Editor,
I believe it is Ken Piniak who is misrepresenting the Apache gun camera video released by Wikileaks.
If you go to Wikileaks you will see the two versions of the video — both the full video which is about 40 minutes and the widely release 17:47 minute video. The shorter video is simply the fist half of the longer video. If you watch both of them, it is clear the only editing was for length. The longer video shows what happened after the shootings.
What the video clearly and unmistakably shows is a group of a dozen or so men dressed in civilian clothes walking through the street and then stopping and talking on a street corner. Yes, two of them pretty clearly have weapons — an AK47 and an RPG. But pretty much everyone in Baghdad has a gun.
These men were not doing anything suspicious and were not trying to fire at or hide from the Apache helicopter, even though they appear to have seen it. They were milling about in broad daylight in the middle of the street. There is no way from the video to tell if the reporters were wearing any press labeling on them.
The van that was later shot at was not clearly marked as an ambulance. But neither was it obviously a military vehicle of any kind. It was, however, clearly providing first aid.
And herein lies the problem. In Iraq and Afghanistan, as in Vietnam before, we can not tell who is with us or against us. But that doesn’t give us the right to shoot whomever we want. In fact, every time we kill a civilian or an ally, we create 10 more enemies. It is a no-win situation and for a war we never should have started in the first place. And it places all the burden of an immoral, ill-advised and mistaken foreign policy on a handful of honorable soldiers like Ken Piniak.
John Liebendorfer
UNM alumnus
