On January 9 we wrote about a video some U.S. special force veteran had posted online to promote his tactical clothing brand. The U.S. military launched an investigation into the issue and has now announced its conclusion. Here are the first graphs of the original Moon of Alabama report:

Afghanistan - U.S. Special Forces Commit Drive-By Murder (Video):
A recent video mashup provided by some U.S. Special Force soldiers in Afghanistan seems to show evidence of a warcrime.

A military truck passes a civilian truck on a paved road at normal traveling speed. A soldier fires directly and intentionally at the driver of the civilian truck without any discernible reason.

This is the relevant two second long cut (repeated 5 times) from a private video mix of scenes taken during the last few months in Afghanistan.

The reporting on the video was taken up by several mainstream news sites. The U.S. military in Afghanistan launched an investigation into the incident. Stars & Stripes, a newspaper for the U.S. military, now reports of the official result:

Probe: ‘No criminality’ in incident of soldier shooting into Afghan truck caught on video:
An American servicemember seen in an online video shooting into a moving truck in Afghanistan acted in accordance with military rules, an investigation has found. ...

After a thorough investigation, [the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command] found that the Americans had “acted in accordance with the rules of engagement,” Christopher Grey, a spokesman for the command, said in a statement.

“An Afghan driver ignored several warnings not to encroach on the U.S. convoy, so a non-lethal beanbag projectile was fired at the driver,” Grey said.

It’s not clear where the shooting took place, what units were involved, or whether the driver was injured. Officials did not immediately release a copy of the investigation.

Some critics found the results of the investigation troubling. Matthew Nasuti, a former Air Force captain and military lawyer, said via email that the findings were not credible. He suggested a shot into the driver’s window was too risky and could have caused more harm than warranted. ...

U.S. military officials declined to comment on the incident and referred questions to CIC. A spokesman there declined to provide comment beyond Grey’s brief statement.

Note:

The scene discussed above was only one short take in the longer video. Other scenes were from special force action in Afghanistan. I had  uploaded the full video to the MoonofA Youtube account and linked the unlisted video in the above piece. Youtube took the video down and sent a warning (three warnings and you are out ...). The original link now goes to a page which says:

This video has been removed for violating YouTube's policy on violent or graphic content.

As the video was unlisted, no Youtube search would have found it. Someone must have seen the video on Moon of Alabama, disliked the content or the fact that it was published on, and complained about it to Youtube.

For documentary purposes a copy of the full video is provided here (video, 46 MByte).