coming up on r t today is the anniversary of the release of the collateral murder video it gave the public a shocking look at the brutality of the iraq war and the human rights abuses that the military tried to cover up we'll revisit that day and speak with one of the soldiers featured in that video and while questions still loom over president obama's drone program activists have begun to protest against the very companies that make these weapons more on that ahead plus you've heard about the growing tensions in the korean peninsula from the mainstream media but what does the military buildup look like will give you a glimpse at the numbers. it's friday april fifth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm making lopez and you are watching r t well today is the third anniversary of the release of the video known as collateral murder it's

a video that highlights the brutality of the iraq war showing a helicopter a target and kill a group of iraqi civilians up until this point we've heard an outcry from the public after seeing this video we've witnessed the manhunt by the government to find the people responsible for leaking the tape but we've never heard from the soldiers themselves the ones featured in collateral murder that is until now i traveled to kansas this week to sit down with ethan mccord he's one of the ground soldiers and his story is one of heartbreak and of regret prepare yourselves this report is not a pretty one. morning by the way it was the video that put wiki leaks on the map 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 the helicopters are approximately about a mile and a half away. when they resume these guys. and from looking at it

now you can't see anything when i mean that right there is obviously a camera dangling. if you're to really pay attention. for that guy has a k forty seven right there baghdad iraq two thousand and seven the two hundred sixteenth battalion was out patrolling a volatile part of the city i was about five blocks away four or five blocks away to the. to the left of the screen this was a battalion wide mission and then the situation turned deadly. we heard the apache was firing. ethan and his infantry squad began running toward the scene to provide support again the apache helicopter opened fire. when he arrived on the scene the apache guns were quiet the accused enemies were dead. one guy's head the top of his head was completely off and the brains were were on the ground and the smell this smell

still haunts me to. i don't even know how to describe it when he approached the van a noisy thing wasn't expecting a cry of a little girl and she was four years old. you could tell she had a wound to the stomach and. remember looking at me and. the blood around her eyes made her eyes so ghostly why isn't grabbed a girl and ran into a nearby building he then picks glass out of her eyes so she could blink and handed her off to a medic i went back outside and. was told to take pictures so i started taking pictures of the inside of the van and that's when he discovered the little boy and that's me. to her. that is a little boy who i originally thought was dead despite their injuries the children survived but part of ethan changed forever that day i couldn't stop myself from

crying i couldn't stop myself from feeling the way i was feeling when he did seek mental help he says he was mocked by his commanders and threatened with expulsion from the military when i started drinking and metal have given me prescriptions thirteen prescriptions. geodon depakote. prozac and i was i was a zombie but things got worse it's started daydreaming of killing my own children and then everybody around me so even took matters into his own hands i had already began drinking pretty heavily and. down all the pills and i drank a fifth of crown row ten o'clock in the morning and my wife at the time found me that was the first time even tried to take his own

life after that he was dismissed from the army i was kicked out with no disability . no benefits from the army was whoever he returned to wichita and then even attempted suicide for a second time. i actually wrote a poem right before i did it. up of the gun in my mouth and. i don't know if i really want to talk about it. ethan story is tragic yes but he certainly isn't alone tens of thousands of military veterans suffer the effects of p.t.s.d. long after they leave the battlefield and for those who simply can't cope with the stress often times they choose to end their own lives their fathers and brothers sons and soldiers and now they're simply another times will see an american wars abroad in the past two years alone ethan has lost eight of his veteran brothers to

suicide and his outlook on life hasn't improved with time i know that i will never ever ever get better i'll never get over this for the rules of the collateral murder video was just another black mark on an unpopular war for ethan it was a catalyst that made him question the entire purpose of the iraq war you know america. john wayne you know we were the white house. americans are always out well we do want to try to help people that's all we do is try to spread freedom and democracy the barrel of a gun history will be the ultimate determinant of how the iraq war is viewed but for ethan and so many soldiers suffering from post war stress the future is far and the past is too much to cope with reporting from wichita kansas meghan lopez r.t. and despite the fact that ethan and his squad have been lambasted for the horrific scenes that came out of the collateral murder video he actually supports private

first class bradley manning and wants to see him released even says that bradley manning is a true hero an american patriot. and on this the anniversary of the release of the collateral murder video i was joined earlier by wiki leaks post person christian who are often son to talk about the video the aftermath and the current legal case of founder julian assange i began by asking him what's changed in the three years since this video is released. well the one thing that has not changed the victims. you see in the video the collateral better video have still not got any justice in my mind. this is clearly a war crime the killing the shooting of the minivan especially and the killing of the year the father of the two children ethan dragged out of the minivan and saved i traveled to. was there just two days before the release of the the collateral murder video and i met these two children. door and saeed they were eight and

twelve years at the time and their father of mater. his only crime was to be driving them to special tutoring and stopping when he came up on the scene to save the site smartly reuter employee who was bleeding to death on the sidewalk. it was heartbreaking to meet them they still have the scars of that incident and of course the psychological logical effects of being shot at and losing their father is terrible they still have not got any justice this event has not been investigated properly as a war crime should be the this should some justice and that is and in my mind this is a very symbolic thing this video because it was not a unique when we released the iraq war logs in october twenty ten there were so many incidents that were similar to this one and actually the field report about

collateral murder incident on july twelfth two thousand and seven was only eight or ten lines long it was in in the general scheme of things very insignificant in the. iraq and question that i think that's something to bring up is the fact that this as i was talking to even the core of that the soldier that was featured in the video before this. it is just one example of so many examples the war was so many years along so can you talk about this can you talk about some of the documents that you have found some of the documents that wiki leaks has released and talk about what were some of the things that surprised you the most. well i mean it was the cold blooded killing often with reference to some legal aspects of rules of engagement i can tell you about what the iraq war documents

gave us as well it was a one incident where people were surrendering to a helicopter they might have been insurgents but they had sort of way their weapons and the crew of the apache gunship the helicopter basically radio back to headquarters and said what shall we do and the headquarters said we'll have to we'll call up the lawyers and they came back to the crew and said will we have talked to the lawyers of the lawyer said that technically you cannot surrender to our aircraft so small can that was what happened in the iraq war and it was a very the same thing happened with the collateral murder video incident it was a. superficial investigation done at the time and it was a total brush over all was within the laws of war and rules of engagement it is extremely brutal picture that all the information that we have revealed about the iraq war has brought to light a terrible chapter and

a dark one in our history and question if you and your organization are the only ones to express but those are the same a sentiment that question also. excuse me that ethan also add longer to to my talks with him now as i understand it. the collateral murder video in many people's opinions was supposed to have ended the war it was really the turning point isn't how your organization says it. well i mean the information that we have revealed had an effect of actually bringing the war to an end the if you if you look back there was a plan to keep. keep soldiers in iraq or u.s. soldiers for far longer than. actually happened and it was because of the information that came out in the diplomatic cables concerning the iraq war all great the iraqi population. of it actually worked for him so leaky government could not get immunity to the u.s.

soldier. and obama decided to pull out all the troops far earlier than expected and we have a short amount of time left but i do want to get to our joy in a sauna and find out what his current status is can you i don't i don't talk about what what joy i thought i was up to these days. well i mean he's still doing the work that he has been doing that throughout all these time that he has been in in the house arrest or in the ecuadorian embassy in london still doing his work as a good intimate kind of connection and we are continuing our work and we have actually a press conference on monday and wasn't going to see to announce. a new project and this is all of course under the direction of julian the songs we hope that takes you to asia will change and he could walk free hopefully very soon and finally your organization was lambasted for leaking this video and arguably the largest document drop in american history what these late have anything that you

have done change the wars in your opinion. changed the war zone in order to change the world i think it has changed the perspective people have on the information sharing and the power that information can have in making historical changes and i think that we have contributed to a very very important changes it is. nobody argues like. gives the fact that the diplomatic cable release started to in the towards the end of the year two thousand and ten did have a catalyst to go for the arab spring and the tremendous changes we have seen in the region. there are so many stories that will come out that have changed so reviews of the world and changed history yes it's always in the years afterward that we discover the most about the war from the present question who are often said what he likes spokesperson thank you for joining us thanks for having me so we have heard from one of the soldiers on the day of the ground invasion of the collateral

murder video we just heard from the wiki leaks spokesperson talking about his take on the aftermath of the video and the iraq war now let's hear from some of the other players who were involved the people whose lives were affected extend beyond the children who were actually pulled from that van and the soldiers who were on the ground and in the air first up wiki leaks founder julian a sausage who has been holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london for almost nine months now he is attempting to escape extradition to sweden archie was the first news organization to speak with a songe after he released the collateral murder video here's what he told us. this is a case i believe where you can see that the internal mere military mechanisms do not work to bring justice or accountability and so it is the court of public jury of public opinion that will try. and commanders and people

who decided the action was within the rules of engagement now a song just so afraid of extradition because we've been in the us from such friendly ties he says that being extradited to sweden could land him in an american prison to suffer the same fate as present first class bradley manning the man who was actually behind the leak itself now as for manning he has surpassed one thousand days in pretrial detention and has yet to have his day in court here's what manning said in a pretrial hearing recently listen closely. that was. given . and finally p.j. crowley he is the former united states assistant secretary of state for public affairs who resigned after he made critical comments about the harsh pretrial

treatment of bradley manning his comments cost him his job and he recently came on our team to talk about the iraq war here's part of that interview i'm actually a firm believer in the case against bradley manning his release of hundreds of thousands of documents some of them classified you know to wiki leaks has done serious damage to the united states national security and the national interest you know that said in a pretrial setting where anyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law i did think that his treatment was excessive so three men with three very different points of view on the iraq war and the collateral murder video these men certainly weren't the only ones whose lives have changed after the leak of this video but on this the anniversary of its release it's important to look at how far reaching the costs of one video really are and to think about the impacts of almost

a decade of war on the global community and to find out what's next for wiki leaks our team will be attending a news conference this monday here in d.c. we'll be watching it and broadcasting the event live on our web site r.t. dot com so be sure to tune in moving on now human rights activists from new york to san diego kicked off a month long nationwide protest against the use of drones both of brawn as well as back here at home it's all part of the april day of action demonstrations drone industry advocates has said that this has provided a huge boost for san diego's economy there iya has now been dubbed the drone because of its technical and manufacturing expertise and that is where the protesters stage their demonstration are to correspond among the lindo was there and he brings us this report. we're in san diego where demonstrators here are speaking out against drone warfare and secret surveillance as part of a nationwide anti drone campaign going on throughout this month there outside of

the offices of general tall mix the defense contractor in charge of making predator drones and reaper drones for the air force and cia in the war on terror they're also in charge of making the drones for customs and border protection to surveil the us mexico border now defense contractors have been a large part of the economy here in southern california for decades but made people that we spoke to here today say that there's a major problem with making so much money off of warfare and secret surveillance to think that you know the workers here either ignore or don't care about what they're doing in the c.e.o. of this company in general in time makes me lose making a lot of money and of a technology that is killing people in a lot of places and making the us hated around the world we want to hear this message one of the things that i think is important is building our lives within the military industrial complex and i think that we really need to look hard at

that because these people need to work they need to figure out how they're going to go about che transitioning into a green job into transportation into something where they can take their skills be retrained and create something that's life affirming not death affirming i love my country in the freedoms that we have and i feel that these drones are infringing upon our freedoms and they're already being used in parts of the united states up on the washington canada border and some law enforcement agencies are using gnome and i believe it's a slippery slope and we need something in place to true till this technology and what they're using it for top government officials including former cia director leon panetta has said that drones are here to stay regardless of the different views about them. in california and in other states around the nation legislators are proposing laws that would restrict the use of drones here domestically this by the drone industry says that in the next decade we could see tens of thousands of

drones in u.s. airspace despite those odds as you drone demonstrators like these about to fight on and will be will continue to see protests like these nationwide in san diego. or t.v. while tensions between the u.s. and north korea are at unprecedented levels this week new reports have come out saying that north korea has prepared two missiles for a launch the country also sent out an advisory to foreign diplomats and killing yang warning them that it cannot guarantee their safety and the safety of embassies in the capital city if a conflict ensues both north korea and the u.s. are now talking strategy are to correspondent margaret how takes a look at the chessboard so back in two thousand and two then president george w. bush had some strong words for a certain group of countries in a state of the union address north korea as a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction. starving and shit of

. iran aggressively pursue weapons in exports terror while an unelected few repressed the iranian people's hope for freedom. he reckoned to. be toward america and to support terror states like these and their terrorist allies constitute and actions of evil arming to threaten the peace of the world. now that designation the axis of evil still continues today now almost eleven years later tensions with one of those countries north korea are possibly coming to a head so as reports of u.s. military build up around that region what exactly does this mean just a speaking well in response to north korea's contend you hostilities and nuclear threats the u.s. has of april first moved at least one more ship capable of intercepting a missile should north korea decide to launch an attack now this ship the u.s.s. fitzgerald sits just off the coast about region also on the map twenty eight

thousand troops on the korean peninsula and sixty seven thousand troops stationed in japan also on the table a high altitude area defense program known as which is the landing base system developed by lockheed martin now this base uses truck mounted launchers to intercept these missiles the u.s. sent these to guam last week in addition of the troops on the ground rounding l.p.'s resources two navy destroyers deployed in the western pacific region now the name of this game is battleship which is now underway and despite not knowing whether this blistering rhetoric will ever turn into war these troop movements give us an idea of what it just might look like and washington margaret howell r.t. . no is that a gun in your pocket for one pennsylvania police officer they answer was yes and then some in a recent sting operation to uncover a prostitution ring in pittsburgh things got a little out of hand when undercover police officer donald. solicited the services

of twenty six year old diana gross apparently to tell a grand was good at pretending he was not a police officer very good the woman's lawyer says the pellerin actually allowed diana gross to perform oral sex on him before revealing that he was a police officer and arresting her this raises huge concerns about the way powerful people take advantage of the position that they're in but there are some strange details about this incident as well to talk more about this curious case i was joined earlier by dan wilbur he's a comedian and i asked him if this was just one of the perks of being a police officer it is one of the perks of the job sometimes someone does something really awful to you and you get to sue him over you mean the cop no no this is not one of the perks for the cop the cop i think is supposed to protect and serve not where protection and be serviced that's that's not how it's. hard to stay in

there so the real problem of this complaint is that really a case of he said she said i mean people are worried client i believe police officers so is this case closed. yeah unfortunately i think it is going to be a he said she said the important thing that we should do is just legalize prostitution because it's just who needs vice cops anyway we can real day am that's going on the real crime that's going on in america is that men are receiving oral sex for free all over the place and i haven't met one deserving man that's receiving it i mean i haven't done anything to receive that ever i've been deserving of that ever and yet i receive it too sometimes three nights a year where he's counting. i'm counting on one hand i think that sounds like a plea for the single but it's not only that he allowed this woman to perform oral sex on you to him as you say they agree to a fee of one hundred forty five dollars which is an odd number to come up with and

i've never solicit attacks before so i don't know what the real number and you should be coming up with for such service says but the problem here is that she didn't even see any of that money when she actually performed the service is right it is that's upsetting and one hundred forty five dollars isn't enough i mean you can't even buy the new play station with that i can't even get a we you for doing one and i was going to try i was going to even take a pay cut and do a couple manually but you know i have to save my wrist strength for a wee tennis tournament that i'm scheduled in my house. things to do over the weekend but dan i have to ask you where is the line when does undercover work go too far because so many times we see these these undercover shows these undercover police officers to catch a predator i can't i can't even name all of them why does it go too far. well in this situation he clearly did something wrong but for me i mean i self deputized myself to catch

a coke dealer in my apartment building and i couldn't figure out whether he was a coke dealer or not until maybe six or seven months down the line of of really negotiating how much coke i could get from him so you know who knows if he's someone who the police should deal with the word or just some small time crook that no one should pay attention to until i've bought all of his drugs so in that case i think that the court should waive all of the charges against me and we have a short amount of time left and by that i have to ask the house of the police officer be punished well she didn't get any money so to that he shouldn't use the money concerned. that the money comedian dan wilbur thank you so much for joining us do and that's going to do it for the news for this week but be sure to tune in next week we have a special lineup in store for you wiki leaks we'll unveil something new on this monday the eighth the organization is holding a special news conference at the national press club on monday the group will

reveal more details about the mysterious project k. that they have been touting to watch our special coverage live and learn even more about the future of wiki leaks tune in next week meanwhile monsanto seem to be receiving very good news this week with a bill that passed to protect them from future lawsuits and also gaining high profits but that may change as protesters have even at the f.d.a. is the center for food and safety and applied nutrition it's countrywide at monday's event they'll demand that genetically modified foods be labeled in the interest of all consumers r t will take a bite out of that story next week. and he's one of the fathers of the internet vice president vince kurt sits down with r.t. to share much about the current state and the future of the internet we will talk about the benefits of on line anonymity and what may come as the internet stretches

beyond the boundaries of our world check out all these stories next week when we return and those are just a few of the stories we have in store for you next week along with more news and in-depth interviews so keep it to dinner right here to our t. and that's going to do it for now to find out what i'm doing when i'm not reporting today's top stories follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez my question for twitter followers tonight in the years and decades ahead how do you think the iraq war will go down in history books the u.s. entered iraq with three goals in mind depose of saddam hussein find and take possession of all weapons of mass destruction and stabilize the region today so hussein is dead and there were no weapons of mass destruction so arguably we have control of them but the region is still very far from being stable so was this mission accomplished in this case tweet me responses who knows they could end up on air but before you go if you missed any part of today's interviews or if you find

yourselves a little bit bored this weekend looking for some in-depth news check out our web site as our you tube channel is youtube dot com slash r t america there you can click comment and forward our stories to your friends for the latest greatest information on all the stories we covered today and a few that we just didn't have time to get to check out our web site or to dot com slash usa for now have a great night and a great weekend. i think. i'm. a potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have a team come.