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For Immediate Release
Contact: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

WikiLeaks Documents Show U.S. Helicopter Killed Iraqis Trying to Surrender

WASHINGTON

JOSH STIEBER
Stieber is a veteran of the Bravo Company documented in the video "Collateral Murder," released earlier this year by WikiLeaks.

The British Telegraph reports: "An American military legal adviser told helicopter crew that Iraqi men were valid targets as they could not surrender to aircraft, the documents show.

"The Apache helicopter killed the two insurgents after being told that they were still legitimate targets even though they were offering to lay down their arms.

"It is thought that the aircraft, Crazyhorse 18, was the same helicopter involved in the killing of two Reuters journalists later in the war."

Stieber said today: "We've been trying even before the initial WikiLeaks video came out to say that this kind of behavior is not out of the ordinary. The fact that the helicopter unit got the go-ahead to kill Iraqis attempting to surrender shows that it's policy."

He is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, which just released a statement on the Iraq War Logs, "A Call for Accountability".

Last week Stieber wrote the piece "Iraq Vet to Congress: Don't Cover Up Wikileaks' Iraq Revelations."

RAED JARRAR
The Guardian reports: "U.S. and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities."

Jarrar, recently back from Iraq, is an Iraqi-American blogger, political analyst and architect. He was in Iraq during the 2003 invasion where he established and directed the first door-to-door civilian casualties survey in Iraq. He said today: "These documents provide us with candid snapshots of what foreign military occupations look like where Iraqis are killed, injured and tortured. Contrary to the spin many are attempting to put on the disclosure, the take-away point is not that the U.S. just stood there while Iraqis harmed other Iraqis, but that this military occupation has been brutal and destructive, and that it must end now."

A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.