U.S. Military in Iraq Responds to Wikileaks, Releases Portions of Internal Investigation
After much of the day’s news was dominated by Wikileaks’ distribution of a graphic video purporting to show U.S. military personnel in Iraq in 2007 firing from a helicopter on Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, the U.S. military command in Iraq has released the following statement. It doesn’t deny the veracity of the video, but doesn’t confirm it, either, and instead offers up source material about what happened at the attack in question:
“„We are aware that several media outlets are airing footage depicting gunfire from a U.S. helicopter and claiming that this footage was recorded during an incident in 2007 in which two Reuters reporters were killed. At this time, we are working to verify the source of the video, its veracity, and when or where it was recorded. The incident presumably associated with this video was investigated in 2007, and the releasable portions of that investigation are available [here].
The link will take you to a U.S. Central Command webpage containing a plethora of internal inquiries in response to the apparent incident. I’m not at a place where I can go through them all immediately but will update as soon as possible.
