US Intell planned to destroy Wikileaks

[Peter Lemkin]

Apr 08 15:45

Facebook disables WikiLeaks Facebook account

By: malterwitty



http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/11826962453

Almost all of the search engines, most of the video upload sites and all of the social networking services are either run by, designed by or act at the behest of the 'intelligence' community and the Deep Political establishment behind them. Sadly. There needs to be independent ones, such as Wikileaks in all fields!

[Helen Reyes]

Very interesting, a clash of cultures between John Young, Julian Assange, and who knows who else. Assange sounds like he was involved with CultoftheDeadCow's hacktivism, somehow. No wonder China isn't enthralled by his wondrous aura.

[Helen Reyes]

Oops, I meant to thank Paul Rigby for his links and very good questions, not Jack White. Sorry, I got the names mixed up for some reason. And no, I don't think a vet like Wayne Madsen could be played all that easily, which leaves the other possibility, that he was acting under his own volition. Actually all the posts were very informative by everyone, Paul's served to catalyze my own thinking and led me, I think, in the right direction.

[Ed Jewett]

EXCLUSIVE: One Day After 2007 Attack, Witnesses Describe US Killings of Iraqi Civilians

As the US Central Command says it has no plans to reopen an investigation into the July 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff, we play never-before-seen eyewitness interviews filmed the day after the attack. [includes rush transcript]


http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/8/exclu..._deadly_2007_us

### ###

Bringing a Battle to Their Kids
by Jay Barr, April 09, 2010

There are certainly many gut-wrenching scenes in the "Collateral Murder" Wikileaks video currently making huge waves on the internet. Though even the hardcore U.S. military apologentsia are having a (relatively) hard time justifying the slaughter of the unarmed men who arrived on the scene of the initial massacre in a black van to evacuate a wounded Reuters photographer, the fact that two children inside the van were seriously injured by a hail of 30mm shells fired from the Apache helicopter gunship has been a particularly sensitive subject for the self-appointed defenders of the troops.
In classic blame-the-victim mode, one of the participants in the event who opined in the skies above Baghdad, "Well it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle" was echoed by the Weekly Standard’s Bill Roggio who asked "And who drives their kids into the middle of a war zone anyway?" Perhaps distracted by their deep concern for the children, it is almost as if they forgot who brought the battle and the war zone to Iraq in the first place. True, years of U.S.-enforced sanctions in the 1990s had already killed an estimated half-million Iraqi children before the 2003 invasion, but I am pretty sure there were still some Iraqi children alive when this war of choice shocked and awed the newly liberated. The difficulty for Baghdadi parents since Operation Iraqi Freedom nearly destroyed their city would be to drive their kids somewhere that was not the "middle of a war zone," especially since the safest parts of Baghdad, in the Green Zone, are off limits to them unless they are serving the occupiers in some capacity.
Besides the obvious projection of blame onto Iraqis for the deadly consequences of the invasion and occupation of a country that never attacked the United States, there is a sickening sense of parental superiority inherent in these comments. The Apache gunner (or pilot, it is difficult to tell which one makes the statement) and Roggio both condemn the would-be rescuers in the van, apparently not comprehending that sometimes parents are accompanied by their children when unforeseen circumstances require the parent to act. For example, if I am driving down the road and see a gunshot victim bleeding to death on the sidewalk, should I just keep driving because my son is in the car? Or because I do not want blood on my upholstery? Clearly the people who were ultimately gunned down for trying to help were not so selfish.
Even if the occupants of the van were "insurgents" as the Apache crew presumed, the idea that they are reprehensible for risking the lives of their children would likewise cast blame on parents in the United States. The legal age to enlist in the military in the United States — with parental consent — is 17, not necessarily a "child" but also not an adult. Many American soldiers killed in Iraq initially joined the military at that age, though the youngest American soldiers to die in Iraq have been 18. Therefore, even if the van rescuers were indeed carrying out hostile activities and risking their children’s lives (and there is no evidence that they were), they should not be criticized any more or less than their American counterparts who do the same. However, no American laptop bombardier would ever condemn a parent for helping their 17-year-old child join the military, as long as it saves the chickenhawk and his or her ilk from having to sacrifice anything for the wars they so desperately cheer and promote (Though to be fair, Roggio, a veteran, is not necessarily included in that group).
For an American to defensively disparage Iraqis for "bringing their kids into a battle" is even more extraordinary when you consider that even in July 2007 no one under the age of 16 had even been alive at a time when the United States was not bombing, sanctioning, invading, or occupying Iraq. As of today, no one under the age of 19 could even have a memory of such a time when Iraqis were not being collectively punished by the United States. Clearly the well-being of an entire generation of Iraqis has been profoundly and constantly put at risk, not from Iraqi parents bringing them into a battle, but from Americans bringing a battle to them.


http://original.antiwar.com/barr/2010/04...heir-kids/

[Ed Jewett]

Wikileaks Video Shows Apache Gunner Lied to Command at Least 8 Times to Gain Permission to Kill Unarmed Civilians

Posted on April 9, 2010 by willyloman
Is Lying to Commanding Officers Now Considered Appropriate Standard Operating Procedure?

by Scott Creighton
In a war started by lies, is it any wonder that soldiers routinely lie as well in order to kill Iraqi civilians?
Its been a few days now since the Wikileaks video story broke and I have yet to hear anyone talking about something I noticed when I first watched the full length video, and that is the clear and numberous lies told by the Apache helicopter pilot and gunner to the commander in charge of making the decision to engage or not too engage.
It seems like the soldiers who are relating the narrative of the situation to their commander, the guys who have “eyes on” the situation, were deliberately misrepresenting the nature of the situation to command. For what reason, I do not know.
I thought at first that it could just be the “fog of war” but one lie especially made it very clear to me that these men who were relating the description of the scene to the officer in charge were deliberately misrepresenting the facts on the ground in order to achieve a certain outcome… not to cover up for something they had mistakenly done already, but rather, they were lying about the situation, as it happened IN ORDER TO get permission to fire upon Iraqi civilians.
So I watched the video again, this time counting the gunner’s misrepresentations to his commanders. I will list those now, with a reference to the time-stamp on the video. To this end, I am using the full, un-cut, 38 minute version of the video released by Wikileaks. The video is at the end of the article.

Listed below are 18 different markerpoints which relate to the video in which misinformation is related to command. 8 of those are clearly deliberate misinformation relating to the given situation.
#1. At 1:45 the gunner in the Apache helicopter misrepresents a camera on the reporter as “a weapon”. A few seconds earlier, the reporter had turned to his left and you can see pretty clearly that the “weapon” looks more like a bag slung over his shoulder than a weapon.
#2. At 2:11 ”Crazy Horse 18″ misrepresents to “Hotel 26″ the number of people with weapons. He specifically says that they “have 5 to 6 individuals with AK47s”. Based on that misrepresentation of the situation on the ground, Crazy Horse 18 requests permission to engage. They are granted permission to engage.
#3. At 2:35 Crazy Horse 18 mistakes a camera lens as an RPG
#4. At 2:48 Crazy Horse 18 claims the target is getting ready to fire
#5. At 2:48 Crazy Horse 18 claims “we had a guy shooting and now he is behind a building“. This misrepresentation clearly establishes this situation to command that it has escalated into a live fire engagement and that the targets initiated it. It is false. No target fired anything. Up until this point, everything could be understood as simple misunderstanding and misreading on the images he is seeing, but now makes the completely unsupported claim that the targeted group of Iraqis have attacked the helicopter. This is LIE #1
#6. At 3:17, just prior to the attack, the 9 Iraqi men are all standing in a group. None of them are armed with AK47s. The two that had been identified as carrying AKs were still across the street, they probably ran after the shooting started and were not seen again.
#7. At 4:32 Crazy Horse 18 contacts command and states “Currently engaging approximately eight individuals, uh KIA, uh RPGs and AK-47s” This is a complete fabrication of the situation on the ground. Hotel 26 reports that they need to get boots on the ground at the location “to get pictures” presumably to ensure they were armed. No pictures of RPGs were to be forthcoming in the investigation.
“Look at those dead bastards.” …. “Nice“
#8. 7:09 As the Reuters driver is trying to crawl away, clearly wounded, the helicopter gunner, sites trained on the injured man, states ” Come on buddy. All you have to do is pick up a weapon“… anyone listening at command would have the impression that the wounded “fighter” is crawling through the scene which is littered with guns. Of course there are no guns anywhere near the injured Reuters employee.
#9. At 7:31, the pilot appears to report that they have a “van that’s approaching and picking up the bodies“… this is a crucial statement and it is certainly LIE #2. Though he accurately describes the vehicle this time as a “VAN”, his statement that they are “PICKING UP BODIES” is a flat-out lie. The van is approaching from the other side of the conflict, not THROUGH the conflict zone where the bodies are. So the VAN COULD NOT BE PICKING UP BODIES as the “pilot?” makes reference to. It is clearly LIE # 2.
#10. At 7:44 It is reported that they have an individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly uh picking up bodies and weapons”… this again is a critical piece of misinformation related to command. The people in the van have stopped and are clearly only aiding the wounded man. They are NOT “picking up bodies” and it is clear that they are NOT “picking up weapons” of any kind. This is important because if they are picking up weapons in the eyes of command, then they are part of the engaging enemy (which never engaged). This is LIE #3
“let me engage“
“Crazy Horse 18 request permission to engage“
At this point it seems command is asking for further clarification.. they ask “picking up the wounded?”
#11. At 8:26 Crazy Horse 18 relates to Bushmaster 7, “We have a black SUV… uh… BONGO TRUCK… picking up bodies. Request permission to engage.” This is LIE #4 and LIE #5
Earlier they had properly identified the black vehicle as a “van”… in fact, it is a mini-van. Crazy Horse 18 is begging for permission to fire on these people. In doing it, he starts to call the vehicle an “SUV” but changes his description to a “BONGO TRUCK”. The reason he does this is to, again, misrepresent the situation to command. The “SUV” or a “MIN-VAN” would imply a CIVILIAN vehicle, so he deliberately changes his description, mid-sentence, to a “BONGO TRUCK”. This is a clear misrepresentation of the events that are unfolding, and one can only surmise that this was done in order to get permission to fire on the people who are trying to help the injured Reuters employee.
this is an Iraqi ”BONGO TRUCK”. There is absolutely no way that Crazy Horse “accidentally” mistook the family’s mini-van for this…

Another aspect of the lie is that Crazy Horse is telling command that the people in the van are picking up “bodies” when in fact, they are picking up only ONE wounded man. Firing on people attempting to clear the wounded from a scene is a direct violation of international law as well as a violation of our rules of engagement.
These two lies, more than any others at this point, demonstrate that the people involved in this incident, knew exactly what they were doing, and were killing unarmed civilians with deliberate malice of intent.
#12. At 11:46 Someone warns the arriving ground units the “We took some RPGs off… uh, earlier so just make sure your men keep your eyes open” . Apparently he was about to say they took some RPG fire, but he modifies his statement midsentance, again.
At 15:21 – Bushmaster puts out the request to confirm which “element” (fighting unit) called in Crazy Horse 18 to engage the eight men team on the roof.
#13. At 15:26 Hotel 26 informs Bushmaster 6 that they were the element that called in Crazy Horse 18 and he describes the situation as “They had AK-47s and were to our east so, where we were taking small arms fire“. A complete fabrication. These people had not been firing on anyone, and Hotel 26 never mentioned taking small arms fire from them in the first place. This is LIE #6
#14. At 15:55 Crazy Horse 18 makes sure that Hotel 26 gets the complete fabricated story correct by saying “I also just wanted to make sure you knew that we had a guy with an RPG cropping round the corner getting ready to fire on your location. That’s why we, uh, requested permission to engage.”
At 17:53 one of the ground forces who is calling for an evac of the wounded little girl who was in the min-van describes his location as “the location where Crazy Horse engaged the RPG fire, break” – this is a clear indication that the lie Crazy Horse told earlier is already part of the narrative of the event.
#15. At 18:12 “It’s their fault for bringing their kids to a battle” “that’s right“. This was not a battle and they did not engage anyone, they were simply trying to save the life of a Reuters employee. Since both parties who made this statement knew better, This is LIE # 7
That concludes the review of the first TWO engagements documented in this video record. As you can see, there have been 15 misleading statements made by the soldiers on the scene and 7 of which can only be described as direct “lies”. 11 civilians were killed and 2 children were seriously wounded.
(It is also important to note, that after the soldiers arrived on scene you can see a rather large group of them move into a building and later another reports they can hear small arms fire coming from inside that building. At this point, there is no way to know what happened in that building or if more people were shot and killed at that time.)
Another aspect of this video which does not get much media attention is the THIRD engagement, the apartment complex that was under renovation. According to the Wikileaks investigation, this building was an apartment complex which was housing 3 families. The same Crazy Horse 18 apache helicopter crew targeted the building and launched 3 hell-fire missiles into it, killing several family members and unarmed civilians who were either walking by or coming to try and aid the families after the first missile strike.
At 31:24 in the video, Crazy Horse 18 identifies a man carrying something that looks like it might be a weapon, but this is the first one he sees carrying something like this.
#16. At 31:50 Crazy Horse then states that “there are at least 6 individuals in that building with weapons“. At this point, according to the video, he has only seen ONE. This is another direct lie. LIE #8
#17. at 33:52 you can clearly see two more UNARMED MEN walking into the building that Crazy Horse 18 is targeting for a Helfire missile strike. “Got more individuals in there” says Crazy Horse 18 deliberately not mentioning they are not armed.
#18. At 34:39 Crazy Horse is about to fire when another UNARMED civilian is clearly walking in front of the building and you can hear Crazy Horse 18 fire anyway obviously blowing that civilian to pieces.
At 36:33 you can clearly see civilians coming to the aid of victims inside the building as Crazy Horse 18 targets it again. With no consideration for those civilians who are simply trying to help the occupants of the building, who are later reported as 3 families who were living there, Crazy Horse 18 prepares fire another Helfire missile into the building. he is unable to fire, so another helicopter fires into the building.
At 38:19, after seeing only one individual who may or may not have been carrying a weapon, Crazy Horse 18 fires his second Helfire Missile into the apartment building, he has clearly seen multiple unarmed civilians enter the building and after he has seen other civilians attempting to save what turned out to be multiple families who were in the building at the time.
The above time-stamp notations refer to the full length gun-camera video released by Wikileaks and presented below.

Filed under: Scott Creighton

[Keith Millea]

http://i.imgur.com/twrSH.jpg

Ed posted this link showing a picture of someone carrying an RPG.At around 3:40-3:45 on the 17 minute video,you can see this person swing the RPG around.It shows more clearly the cone shaped rocket loaded in the RPG tube.RPG's are anti-tank weapons,and there are Bradley tanks in the area.I see a lot of people gingerly skip around this RPG threat,but the fact is this makes the group a legitimate target.War is Hell,Live for Peace.........

[Magda Hassan]

Activists behind a website dedicated to revealing secret documents have complained of harassment by police and intelligence services as they prepare to release a video showing an American attack in which 97 civilians were killed in Afghanistan.
Julian Assange, one of the founders of Wikileaks, has claimed that a restaurant where the group met in Reykjavic, the capital of Iceland, came under surveillance in March and one of the group’s volunteers was detained for 21 hours by police.
Assange, an Australian, says he was followed on a flight from Reykjavik to Copenhagen by two American agents. The group has riled governments by publishing documents leaked by whistleblowers.
Last week it released the cockpit recording from an American Apache helicopter as it killed Iraqi civilians, including a Reuters photographer, in Baghdad in 2007.
Related Links

• No one's secrets are safe from Wikileaks
  

• ‘Can I shoot? Come on, let us shoot’
  

Assange claims surveillance has intensified as he and his colleagues prepare to put out their Afghan film. It is said to concern the so-called “Granai massacre”, when American aircraft dropped 500lb and 1,000lb bombs on a suspected militant compound in Farah province on May 4 last year. Several children were among those killed.
In messages on Twitter, the internet social networking site, Assange complained of “covert following and hidden photography” by police and foreign intelligence services. There have been thinly veiled threats, he says, from “an apparent British intelligence agent” in a car park in Luxembourg.
“Computers were also seized,” another member of Wikileaks said on Twitter, raising alarm among supporters with a subsequent post: “If anything happens to us, you know why ... and you know who is responsible.”
Their apprehension is perhaps understandable. America’s defence establishment has made clear that it would like to silence the site. In 2008, the Pentagon produced a report on how to undermine and neutralise Wikileaks. This, too, emerged on the website.
Assange, who is believed to be 37, founded Wikileaks three years ago with a group of like-minded computer programmers, academics and activists. The site says it has had more scoops since then than The Washington Post in three decades and has become a global clearing house for sensitive documents. It has exposed crimes from toxic dumping and tax evasion to extrajudicial murders in Kenya.
Assange says the 38-minute Iraqi video broadcast by the group is evidence of “collateral murder” by American forces. It shows a group of Iraqi men being killed by gunfire from the helicopter. A helicopter then shoots at a van arriving to take the bodies away.
A crew member is heard saying: “Nice shooting.” When it emerges that two children in the van have been injured, someone else says: “Serves them right for bringing their children into a battle.”
The film, in which American forces kill with the seeming detachment of video gamers, has been seen by millions on the internet since it was first aired on Monday. The website, which claims to exist on a shoestring budget, says it has since received more than £100,000 in donations.
America’s military defended the killings, saying no disciplinary action had been taken at the time of the incident. However, Reuters has striven in vain since 2007 to obtain access to the video under freedom of information laws.
Broadcasting such a film could expose Wikileaks to prosecution in America but the organisation appears to have put itself beyond the reach of court injunctions by existing only in the digital sphere.
There has been speculation that Wikileaks might be part of a sophisticated “psy-ops” campaign by the CIA. If that is the case, says Assange, “I only wish they would step forward with a cheque.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo...094234.ece

[Helen Reyes]

http://i.imgur.com/twrSH.jpg

Ed posted this link showing a picture of someone carrying an RPG.At around 3:40-3:45 on the 17 minute video,you can see this person swing the RPG around.It shows more clearly the cone shaped rocket loaded in the RPG tube.RPG's are anti-tank weapons,and there are Bradley tanks in the area.I see a lot of people gingerly skip around this RPG threat,but the fact is this makes the group a legitimate target.War is Hell,Live for Peace.........

Looks damning, but really at that resolution I can't tell if it's a rocket-propelled grenade or a camera tripod.

[Magda Hassan]

Even if it is an RPG
a) it was the USA that created the hell of war NOT the Iraqis.
b) it wasn't being used against any one and there is no evidence that it was going to be. There was no attack except from the US military. It was an unprovoked attack by the US military.
c) there were civilians with them. In fact the vast majority of them were civilians. No one displayed any aggressive activity. Only the US military did.

Not only did the US military attack unarmed civilians they were begging to do so and looking for any pretext, even imaginary, to attack anyone.

[Keith Millea]

I think I'm the only person that posts here that has actually been in combat.I have a different perspective than everyone else.For instance,seeing the soldier pick up the wounded child and run as fast as he could to get her to the medic track showed how he tried his best to save this child(which they actually did).I thought to myself,this guy will invision,and have trouble with this horrible scene for the rest of his life.The following interview proves this out.I have not seen nor heard anyone express anything but contempt for the soldiers though(murderers all).

So,I'm not going to argue with anyone here about what is right or what is wrong.I find this interview with a former soldier from that unit to be pretty much in line with how I see these things,so I'll let him speak.And again,from my perspective,Amy Goodman was a complete asshole to keep trying to get him to name names over the public airways.This was about as unprofessional as a journalist could be.......

From yesterdays Democracy Now:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/12/th...diers_were

And actually, looking at the video myself, you know, based on my training, what I saw in the video of what the people on the ground were holding in their hands, whether or not it was a camera, but again, from my military training, I would have, you know, been told that that was a military—militarily justifiable thing. And, you know, top sources have confirmed this. But again, if you watch the forty-minute video, they actually recovered an RPG shell, so I think there’s evidence that there were weapons involved. And I think, you know, the conversation has to be that the people in the helicopter and the people in the military were responding exactly as they had been trained.