Imperial justice in Iraq? Three men, one of whom threw away an object that could have been a weapon, and one who seems to have just been driving past on a tractor, are judged to be The Enemy and executed by an Apache helicopter crew. One of them isn’t vapourised by gunfire and crawls away injured, so it takes another burst of 30mm gunfire to kill him.
There’s been no contextual information (or official justification) released for this clip. It seems to be spreading as juvenile entertainment rather than evidence something very worrying. If these men had just fired a missile, then returning fire would be acceptable, but the clip seems to show something closer to indiscriminate assassination (if they were following a suspect) or just plain murder. Bear in mind that a group of ‘resistance fighters’ captured and interogated recently turned out to be a Reuters film crew.
Link: Apache killing video becomes viral news (Yes, but I’m not passing it on with a “woo hoo!” noise)
Link: Rules of Engagement (Notice how the title of the story contains a hint of ethical concern
