Wikileaks Pre-Emptively Nullified, If Only Anyone Was Paying Attention

Collateral murder? Hardly. The American Journalism Review has provided everything you need to know about the Wikileaks "scandal" that put them in the public spotlight - the shooting of a couple of journalists that were suspected of being militants.

In an article from 2006, we find this gorgeous little nugget.

Photojournalists also find themselves facing a dilemma: to do their job, they have to be on the scene with equipment in full view, making them highly visible and provocative targets. A camera, positioned to make a picture, could be mistaken for a weapon, says Detroit Free Press photographer David Gilkey, who has had several close calls.

So let's see - a Detroit Free Press photographer has several close calls because his equipment looks like a weapon, but an Apache gunship responding to reports of troops under fire, with known insurgents in the area, is supposed to not mistake photography gear for a weapon? From 3000m away? In thermal sights? Suck it, Assange. You just wanted headlines, and you got them. Never mind the truth, eh?

More depressing is the number of media outlets that jumped on Wikileaks version of the story. The professional journal of their own trade had armed them with the truth they needed to fend of Assange's quest for headlines, and they ignored it.

So after being deconstructed by folks like This Ain't Hell and The Weekly Standard, you now have an American journalist admitting - months before the attack, and years before the video was released - that camera equipment can look like a weapon.
After all of this, you have to wonder who's still clinging to the idea that the US helicopter attack shown in the video wasn't completely legal and well within the bounds of the ROE at the time.

By: Brant