Re: The USA wants Assange for what he did
The helicopter crew engaged armed people during a combat operation. Other units involved were having gun battles at the time. According to the "Collateral Murder" video released by Assange they would have no charges to answer. The gunner correctly identified armed people wandering around, then called out that he saw an RPG poking round the corner of a building and engaged. Sadly that "RPG" wasn't a shoulder mounted rocket grenade, but a shoulder mounted camera.
They then proceeded to make some awful comments and act like arseholes. But if being an arsehole was illegal Julian Assange would already be serving a life sentence.
I've since read it argued that there is a bit of the video that might be considered a war crime. It was ironically cut out by Wikileaks when they edited the footage to make the pilots look guilty, they edited out the armed people - which rather fucks up Assange's journalistic credentials.
Anyway it was a while ago, and I've not watched the whole video, but this piece talked about a later bit where some armed guys run into a building, and the helicopter shoots at it. Seeing as the pilots had only seen guns on those people, and didn't know who else was in the building, she argued that this was a disproportionate use of force, and might aguably constitute a war crime. Although as they didn't know they'd shot a cameraman and not an RPG armed insurgent, so thought this group had RPGs and intended to shoot them down, and other US helicopters had been taken out with RPGs, that seems like one of those rather lawyerly arguments that are rather hard on the troops on the ground.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
