Wikileaks Defends Release of Video Showing Killing of Journalists in Iraq - NYT

[WillyT]

Be sure to check out the videos with this story at the link below.

Wikileaks Defends Release of Video Showing Killing of Journalists in Iraq
By ROBERT MACKEY
April 6, 2010, 11:49 am

<snip>

As my colleague Elisabeth Bumiller reported, a senior American military official confirmed on Monday that a graphic video released by the Web site WikiLeaks.org, which shows an American helicopter shooting and killing a Reuters photographer and driver during a July 2007 attack in Baghdad, is authentic.

One of the whistle-blowing group’s founders, Julian Assange, explained and defended the decision to release the graphic, disturbing video shot from the helicopter during interviews in Washington on Monday with Al Jazeera and Russia Today.

Both of those appearances, and an edited version of the leaked video, are available on YouTube. (Be warned that even the edited version shows people being killed.) Wikileaks uploaded the 17-minute edit to YouTube on Monday morning, along with the complete video, which runs more than 39 minutes.

Soon after releasing the video, Mr. Assange discussed it with Alyona Minkovski, a Washington correspondent for Russia Today, an English-language satellite channel financed by the Russian government.

And...

As my colleagues Noam Cohen and Rogene Fisher reported on Monday, Wikileaks, which describes itself as “an intelligence agency of the people,” is a nonprofit group, created in the spring of 2007. In March, Stephanie Strom reported in The Times that the group’s release of an internal Pentagon report had upset the military:

The Pentagon concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.

On a page of links to additional information and reports on the strike, Wikileaks points to this blog post from Reuters in 2007 about the two slain journalists.

The group also uploaded a video made by an Icelandic journalist the group sent to Iraq to find two children who were wounded in the attack after their father stopped his van to try to rescue some of the victims. The father was also shot and killed in the effort.

<snip>

Link: http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/wikileaks-defends-release-of-video-showing-killing-of-journalists-in-iraq/#more-17583

:kick:

[WillyT]

1. Kick !!!

:kick:

[jberryhill]

2. Defends it against what? /nt

[kenny blankenship]

4. The obvious charge:

Terrorism. Presenting an "INFOSEC threat to the forces of the United States military", while said forces are engaged in a heroic struggle against the global source of terrorism on all continents is in itself pure concentrated terrorism.

I say the charge is obvious and inevitable -since this country has jumped so far up its own asshole into an Orwellian dystopia of self-perpetuating imperial warfare that the TRUTH is now considered to be the greatest enemy.

[jberryhill]

5. Nobody has attacked them for releasing the video

Yes, they solicit people to send them leaked documents, but I haven't seen any criticism of them for releasing this video.

[WillyT]

7. So... ApparentlyYou Missed This ???

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8092853

:shrug:

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jberryhill]

11. A report from 2007 is not an attack for releasing this video

How is that relevant to my statement?

[Flaneur]

3. It's the Pentagon that should be on the defensive.

When you're a serial killer, you deserve to be on the defensive.

[Mari333]

8. yep.

[gratuitous]

6. Wikileaks: I refer you to Daniel Ellsburg

You're going to be defending yourself for quite some time, maybe decades, before the conventional wisdom finally bends enough to see that exposing American war crimes is not only desireable, but necessary if our country is to continue. We have to re-learn these lessons every few years, and expect condemnation and support to come from equally unlikely corners of society. But you did the right thing.

[Bolo Boffin]

10. I'd defend them for releasing the video

There's a very good discussion to be had with this primary information. Sure, there's a lot of emotions to be aroused by this, and nothing's wrong with that.

But Wikileaks was well within its rights to release this and protect their source. Even their 17-minute version, which presents analysis as well as the facts, is accompanied by the full video so you can check their work.

Go, Wikileaks!