Just over a year ago, WikiLeaks released footage from a gunsight camera of an Apache helicopter engaged in an attack that killed two journalists and eight civilians in Baghdad. The “Collateral Murder” video, as it came to be known, was a shocking document of America’s war in Iraq, and was greeted with a firestorm of controversy on its release. One of the first soldiers on the scene after the air attack, Ethan McCord, is now the subject of a short documentary, Incident in New Baghdad, which will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York next week.
McCord, in New York for the festival premiere, told the story of what he experienced while saving two children wounded in the incident. When he returned to the Forward Operating Base, he requested mental health support to deal with the scenes he had witnessed. He was laughed at and told to “suck it up.”
According to McCord, what Americans can see in the video is “one incident of many,” and that similar abuses of American military power occur almost daily. “You can see from that one incident that we shouldn’t be” in Iraq, McCord concludes.
For more, read Greg Mitchell’s “One Year Later: Soldier in WikiLeaks Iraq ‘Murder’ Video Speaks Out in New Film.”
—Kevin Gosztola
