The 39-minute video became known as Collateral Murder. In July 2007, two American Apache helicopters launched 30mm cannon fire at a group of Iraqi men in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, New Baghdad. When US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning first came across the file, it had been labelled, she tells us in this gripping memoir, as training material “for how to defend soldiers accused of rules-of-engagement violations – messy situations”.
This was something worse than a messy situation. “You can hear the American soldiers say that the group is shooting at them, though the visual evidence contradicts this,” writes Manning, recalling how she first saw the film on screen at her workstation at Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad. “What they’ve mistaken for an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] is in fact a Reuters’ photographer’s camera.” Seven men died outright, others were wounded, some fatally, in those first moments. Manning heard an officer gloat: “Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards.”
