It made headlines in British tabloids and was treated as fact, but this LiveLeak video should be examined more closely before accepting conclusions provided by the people who posted it and have written about it so far.

The video claims to show an Apache helicopter pilot targeting a group of "innocent farmers planting poppy seeds in the middle of the road" and belting out Don McLane's classic "Bye Bye Miss American Pie" as the missile strikes its target and someone saying "Nice" when the line ends.

But one could see it differently.

Planting poppies in road is an unlikely horticultural practice, and could instead be insurgents planting a bomb in the road. Attacking insurgents caught planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) is one reason that the number of deaths from IEDs is down this year.

It's also difficult to tell by listening if the voices are laid on top of the video after the fact, the damning bit of song and the word Nice interject oddly. Could be genuine, maybe not, but before it gets more attention and touted as the next "Taliban Urination Video" it's time to be a bit skeptical.

The video caption from LiveLeaks also says the missile released on the group was a "ONE kilo Hellfire" and the Daily Mail says it's a "one kilogram Hellfire missile". Depending on the variant, an AGM-114 Hellfire missile weighs between 45 and 49 kilograms.

What one voice in the video actually says is an 1K2A (one-kilo-two-alpha), or one K2A, Hellfire will be fired. The 1K2A is more likely a variant assigned by the Army, the only place I found the reference was in a Wikileak document of a separate incident in May 2009. The video claims to be shot in September of the same year.

Hunting for any factual references, I also looked to the response when the pilot asks if there are friendlies nearby. The response is negative, that the closest are at VC71355537. This is a grid zone coordinate minus a grid zone designator (GZD), and a string of numbers that would place American troops to within 10-meters of that spot on a Military Grade Reference System map. Seems genuine, so some of the voices on the video may be real, or they may all be genuine and a pilot broke into song at the idea of removing a roadside bomb from the path of American troops.

Or, maybe, there are poppy growing possibilities I don't know about, and the pilot is a sociopath. Either way, it's time to start getting a bit critical of these videos and where they're coming from.

A few stills from are immediately below with the original video below them:

Where the pilot spots individuals in a road LiveLeaks

The missile striking the road LiveLeaks

Strafing rounds targeting individuals not killed in missile strike LiveLeaks

The pilot allegedly asks if he should fire into the building and receives a negative reply LiveLeaks

The video is below: