This video released some days ago through WikiLeaks has been posted a couple of times around the web these days, but if you haven’t seen it yet, be aware it’s content is quite rude, real and graphic. It is the classified US military video that Reuters has tried to get hold of for some time since it is showing the shot of two of their journalists in Iraq in 2007. The video is shot from a Apache helicopter gunship, so you can also hear the comments of the soldiers and the radio. In this incident two Reuters journalists were killed together with at least six other Iraqi people, two children were wounded deeply while sitting in a car that tried to rescue one of the journalists that was lying wounded on the street. The language used by the soldiers is sickening as well, but one of the things that even the last will understand now is that there is nothing like a clean or precise war. Shooting unarmed journalists because you think there cameras are AK-47s is just another prove how less there is control and that with all the technique it is still the human being that is responsible and that leads to incidents like that. The question for me is especially after that video what became public because of the certain interest that is behind it because journalists were shot, is how many other incidents like that happen day in day out without no one ever reporting about it. We hear of every US, german or UK soldier killed, but what about the hundreds of other people, the Iraqi people in that case, that are killed? Seems like it is just a mass not worth to be counted or report on. For more information and the long version of the video, check www.collateralmurder.com.

As a small addition: Some time ago i read an article about massacres done by American soldiers in Vietnam. They were interviewed afterwards about it and one of the main things no one understood was why they killed so many women and small children. They gave answers that they feared they would use the babies as bombs or weapons against them. It showed how unreal and hard to control that fear of the soldiers was. They saw the enemy everywhere, were out of control, so they tried to simplifiy the situation in their minds to create a situation they could handle. And that made this women and small children part of the enemy. I think it is hard to compare with this incident, but still there is the question for me: Why is stuff like that happen? Where comes this fear or hatred from that a situation get’s misinterpretated so much?