The US war effort in Iraq is undermined by the very savergery of its sometimes unrestrained killing. Of course, in a war zone the forces are at liberty to shoot and shoot to kill if need be, but it apperars that gratuitous acts of great violence are being carried out without any tactical advantage or objective.
On July 12, 2007 an employees of Reuters, Baghdad,Namir Noor-Eldeem who was all of 22 years old was killed by a deadly burst of 30 millimetre M230 chain guns mounted on AH-64D Appache helicopters which have become the backbone of the US military for decades now. Sometimes called the Black Hawk because of its predatory shilloutte this war machine is etched in American consciousness due to another unfortunate incident in Somalia several years back. Namir Noor and his colleague were killed on the spot even though both of them were neither terrorists nor were they armed. In fact both men took extreme precaution not to send wrong signals as the site of their killing has witnessed sectarian strife. What is shocking is that the US military did not even acknowledge that such an act had taken place and tried to cover up for the error in judgement. It is not anyone's case that the pilots were seeking out innocent targets and wwere getting their kicks by killing inncocents. We are saying that the US military in its field operations has given far too much leeway to its soldiers and all damage justified under the label "collateral damage".
This incident would have been forgotten but for a happenstance. The video footage of this particular attack was loaded on to a little known site called Wikileaks. It is obvious that someone from within the US military establishment has had the courage to leak the footage either to embarass the military or to assuage the conscience. Either way the damaging video soon becme one of the most watched videos even on you-tube where it is presently hosted.
The video has to be watched for one to understand the absolute cold bloodedness of the soldiers in the helicopter. The gunmen in the helicopter open fire on the sdmall group of unarmed men and kill all of them. Not content at this massacre they wait for the relief van to pull up and in the video one hears a voice with a mid-western accent: Come on, let us shoot.
When the US militatry was done with its deed 8 men and children lay dead and not one was armed or even remotely associated with insurgency.
This is only to bring home the horror of what is unfolding in Iraq.