Filming War Massacres in the Era of Pentagon Spin

Forget 'Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.' For authentic, remote-controlled war, it's not Xbox or Playstation 3; it's wikileaks.com. The 'game' involves sniping civilians from above, followed by cover-up, facilitated by our uncritical media. The 'game?' U.S. military operations in Iraq.

Take a look at this video, please. My apologies in advance. This video will cause you unease, at a minimum.

After I saw the video, I scanned some of the mainstream media coverage of the incident. Reading and watching the reporting of what I had just seen left me with the feeling that I had entered a parallel universe in which what you think you saw is some sort of illusion.

My first take on seeing the video was that it captured a horrific example of contempt for life; that it demonstrated the deeply disturbing and abusive approach of U.S. forces in the war in Iraq. What it shows — or so I thought — is a helicopter firing on unarmed civilians, because a few of them are carrying things (camera equipment) that might be weapons. Worse, it shows the helicopter firing on a van that tries to rescue the wounded, even though (it turns out) there are children in the van.

Throughout, the video is peppered with the warped, hateful, fratboy dialogue of self-congratulations for hitting targets, Xbox style. Forget that these are people whose bodies are being torn apart by high-powered weapons. In many ways, the feel is of a sick game with fatal consequences, an analogy for the entire Iraq war effort, sold from the beginning with catch phrases like “shock and awe.”

In a nutshell, the video demonstrates all that is wrong with a military effort that sees every civilian as a potential enemy, and that authorizes troops to fire first and ask questions later, knowing that the questions will be asked by investigators with little demonstrable interest in discerning the truth. (Note that the Pentagon’s initial statements involved several misrepresentations, and the forces involved were exonerated).

Fortunately, all these troubling perceptions can be comfortably buried in the sea of half-truths, distortion and double-speak that is already characterizing the mainstream media reporting of the incident. Take this apparently ‘neutral’ lead/caption from CNN: "Newly released video shows a 2007 attack by a U.S. Apache helicopter in Iraq. Several people were killed in the attack, two of them journalists. The helicopter crew members believed they were firing on armed insurgents."

Let’s juxtapose two sentences here to get a flavor of CNN’s efforts to spin the story into a legitimate conflict.

First, “Several people were killed.” Why the passive voice? Is there any doubt from the video about who is doing the killing?

To be fair, journalists should not jump to conclusions when faced with ambiguity. (There’s no ambiguity, though, about the shots that killed the civilians). And ambiguity, of course, never applies when it comes to the just intentions that must be applied to U.S. forces: “The helicopter crew members believed they were firing on armed insurgents.” These presumed good intentions should override even objective evidence to the contrary, such as the audio demonstrating that the shooters are eager to get authorization to fire (“C’mon, let us shoot" on the rescuing van), their use of demeaning language to refer to their victims (“Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards”), the troops chuckling after running over one of the bodies, and their later refusal to provide U.S. medical care to the injured children, etc., etc.

If your mandatory point of departure is the goodness of U.S. troops and the U.S. war effort, it’s hard to see a massacre for what it is. In fact, it’s even hard to see a massacre at all — CNN purports to cover the issue by running only the first few minutes of the video, eliminating the shootings altogether. “Out of respect for the families [of the Reuters employees killed],” we are told.

The video piece on CNN provides further apologies and ‘explanations’ that follow the same theme. It cites the U.S. military non-investigation and ends with a few wise words from Barbara Starr, CNN’s Pentagon correspondent, about the sad, dangerous business that is war.

OK, then. Bad things happen in war. No one is to blame. All in order, thank goodness! I was worried for a while.

I thought I had seen video of a massacre by U.S. forces.

UPDATE (April 7): Wow! I thought yesterday’s CNN coverage of the video-game killings was apologetic, uncritical and unprofessional. But this is far worse.

Photo credit: Wikileaks.com