[Trigger Warning]

Yesterday, WikiLeaks, a website that publishes anonymous leaks of sensitive information from governments, released a video of U.S. soldiers in an Apache helicopter firing upon and killing most of a group of non-combatant men, including a Reuters photographer, in Baghdad in 2007. The video is ghastly and depressing. At one point, the soldiers are literally begging for permission to shoot at a van that arrived to rescue the few survivors of the attack.

(video below the cut)

From the New York Times:

David Schlesinger, the editor in chief of Reuters news, said in a statement that the video was “graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result.”

On the day of the attack, United States military officials said that the helicopters had been called in to help American troops who had been exposed to small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades in a raid. “There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,” Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad, said then.

But the video does not show hostile action. Instead, it begins with a group of people milling around on a street, among them, according to WikiLeaks, Mr. Noor-Eldeen and Mr. Chmagh. The pilots believe them to be insurgents, and mistake Mr. Noor-Eldeen’s camera for a weapon. They aim and fire at the group, then revel in their kills.

“Look at those dead bastards,” one pilot says. “Nice,” the other responds.

A wounded man can be seen crawling and the pilots impatiently hope that he will try to fire at them so that under the rules of engagement they can shoot him again. “All you gotta do is pick up a weapon,” one pilot says.

A short time later a van arrives to pick up the wounded and the pilots open fire on it, wounding two children inside. “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle,” one pilot says.

At another point, an American armored vehicle arrives and appears to roll over one of the dead. “I think they just drove over a body,” one of the pilots says, chuckling a little.

Reuters said at the time that the two men had been working on a report about weightlifting when they heard about a military raid in the neighborhood, and decided to drive there to check it out.

“There had been reports of clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents in the area but there was no fighting on the streets in which Namir was moving about with a group of men,” Reuters wrote in 2008. “It is believed two or three of these men may have been carrying weapons, although witnesses said none were assuming a hostile posture at the time.”

The American military in Baghdad investigated the episode and concluded that the forces involved had no reason to know that there were Reuters employees in the group. No disciplinary action was taken.

In case it’s not clear, the Pentagon lied about the nature of the attack. And now that the video has been released, the coverage has been questionable to say the least. Don’t worry, though. None of this will distract anyone in the major news media from obsessively covering who Tiger Woods has slept with or how awesome the iPad is for too long.