Not Watching Snuff Tonight (Update: I Watched The Snuff Film After All, And Was Predictably Sickened)

Have enough to think about with a paper going to press tomorrow. Not going to watch film of U.S. helicopter gunners blowing away civilians and children while gloating. Nope.

But here’s a tale of two newspapers reporting on the leaked video of a massacre of Iraqi civilians by a U.S. helicopter gunship. First, the American take on the leak, from the Washington Post:

WASHINGTON — A gritty war video circulating on the Internet that shows U.S. troops firing repeatedly on a group of men – some of whom were unarmed – walking down a Baghdad street is authentic, a senior U.S. military official confirmed Monday.

The official said the video posted at Wikileaks.org was of a July 12, 2007, firefight involving Army helicopters in the New Baghdad District of eastern Baghdad.

Wait a second… the Post doesn’t seem to have its own story on this. This is the (New York-based) Associated Press wire story. Which took 10 minutes to find since it’s stashed away pretty good on the Post‘s website.

Hm.

Now, contrast that lede with the Guardian’s opening:

A secret video showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead after launching an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency, was revealed by Wikileaks today.

The Guardian–a British paper — calls the ‘copter attackers liars before the story is 10 words in. The Guardian also puts their story (this isn’t wire copy, it’s original work) on their home page.

The AP story–completely buried in the Washington Post, you’d never find it if you weren’t looking for it–is a lot softer, I think.

Draw your own conclusions about the credibility of American “journalism”.

I’m not watching it but you have a right to see what’s actually going on in Iraq. Here it is. Watch at your own risk. It’s people getting brutally slaughtered, so, I repeat, WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK.

UPDATE: yeah, fine. I watched it. Ugh. Horrible as advertised. Definitely Vietnam-ish. The U.S should get the hell out of that poor country.