Slashdot Mirror
Konami Announces a Game Based On a 2004 Battle In Fallujah
The LA Times reports that Konami has announced Six Days in Fallujah, a video game due out next year that is based on an actual battle fought in Iraq in 2004. Quoting:
"The idea for the game ... came from US Marines who returned from the battle with video, photos and diaries of their experiences. Instead of dialing up Steven Spielberg to make a movie version of their stories, they turned to Atomic Games, a company in Raleigh, NC, that makes combat simulation software for the military. ... 'The soldiers wanted to tell their stories through a game because that's what they grew up playing,' said John Choon, senior brand manager for the game at Konami... More than a dozen Marines are featured in documentary-style video interviews that are interspersed with the game's action. The Marines reappear in the game itself, doing pretty much what they did during the war. One tells the story of how he furiously wrote a letter to his wife and begged a chaplain to give it to her if he died. Another, Eddie Garcia, talks about how his right leg was shredded in a mortar attack, and how he suffered survivor's guilt after he was taken out of combat."
So this is flamebait why? The US Army did use white phosphorous in Fallujah and did so even according to the US Army themselves. White phosphorous is a terrible substance that "melts people's bodies down to the bone", and requires significant moral gymnastics/cowardice* to justify as a weapon of war. I think it's only reasonable that, as an American soldier, the option to deploy banned weapons against the enemy be an option, just as it should be possible to win the game by not ever going to war on half-truths and lies disseminated by a blatantly evil and corrupt administration. (* Delete as appropriate)
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
You might as well put tl;dr in there.
Read very closely:
"They told me stories of teams of people that would go into apartment buildings and shoot every single thing in it. These people were all "insurgents". Entire families of insurgents."
This is what he means by massacre. The fact that you aren't able to read the 4 lines of his post doesn't make you insightful, it makes you a moron.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
As someone who was there, F you man. It's easy to sit here at home and call us murderers and bastards for what we did, but the fact remains that the people we put down were bad people.
Sure, There are bound to be a few innocent people killed in any war. This war has been great in that we have greatly reduced the number of innocent people killed as compared to historical numbers.
But when you take a town of 25,000 where the vast majority are violently anti-american and put lots of american soldiers in the center of town, you're going to have lots of people die. You choose who you would rather have die. Your neighbors and countrymen, or some terrorist raghead who is hell-bent on destroying america and is practicing building bombs in his kitchen.
--Forest C. Adcock--
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was there in 2004 alongside the Marines (Army Infantry), and coalition psyops basically blanketed the city for weeks prior to the invasion with the message that all civilians needed to leave the city and any male over the age of 15 who stayed would be considered a combatant. We all but told them exactly when we were coming and "you want to fight, let's fight...you want to live, get the hell out of the town".
The civilian casualties that I saw were caused by bombing the city prior to the attack and bombing/artillery on specific buildings that insurgents were using as strong points that couldn't be taken any other way.
At no time did I or anyone in my company fire upon any civilian. In fact the only civilians that I saw were after the fact when they came out of their hiding places and surrendered. We sent them on their way with the MP's, safe and sound.
What I did see was a lot of AK and RPG's fired at my Bradley Fighting Vehicle. I took 4 within the span of 15 minutes. Thank $DEITY for that reactive armor.
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
The original was a troll: no women or children have been reported killed by WP in Fallujah. The WP was used for anti-personnel attacks on protected positions where high explosives were having no effect. (Paraphrased from wikipedia, but consistent with reports I've heard)
The baby-killers charge was, is and always will be trolling.
You do realize we made it very public in and around Fallujah that we were going to attack the city before hand right? We encouraged people to leave the city before we took it. These were no unenlightened individuals struck by a surprise attack.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
As soon as you are a fighting force hiding amongst the populace you are no longer part of a legal army, you are a terrorist, and anyone assisting these people are also the same.
Not immedeatly. It makes you a guerrilla first. And given that a guerrilla army needs the support of the local populace, a guerrilla army can only *defend* a territory as it's almost impossible to act on enemy territory. If some cell manages to do so, attacking civilians, thats terrorism.
bickerdyke
Incendiary Weapons are Protocol III of V of the 1980 Geneva Conventions. The United States is a signatory to Protocols I and II. Protocol I is no x-ray invisible fragments and Protocol II is certain types of Landmines and Booby-Traps. The US does not consider itself bound by Protocol III so WP is not an illegal weapon for the US.
This is an example of the problem with International Treaties, like the Geneva Conventions.
They only apply to countries who voluntarily agree to have them apply.
Are you aware that the Germans and Japanese killed civilians by other means than bombing?
Germany ran death camps that murdered several million civilians, and murdered more millions in other ways.
Japan was not as organized, but their civilian toll does run in the eight digits somewhere. Let's not forget Unit 731 in Manchuria, where among other things Japanese surgeons practiced amputations - on healthy limbs, without anesthesia.
The Western Allies (including the US) committed plenty of atrocities. I'm unaware of any major power in a large war that didn't. However, they weren't anywhere near on the scale of the Germans and Japanese. The Western Allies, for all their faults, were the humanitarians in that war.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes