PZ Myers - We have seen evil, and it is us:
Here is why we need Wikileaks — because when our soldiers carry out Collateral Murder, we should know about it. Good journalism should be exposing this stuff for us.
This is a video shot from an American helicopter gunship in Iraq. It shows real human beings being shot to death. I wish I could unwatch seeing it now, so be advised before you click on that play button…it is horrific.
A couple of Iraqi journalists working for Reuters are slaughtered in the above clip, gunned down from a distance by American troops who claim their cameras are weapons, that they're walking around with AK-47s and RPGs…which I simply don't see anywhere in the clip. I see a small group of civilians casually walking down a city street.
Perhaps the killers were merely mistaken, as happens in war. Perhaps they had better views of weaponry than can be seen in this video. But that doesn't explain what happened next, when a van pulls up to help a wounded man and they open fire again, fully aware of what was going on below them, and fire several bursts into the people and into the van.
Maybe they could see weapons more clearly than I can. But then how did they fail to notice two small faces peering out of the passenger side window of the van? They shot journalists and children, all the while laughing and congratulating themselves on the 'nice' pile of bodies they had produced. And when they see soldiers on the ground rushing injured children to aid, they say, "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle."
I am ashamed. We are the storm troopers, the murderous invaders, the butchers of children, the laughing barbarians. We aren't in Iraq to help those people, our troops are there to oppress them…when we aren't gunning them down outright.
Oh, and go ahead, turn on your TV news. The top stories on CNN are the iPad, Jessica Alba planning to adopt a baby, and Tiger Woods. Doesn't that fill you with confidence?
