Dit bericht volgt op eerdere berichten over de door Wikileaks gelekte beelden van een moordpartij in Bagdhad in juli 2007. Bekijk de beelden hier.

Uitgebreid onderzoek

John Nichols van The Nation dringt aan op een volledig onderzoek:

The only question that remains is whether there will be any form of official accountability — not so much for the pilots but for the military commanders and civilian higher ups who lied about the incident.

Were there intentional cover-ups?

After employees of an international news service were killed, and with those killings inspiring widespread calls for an inquiry, was anyone in the Bush-Cheney White House brought into the discussion? What did they know? When?

(…)

Shouldn’t congressional committees with clear oversight authority and responsibility be moving, now, to assure that all of these incidents are fully investigated, that the findings are publicly disclosed and, above all, that anyone involved in deliberate deceit or cover-ups is held to account?

Andere reacties

Andrew Sullivan van The Atlantic heeft een heel aantal reacties verzameld: sommige commentatoren verdedigen de acties van de militairen in de video, anderen veroordelen ze.

Via Reddit is een reactie boven komen drijven van een ex-militair uit Irak, hier enkele fragmenten:

“The video may be disturbing but doesn’t strike me as unjustifiable.”

“War is an ugly, atrocious action. Bad things happen every day; good things only rarely. It’s a waste of money, time, potential, and especially lives. What’s in this video is distasteful to say the least, but it’s also intentionally inflammatory”

“[For all their] stress, they still behaved according to the rules of engagement. They positively identified small arms (which are a threat) and misidentified an RPG [rocket launcher]. Had I not known, I would also have called out RPG. It unfortunately looks like it, and that was amplified by the pose he [the photographer] took. [Wikileaks] added in captions to let you know there were cameras to amplify outrage, but having flown around Baghdad in helos everything looks like a threat after they shoot at you.”

Lees ook de rest van dit verhaal, dat poogt overdreven reacties op de videobeelden te weerleggen.

The nature of war

Een schrijver van The Economist neemt het – nadat hij de video een aantal keer heeft bekeken – op voor de piloten:

“[Ask] yourselves, would you have been able to distinguish between the journalists’ cameras and the guns some of the other men were carrying? More importantly, did you see the man with the RPG? Did you see him poke around the corner and seem to aim it at the helicopter?”

Even later concludeert hij:

“I’m sure many of you will disagree, but my broader point is that no matter how precise our weaponry gets, no matter how much information we feed into our targeting systems, the decision to fire will always be based on incomplete information and come down to fallible human judgment. So while it is normal to react to these tragedies with varying degrees of moral repugnance, let us not be shocked. This is the nature of war and there is only one truly effective way to avoid such incidents.”

De juridische kwesties

Ook de juridische discussie is opgelaaid. Newsweek stelde gisteren:

“More than an emotional reaction to the callousness seen in the video—which is unquestionably jarring—an in-depth reading of the laws should reveal how much of an impact the WikiLeaks report will (or should) have.”

Vandaag concludeert het tijdschrift:

“The attack may not have been as “indiscriminate” as WikiLeaks presented it to be, but it appears there still may be a legal case to be made regarding the military’s conduct.”

De New Yorker heeft een meer gedetailleerde analyse: het legt de videobeelden naast de regels die gelden bij conflicten als deze, de “rules of engagement.”

Waar was de ‘oude’ journalistiek?

Elders wordt opgemerkt dat het opvallend is dat dit grote nieuws naar buiten is gebracht door een website, en niet door een grote krant of een televisiestation.

Techdirt concludeert dat onderzoeksjournalistiek ook zonder kranten kan bestaan:

“There’s nothing inherent in newspapers that says that only they can do investigative reporting. As we’ve seen over and over and over and over again, investigative reporting comes in many forms, and it need not come directly from newspapers.”

Meer over wikileaks

The Guardian heeft een bericht online over wat Wikileaks precies is en wat de organisatie probeert. Ook de NOS legt uit wat Wikileaks is:

Laatste update 06-04-2010 23:04