed with AKMs and RPGs. The crew estimates the group is twenty men. Among the group are two journalists working for Reuters, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. While the two are carrying media cards, a military officer claimed they were not wearing distinctive clothing identifying themselves as such. Noor-Eldeen has a camera and Chmagh is talking on his mobile phone.

A crew member requests authorization to engage after seeing five or six of the men moving in the direction of U.S. soldiers. A long shadow cast on the ground by a telephoto lens on Noor-Eldeen's camera is misidentified by the pilot as an additional RPG aimed at him and a U.S. Army Humvee directly below his aircraft. One second later he screams, "He's got an RPG!" Noor-Eldeen fails to photograph the Apache but three pictures of the U.S. Humvee appear on his camera's memory card when it was recovered by U.S. soldiers. The men become obscured behind a building as the Apache moves around the group. Both helicopters strafe a group of ten men with 30 mm rounds once they became visible again. After the lead helicopter fires, one of the crew shouts "Hahaha. I hit 'em" and another member of the crew responds "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards".

Seven men were killed, including Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh, with three others being wounded. Once the group is eliminated, the Apache pilots direct the ground troops to move up to the position of the attack to clear the area.

Attack on a van

As the ground troops advanced, a wounded Chmagh was seen crawling and attempting to stand. As the U.S. soldiers moved towards the site of the attack, a van stopped near Chmagh. The military said that the van was "fair game under Army rules" , because it had no visible markings to suggest it was an ambulance or a protected vehicle. The Apache crew alerted the ground troops of the van and requested permission to engage the vehicle before the ground troops arrived. The Apache crew saw unarmed men exit the vehicle and move to Chmagh. The Apache crew requested permission to engage, stating it "looks like he menpossibly, picking up bodies and weapons" from the scene, and repeated their request to shoot, before they received permission to begin firing on the van and its occupants. Chmagh was killed along with three other men, while two children, not known to be in the van to the U.S. forces, were injured. The children, a girl and boy, suffered injuries. The girl suffered from a stomach wound and glass in her eyes, and the boy a head injury. Just as the van was destroyed, U.S. ground troops made their final turn and arrived on the road with the van. The Apache crew then alerted the ground troops that they believed that they could see an injured child moving around inside the destroyed van. On the video, it is then seen that Army soldiers establish a perimeter around the site and extract the children from the burning van. When the helicopter pilots discover that they have killed a number of Iraqi civilians and wounded two children, one of them is heard to say: "Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle".

Attack on a building

The ground troops that secured the site of the first two strikes then receive small arms fire from nearby buildings.

There is a period of 20 minutes not included on the leaked tape. According to the internal legal review, the helicopters engaged a group of armed insurgents, and that some were seen entering a nearby building.

As the tape resumes, two men, one holding an AK-47, are seen walking. They split up and the footage follows one who appears to be armed. He walks into a building which has been identified as the source of fire at U.S. ground troops. They request permission to fire a missile at the building, describing it as "abandoned" or "under construction". The ground controller responds, "If you've ositively identifiedthe individuals in the building with weapons, go ahead and engage the building". As the pilot positions the helicopter to attack the building, two unarmed men walk towards, and perhaps into, the building. As the gunner fires the first missile, another man is seen walking along the street in front of the building. The missile hits the building, and the man is caught in the explosion. The crew then reposition the helicopter and fire two more missiles into the upper floors of the building

Commentary

WikiLeaks said in the preface to one of their videos of the incident that "some of the men appear to have been armed lthoughthe behavior of nearly everyone was relaxed" in the introductory text of the shorter video. Julian Assange said "permission to engage was given before the word 'RPG' was ever used". Politifact stated: "When Assange points out in the context of justifying the title 'Collateral Murder' that the word 'RPG' was not used until after permission to engage was given, he leaves the impression that the soldiers were given the okay to open fire on a group of unarmed men, or men believed to be unarmed. But the video and accompanying audio make clear that the soldiers in the helicopter said they spotted 'weapons' among those in the group—later identified by an internal army investigator as an AK-47 and an RPG." Assange later said "Based upon visual evidence, I suspect there probably were AKs and an RPG, but I'm not sure that means anything". The legal review carried out by the U.S. Army stated that the two children were evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital via Forward Operating Base Loyalty, then transferred to an Iraqi medical facility the next day.

Fox News said that of the attack "WikiLeaks appears to have done selective editing that tells only half the story. For instance, the Web site takes special care to slow down the video and identify the two photographers and the cameras they are carrying. …The Web site does not slow down the video to show that at least one man in that group was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a clearly visible weapon that runs nearly two-thirds the length of his body. WikiLeaks also does not point out that at least one man was carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. He is seen swinging the weapon below his waist while standing next to the man holding the RPG."

''The Guardian'' stated "It is unclear if some of the men are armed but Noor-Eldeen can be seen with a camera". Glenn Greenwald of ''Salon.com'' said that "the vast majority of the men were clearly unarmed". Greenwald called the second airstrike a "plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety". ''The Australian'' newspaper said the group was displaying "no obvious hostile action".

In ''The Independent'' on April 8, 2010, human rights activist Joan Smith wrote that the engagements were like a game to the helicopter crew. She wrote that the co-pilot urged a dying, unarmed journalist to pick up a weapon as he tried to crawl to safety and that "the Apache crew open dfire on civilians". When the crew were informed that a child had been injured by their attack, one initially responded, "Ah damn. Oh well", and a minute later continued, "Well, it's their fault for bringing kids into a battle". Smith describes this reaction as inhuman. She draws parallels with soldiers who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder in earlier wars. She continued, "the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are inflicting huge psychological damage on combatants". In refusing to recognize this, the US military fails both its own soldiers and their victims. She concluded that command structures need to be in place to identify "combatants with serious psychological problems".

On ''Democracy Now!'', Josh Stieber, who was at the time assigned to Bravo Company 2–16, said that although it's natural to "judge or criticize the soldiers", in fact "this is how heywere trained to act". He said that the debate should be re-framed, that it is more appropriate to ask "questions of the larger system" that teaches "doing these things is in the best interests of my own country". In 2009, Stieber left the military as a conscientious objector and became a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. In a later interview on the ''World Socialist Web Site'', Stieber said that the attack "exposes so clearly the fallacy of using war as a tool of foreign policy or as a way to supposedly spread 'freedom and democracy' around the world".

Ethan McCord, a soldier who arrived on the scene after the attack, stated in an interview for the ''Australian Broadcasting Corporation'':

On June 7, 2010, ''The New Yorker'' reported that Kristinn Hrafnsson, an investigative reporter who worked on the Collateral Murder video and later became a spokesman for WikiLeaks, said he had found the owner of the building involved in the incident. The owner told him that three families were living in the building and seven residents had died, including his wife and daughter. The report stated that the helicopter crew did not know how many people were in the building when they destroyed it with missiles, and that "there is evidence that unarmed people have both entered and are nearby". It concluded that an investigating officer would want to know how the armed men were identified as combatants from the earlier engagement; would question the nature of the collateral-damage estimate carried out by the crew before the missiles were launched; and would wish to determine whether a missile attack was a proportionate response to the threat.

A Pentagon spokesman said the video did not contradict the official finding that the helicopters' crew acted within the rules of engagement and said that the inquiry backed the assessment that the group of men were carrying a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).

Assange stated that the attack on the van was the most damning part of the video: "I'm very sceptical that was done under the rules of engagement; and, if it was legal, the rules of engagement must be changed". Fox News reported in 2010 that the rules of engagement in Iraq had not been changed since the incident occurred.

2007–2009 coverage

On the day of the attack the U.S. military reported that the two journalists were killed along with nine insurgents, and that the helicopter engagement was related to a U.S. troop raid force that had been attacked by small-arms fire and RPGs. U.S. forces spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Scott Bleichwehl later stated: "There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force".

''The Washington Post'' reported it was unclear whether the journalists were killed by U.S. fire or by shooting from the targeted Iraqis. Captain James Hall stated they couldn't drive in Bradleys in fear of running over bodies. Major Brent Cummings claimed they took great pains to prevent the loss of innocent civilian lives.

Reuters reported that it could locate no witnesses who had seen gunmen in the immediate area. Reuters also stated that local police described the attack as "random American bombardment". Reuters subsequently asked the U.S. military to probe the deaths. They asked for an explanation of the confiscation of the journalists' two cameras, access to the on-board footage and voice communications from the helicopters involved, and access to the reports of the units involved in the incident, particularly logs of weapons taken from the scene.

On July 25, 2007, during an off-the-record briefing in Baghdad by the U.S. military, two Reuters editors were shown "less than three minutes of video from the Apache’s gun camera, up to the exact moment it opened fire the first time." The editors asked to see the remaining footage so Reuters could check whether it had been edited or manipulated. Their request was denied at the briefing and they were told to seek access under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Reuters requested a copy of the full video under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on the same day. In a personal statement during her court-martial, Chelsea Manning stated that the military had access to the video, and was actively examining it, yet it told Reuters in response to the FOIA request that the information might no longer exist. The Pentagon eventually blocked the FOIA request despite several follow-up requests by Reuters.

An internal legal review by staff at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in Iraq during July 2007 stated that the helicopters had attacked a number of armed insurgents within the rules of engagement, and that in an apparent case of civilian casualties two reporters working for Reuters had also been killed. The review was not released in full until 2010, after the video of the incident had been released by WikiLeaks.

After the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement", WikiLeaks released the classified Rules of Engagement for 2006, 2007 and 2008, revealing the rules before, during, and after the attacks.

''Washington Post'' reporter David Finkel, who at the time was embedded with Bravo Company 2–16 Infantry, later covered the incidents of the day in his book, ''The Good Soldiers''. At a February 2013 pretrial hearing, Manning stated that Finkel "was quoting, I feel in verbatim, the audio communications of the aerial weapons team crew". She said that she was "aghast" at Finkel's portrayal of the incident. "Reading his account," she explained, "one would believe the engagement was somehow justified as 'payback' for an earlier attack that led to the death of a soldier."

Coverage from 2010

Leaked video footage

Early in 2010, the Internet whistleblower site WikiLeaks made a public request for assistance in decrypting a video it described as "US bomb strikes on civilians", specifically requesting access to supercomputer time. The site stated on its Twitter account on January 8, 2010, that it had a copy of gunsight footage of the incidents. The footage was released during an April 5 press conference at the US National Press Club, and subsequently on a designated website titled ''Collateral Murder''. WikiLeaks stated that the footage shows the "murder of Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists".
WikiLeaks identified the leak's source as "a number of military whistleblowers". Speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, a U.S. Defense official confirmed the authenticity of the leaked audio and video. The military reported that it could not find its copy of the video.

WikiLeaks released a 39-minute version, which shows all three incidents, and a 17-minute version, which shows only the first two incidents. Highlighted in the 17-minute version of the video are Noor-Eldeen with a camera and Chmagh talking on his mobile phone. Both videos depict the attack on the van, van driver, and two other men, and the aftermath when the two seriously injured children were evacuated by U.S. ground forces who arrived on the scene. The longer video shows the third attack, in which Hellfire missiles were fired into a building.

Choice of title for the video

In an Al Jazeera English interview on April 19, 2010, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange explained why WikiLeaks titled the video ''Collateral Murder'':

Stephen Colbert, in an interview with Assange in April 2010, asked him about the title: "You have edited this tape, and you have given it a title called 'Collateral Murder'. That's not leaking, that's a pure editorial." Assange responded:

Colbert asked "So 'Collateral Murder' is to get political impact?" Assange responded:

Reactions to the video footage

On 19 April 2010, Ethan McCord, who appears on the ground in the video, and Josh Steiber, a member of the same company who was not present on the day, wrote an open Letter of Reconciliation & Responsibility to the Iraqi People apologising for the events in the video. They wrote that:

Ahlam Abdelhussein Tuman, the widow of the man who had been driving the van, and the mother of the children McCord had carried out, responded to the open letter in 2010:

Bill Keller of ''The New York Times'' wrote, "But in its zeal to make the video a work of antiwar propaganda, WikiLeaks also released a version that didn't call attention to an Iraqi who was toting a rocket-propelled grenade and packaged the manipulated version under the tendentious rubric ''Collateral Murder''." ''The New York Times'' wrote that "Critics contend that the shorter video was misleading because it did not make clear that the attacks took place amid clashes in the neighborhood and that one of the men was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade."

Captain Jack Hanzlik, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command stated that the airstrike video "gives you a limited perspective, tonly tells you a portion of the activity that was happening that day. Just from watching that video, people cannot understand the complex battles that occurred. You are seeing only a very narrow picture of the events". Hanzlik said images gathered during a military investigation of the incident show multiple weapons around the dead bodies in the courtyard, including at least three RPGs. "Our forces were engaged in combat all that day with individuals that fit the description of the men in that video. Their age, their weapons, and the fact that they were within the distance of the forces that had been engaged made it apparent these guys were potentially a threat." He said that WikiLeaks "does not point out that at least one man was carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. He is seen swinging the weapon below his waist while standing next to the man holding the RPG". The WikiLeaks edited video did not add arrows pointing to these men, or label them, as it did with the men carrying cameras. WikiLeaks stated that "some of the men appear to have been armed lthoughthe behavior of nearly everyone was relaxed" in the introductory text of the shorter video.

In an interview with Fox News Assange said that "it's likely some of the individuals seen in the video were carrying weapons" and "based upon visual evidence I suspect there probably were AKs and an RPG, but I'm not sure that means anything. ... Nearly every Iraqi household has a rifle or an AK. Those guys could have just been protecting their area". Fox News later stated that "although it could be argued AK-47 rifles are common household items, RPGs are not". A draft version of the video WikiLeaks produced made reference to the AK-47s and RPGs, but WikiLeaks said that ultimately they became unsure about the RPG, believing the long object could have been a camera tripod, so they decided not to point it out in the released version. Assange also said "it's ludicrous to allege that we have taken anything out of context in this video".

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticized WikiLeaks for releasing the video without providing any context. "These people can put out anything they want, and they're never held accountable for it. There's no before and there's no after". Gates said that the video provides the public with a view of warfare "as seen through a soda straw". Gates stated: "They're in a combat situation. The video doesn't show the broader picture of the firing that was going on at American troops. It's obviously a hard thing to see. It's painful to see, especially when you learn after the fact what was going on. But you—you talked about the fog of war. These people were operating in split second situations.".

''The New Yorker'' praised its release, calling it "a striking artifact—an unmediated representation of the ambiguities and cruelties of modern warfare".

Gabriel Schoenfeld, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, said of the airstrike:

Daniel Ellsberg, a former United States military analyst who was known for having leaked the Pentagon Papers to the media, said of the airstrike:

Subsequent mainstream media coverage

Publicity of the incident ballooned following the release of the footage. The event was covered by Al Jazeera English and Reuters, and later by ''The Washington Post'', ''The New York Times'', ''The Christian Science Monitor'', the BBC
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