Cameras & War

This morning I watched a disturbing video from Wikileaks that shows two U.S. Apache helicopters use 30 mm canons to kill 12 people and injure two children back in 2007. The military claimed the dead were armed insurgents, though they later learned that two of the dead worked for Reuters. The pilots mistakenly thought a camera stretched over a shoulder was a gun. Listening to the two pilots is the most troubling aspect of this for me. I can imagine combat is stressful and there is a psychological need to demonize the enemy. But unlike these pilots, I would imagine that I would never laugh after a tank rolls over a corpse or say "Nice!" after someone states "Look at those dead bastards!" Here's the video. It's about 17 minutes long and be warned that it is pretty graphic.