It’s now been more than three years since the world saw the horrifying footage of the “Collateral Murder” video: civilians mown down in a ghastly battlefield error. Their would-be rescuer—a father taking his children to school—similarly shot to pieces by a U.S. helicopter gunship, its pilots chatting and laughing as if playing a video game.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
And for those who kept watching, an aspect of the footage often forgotten: a Hellfire missile fired into a building, with no regard of the passerby just outside. Waiting a mere few seconds longer could’ve kept him safe—but no. Amid the revulsion at the earlier horror of the clip, this became a mere background detail.
That footage was just the start of a string of ever-larger WikiLeaks document releases, reporting, and revelations that shook the faith of many around the world in the U.S. government’s activities—from revelations of death squads operating in Afghanistan, through complicity in torture in the Iraq documents, to evidence of spying on U.N. diplomats in U.S. Embassy cables.
Now, two years after the last release of that kind of significance—the Guantánamo files—comes an opportunity to reflect on WikiLeaks; its most famous source, Bradley Manning; and its ever-divisive founder, Julian Assange.
No comments:
Post a Comment