“Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, [...] who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. ” Romans 1:24-25
Now this is truly disgusting. One of the accusations brought against these specific individuals by scripture is that they changed the truth into a lie.
The video that was released today by wikileaks, and retooled for publication on “collateralmurder.org”, is an excellent example of this.
The article takes a video of combat footage from the front lines of a battle in Iraq in 2007, trims most of the useful information out of the video, surrounds it with anti-establishment epithets, and even claims to identify some of the insurgents (whose faces we cannot see) as specific victims of war-time cross-fires in Iraq (the now infamous Reuters reporters.) [WARNING: the video is not appropriate for children!]
Anyone watching this video without first being “primed” for it by the lies published on collateralmurder.org will notice that it opens with a request for backup from a ground position. The unseen helicopter pilots (the ones who were supposedly stupid enough to carefully film every detail of their own misdeeds), are combing an unspecified area, searching for enemy combatants. They see them even before we do.
On the ground, the camera picks out several soldiers that can clearly be seen to be brandishing weapons (2 or three soldiers are carrying AK-47s, and one of them is carrying a rocket launcher). As the video continues, the pilots begin swearing as the helicopter starts to take fire from the ground. After they have killed the enemy soldiers, they then proceed to destroy a convoy truck that appears to pick up the wounded.
Shortly afterwards, several American vehicles approach to secure the area on the ground, each carefully announcing their approach and identifying themselves as “friendlies” (strangely, the enemy combatants fail to do this). Unfortunately, two innocent children appear to have been wounded in the skirmish. The children are taken by the American troops to a local hospital.
Finally, the helicopter continues to another location where troops on the ground have requested a second strike, a building that armed terrorists can clearly be seen to enter, along with reports of more shots fired by terrorists from that location. The helicopter destroys the building using three hell-fire missiles.
However, this is not what is presented at the website.
The video, as I said, is trimmed down from it’s original 39-minutes to just under 18. [WARNING: This second video is also inappropriate for children!] The “non-incriminating” parts are carefully removed. The edited video is also conveniently labeled with arrows pointing to the insurgents and useful comments like, “this is an innocent civilian, and what he is pointing at the helicopter is nothing but a harmless camera.”
Even in the edited video, the terrorists can clearly be seen to crouch behind a building and point an RPG cannon at the helicopter, and the Americans who arrive on the ground later confirm that the targets were armed and firing at an American location.
Those men in the helicopter were American soldiers who put their lives on the line every day to defend our country and our freedom, and the intentional perversion of the truth by untrustworthy, irresponsible sensationalist “reporters”, and by those who wish to justify their unlawful lifestyles by jumping at every lie that makes our government and military out to be populated by crazed sociopaths who regularly murder civilians for their own entertainment is offensive, to say the least.
In addition, it is treachery and a threat to the safety of our soldiers to make publicly available examples of tactics used by Americans in urban warfare, for careful analysis by our enemies. The publication of this video and it’s subsequent editing to pervert the facts surrounding this situation is reprehensible and should be punished to the fullest extent permitted by law.