It was the video that put WikiLeaks on the map: \u201cCollateral Murder\u201d turned the tide of war in Iraq and landed Private first class Bradley Manning in military detention. But for Army veteran Ethan McCord, it was just another day on duty. When he approached the van targeted by the airstrike, he heard a noise he wasn\u2019t expecting: the cry of a little girl.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think she was four years old and you could tell she had a wound to the stomach and I remember her looking at me and the blood around her eyes made her eyes so ghostly,\u201d<\/i> he says.<\/p>\n
McCord grabbed the girl and ran her into a nearby building. There he picked the glass out of her eyes so she could blink and handed her off to a medic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went back outside and we were told to take pictures and so I started taking pictures of the van,\u201d<\/i> he says. Then he discovered another child.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s me right there,\u201d<\/i> McCord tells Lopez as he walks her through the now infamous \u201cCollateral Murder\u201d clip. \u201cThat is a little boy that I originally thought was dead.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cI couldn’t stop myself from crying,\u201d<\/i> he says.<\/p>\n
McCord sought out mental health afterward, and says he was mocked by his commanders and threatened with expulsion from the military.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that I will never, ever, ever get better,\u201d<\/i> he says. \u201cI will never get over this.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cYou know America, we were John Wayne, we were wearing the white hat. Americans were always trying to help people, that\u2019s what we do, we try to spread freedom and democracy,\u201d<\/i> he says. \u201cWith the barrel of a gun.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Z6Ye12mQvcw<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI went back outside and we were told to take pictures and so I started taking pictures of the van,\u201d he says. Then he discovered another child. \u201cThat\u2019s me right there,\u201d McCord tells Lopez as he walks her through the now infamous \u201cCollateral Murder\u201d clip. \u201cThat is a little boy that I originally thought was dead. I couldn’t stop myself from crying,\u201d he says. \u201cI know that I will never, ever, ever get better,\u201d he says. \u201cI will never get over this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance","category-short-video-clips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}