In the long version of that helicopter video clip the Iraqi's can very clearly be seen trying to ditch a weapon in that field off to the left. It looked like a shoulder fired surface-to-air missile, perhaps a Stinger - and helicopter jockeys definitely do not like people with surface-to-air missiles and RPG's very much. The guys in the helicopter had been watching the activities of those guys on the ground for quite a while. This clip was filmed when the war first started, too. During the initial attack on Iraq. There were no US troops on the ground (at that point in the war) to intercept or capture those guys that were attacked. The helicopter crew, as a forward element on a rapidly evolving battlefield, obviously had orders to engage and destroy anything on the ground that may have presented a threat to the oncoming invasion forces. Those Iraqi's were clearly in uniform, they were traveling in military vehicles, they were engaged in military activities, they were armed with military weapons, and they obviously represented a very real threat. They were completely legitimate targets by any standard.

In the shortened video clip you just don't see the full "context" of the engagement, that's all. Context is everything.

I did not visit that website myself (I've seen all the gore I really need to see in my life already, thanks) so I don't know anything about that other clip you mention - the exploding head thing. But I can tell you that virtually any rifle bullet will explode a human head - especially if it passed through a vehicle windshield first. When it hit the windshield it would have mushroomed and flattened from that initial impact. By the time it passed through the windshield and hit some guy's head the bullet was probably flattened out to the size of a nickel or a quarter, at least. The human head is mostly water, and something that size (and travelling at that velocity) would make quite a mess of it. That's called "hydrostatic shock".

Just for the record; the NATO 5.56 mm bullet (for the M-16, etc.) was specially designed and is "weighted" more heavily on one side than the other so that it travels nice and stable until the very instant that it hits something, and when it does hit something it immediately begins to tumble end-over-end. In this way it causes a great deal more damage than it's relatively small caliber might lead you to expect. This is entirely intentional, and is meant to help ensure that the relatively small 5.56 mm round is just as lethal as the larger, more powerful 7.62 mm rounds that weapons like the AK-47 use. The 5.56 mm design dates back to before 1960. This is nothing new. That's been the standard small caliber NATO round for nearly 40 years now. It's small, but it's wicked.