US military responds to Fallujah video
Updated on 07 October 2004
A US fighter pilot using the most advanced and lethal technology to attack a group of Iraqis in a street in Fallujah, all caught on the aircraft's camera and shown on Channel 4 News earlier this week.
Now the Pentagon has given us their version of the precise circumstances of the attack - as seen in the images shown.
We showed cockpit video of an American F16 jet bombing a crowd of people on a street in Fallujah, west of Baghdad. We now know the date - Saturday 10 April.
Overnight, this programme received from Baghdad the official US military version of what happened. It says US Marines were pinned down by fighting somewhere towards the bottom of this wide, empty street.
A ground commander saw this crowd come out along the road and fire at the Marines. That commander had already asked an F16 pilot overhead to target a building from where insurgents had fired.
So when the crowd appeared and the pilot asked what to do, the ground commander knew the pilot was looking at the same hostile crowd as he was and could give the order to bomb them immediately.
"As the F-16 aimed on the building, the pilot saw a group of people come running out of the building, around the corner, and towards the Marine unit under fire. When the pilot queried about the group, the JTAC cleared him to engage...those were the people shooting at the Marines."
Lt Col Steven Boylan, Director, Combined Press Information Center, Baghdad.
That's what happened, he says, to the best of our knowledge. The trouble is, the available evidence doesn't show this.
When you look at the video, the pilot didn't see people coming out of the building.
He couldn't have done - his monitor only shows a crowd emerging onto the main road from a side street.
Late this afternoon the Pentagon emailed saying both pilot and ground controller did see what was going on before this brief video clip.
But there's a bigger problem. Since when do urban fighters run in a crowd whilst firing, in an open area with no cover?
The US military is asking the world to believe that is just what happened here.
We've shown this video to two leading defence experts in London - neither accepts that this crowd is behaving as an offensive military force.
Those who were in Fallujah at the time say if insurgents had behaved like this it would be an act of mass suicide.
"They know themselves they have simple weapons. So actually they use these by hiding in places, fighting or firing behind walls and trying to stand between the houses. They never ever put themselves in front of the Americans because they know that the Americans have big military forces"
Dr Salem Ismael, Doctors for Iraqi Society
When we asked the US military in Baghdad if they could explain this, Lt Col Boylan emailed:
"I cannot give any explanation...we see people making what we would consider to be tactical errors all the time."
From the Pentagon to Baghdad, the US military say they're trying to get us interviews, radio traffic or documents to back up their story.
And Iraqis in Fallujah tell us that crowd on Julan Steet that day were innocent civilians. They too are searching for their proof.
