More bad news from Iraq...

If you haven't seen the video released by "Wikileaks" showing the killing of at least two Iraqi civilians who were mistakenly identified by American troops as insurgents, then you'll have to find it yourself. I'm not going to include the link here.

It is a tragedy when something like this occurs. I am not making the post to dwell on the tragedy, or to lay blame... but to use the coverage of the tragedy as another example of the bias in American media towards anti-American interests and away from the US military.

If you watch the longer, unedited version of the footage (aprox. 11 minutes in length), it is very clear that the two journalists were, indeed, traveling with armed bodyguards in civilian clothing, and had left their police escorts somewhere else. I am inclined to agree that of the twenty-odd men, only two are clearly carrying weapons and the two journalists are clearly carrying cameras (not AKs, as one pilot says in the audio)...but the pilots are asked to discern identity and intent from a 6"x8" video screen while hovering in a helicopter 400 yards away, knowing these men are potential insurgents with the express intent of killing American soldiers or Iraqi civilians.

I'm sure this is the sort of video that the anti-American media and the anti-war elements within our own society have been hoping for, to show the tyrannical nature of the American effort... but the government (OUR government) has a duty to accurately portray what the soldiers and marines are dealing with on the ground out there, even now. The threat of insurgent violence is still real, and Iraqi civilian authorities and the US military need to ensure that non-combatants have either an FOF transponder or some other identifying means of protective recognition so future incidents of this type are avoided.

I think it is criminal, however, for civilians (and especially pundits) to use the audio portion of the video to decry the nature of the American effort. These men and women are placing their lives in harms way each and every day, and to deal with that kind of stress, sometimes these soldiers and marines employ a "cavalier" attitude about killing other human beings. It happens all the time, even in the civilian world were pundits and political experts employ terminology that takes the actual, contextual meaning of what is being said or done and twists it into something completely different with the use of exaggeration and hyperbole.

Frankly, this is the risk that is taken when we face an enemy that routinely hides inside a civilian population, using innocent men, women and children as cover to hide behind. The fact is tragic, and the cost to the effort is high, but it must be paid or the effort is lost before it even begins. If this is no longer understood and accepted by the Iraqis, then perhaps it is time to scale-back the anti-insurgent effort to show the anti-American elements in Iraq and elsewhere just how dangerous their hidden enemies really are.