Wikileaks Releases Video of Journalist Killings

linguizic writes "Today Wikileaks released a video of the US military firing large caliber weapons into a crowd that included a photojournalist and a driver for Reuters, and at a van containing two children who were involved in a rescue. Wikileaks maintains that this video was covered up by the US military when Reuters asked for an official investigation. This is the same video that has supposedly made the editors of Wikileaks a target of the State Department and/or the CIA, as was discussed a couple weeks ago." Needless to say, this video is probably not work safe (language and violence), and not for the faint of heart.

Comments

Video

[sopssa]

A short version with some initial analysis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
Full version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik

If you read the comments from Army and US in the video before it was now released to public, they're just really blatant lies. They also did not release the video when Reuters requested it by Freedom of Information Act. Like the earlier news note, they followed, photographed, filmed and detained a Wikileaks editor about this video, not knowing what will they uncover. There's definitely more dirty secrets they don't want anyone to know.

In the video you see the people weren't attacking anyone, weren't targeting anyone (hell, all they had was cameras!) and that they were just civilians walking on the street. The military clearly had no idea what they were doing. Now theres plans to employ remotely controlled UAC's too? Make it a video game so that you don't need to care about the people you are murdering. These are people with families, with kids, with a whole lot of their own life, dreams and childhood. Then some idiot with large caliber weapons comes and shoots them without even a blink of an eye or thinking what he is doing. In top of that the truth is held from the public and the families of those who were killed, and US Army admits no mistake. I have no respect for these people - they're scum.

Re:Video

[KBKarma]

WikiLeaks commented that there was a possibility that at least one person had a weapon. What really got me was that they used a GUNSHIP on HUMAN TARGETS. Would have been much better if the Military had come out and said "Yeah, we fucked up bad." when it was first hinted at. But covering it up just makes it so SO much worse.

Re:Video

[lorenlal]

But covering it up just makes it so SO much worse.

Covering it up is only worse if someone finds out about it. See previous treatment of Wikileaks. All this means is that someone in the command structure will be ordered to fall on the sword.

Re:Video

[lamppost]

I could follow the actions of the gunship operators up to a certain point YOU knew they had cameras, they did not. However, the targets in question did not seem hostile nor did the threat of an RPG seem very real. The firing on the van though, without question, was a mistake. They were clearly evacuating a wounded man, something I thought was pretty much a universal no-no for engagement.

This is what happens in war, this is what happens when you put kids in situations where there lives are in danger and you've taught them to kill. Rather than this specific instance (which has happened in every war ever on every side) I think the real story should be about the cover-up, and the actual purpose of the war itself.

Re:Video

[FriendlyLurker]

These are people with families, with kids

Worse, the video shows two children clearly visible in the front seat of a van being shot up by the gunship after their parents stopped to help the wounded from the first attack. The soldier commentary says something like "serves them right" for stopping.
Never fear, there is a new "Cybersecurity" act now to allow the president to block disturbing leaks and wikileaks from challenging incompetence and corruption in the future. Nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Video

[Firethorn]

Disclaimer: I'm at work, and they have video stuff blocked, so I have not seen the video

What really got me was that they used a GUNSHIP on HUMAN TARGETS.

And what's wrong with this? The usage of 'gunships' on human targets is valid by the laws of war. There's normally nothing special on how you kill people during war.

Where I WILL get upset is the targeting of non-combatants, whether by gunship, missile, or even humble assault rifle. I understand that there can and will be collateral damage if you need to use something with explosives to take out a target, but sometimes this is necessary.

Re:Video

[Bakkster]

And what's wrong with this? The usage of 'gunships' on human targets is valid by the laws of war. There's normally nothing special on how you kill people during war.

Where I WILL get upset is the targeting of non-combatants, whether by gunship, missile, or even humble assault rifle. I understand that there can and will be collateral damage if you need to use something with explosives to take out a target, but sometimes this is necessary.

I have not seen the video either, but it was mentioned there may have been one person in a crowd of non-compatants with a gun. The near guarantee of collateral damage due to using a gunship is exactly the reason not to use it. That goes far beyond acceptable use in a crowded group of civilians.

Re:Video

[Jeffrey Baker]

"What's wrong with this" is they had mounted infantry 100m away. The gunship crew could have just called in the coordinates and had the eyeballs check it out. They might have seen that the "AK-47" was a tripod and the "RPG" was a camera lens.

And there was no excuse for blowing away the minivan trying to carry off the wounded survivor.

Re:Video

[RsG]

I could follow the actions of the gunship operators up to a certain point YOU knew they had cameras, they did not. However, the targets in question did not seem hostile nor did the threat of an RPG seem very real. The firing on the van though, without question, was a mistake. They were clearly evacuating a wounded man, something I thought was pretty much a universal no-no for engagement.

Second on that. Firing on people you mistake for the enemy (and who look armed, might even have been armed) is understandable. Firing on a civilian vehicle trying to rescue the wounded is not. A better solution, given that they did have ground assets in the area at the time (as evidenced by the arrival of a group of IFVs shortly after the engagement) would have been to let the ground forces intercept the van. They have the option of stopping it without killing the people inside.

Moreover, if you watch the video, it's pretty obvious that the people who get out of the van aren't armed. At the stage where the van is evacing the wounded reporter, the gunships crew has no reason to assume they pose any threat, to them or the IFVs and infantry about to arrive. What was the point in opening fire?

This is precisely the sort of scenario you want to avoid. If you have a situation like that, you need eyes on the ground. The air crew couldn't see the kids in their downrange; a ground of infantry stopping the vehicle surely would have.

Re:Video

[HungryHobo]

We're seeing a low quality low resolution video and yet we can see that.
Those guys had the full color full resolution experience in person with binoculars.

It's not asking much to actually look where you're pointing a gun before you pull the trigger especially when nobody, absolutely nobody is firing back.

Re:Video

[Jeffrey Baker]

Maybe if you refrain from commenting until after you watch the fucking video, you will not appear to be profoundly ignorant.

Re:Video

[Lunix Nutcase]

I've always wondered what keeps the Geneva Convention enforced.

Because you don't want the other side doing the things banned by the convention to your own soldiers and civilians?

Re:Video

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the tax losses of 60-80 years of a soldier's life?

It's sad to see someone's life being viewed as little more than a government's paycheck.

Re:Video

[jedidiah]

Yes. In hindsight it looks like one of the photographers was reaching around a building to
take a picture of the Apache. That got mistaken for sighting in with a rifle. The photographer
gets the same kind of Darwin award that goes to kids that point water guns at cops. If you are
in the wrong place, you will be taken for a perp. You don't have to be in Baghdad for this to
be case.

Re:Video

[saider]

Soldiers do not go into battle with "just enough" to win. They go in with everything they have and they will use the most destructive devices they can. They are not looking for a fair fight.

Keep in mind this was three years ago during some of the most violent times in Iraq. What you are seeing is guerrilla warfare. The enemy does not stand out with "bad guy" uniforms and because of this, the soldiers are on edge and in a defensive posture, exposed out in the open. They are essentially targets sitting around waiting to be shot at. Their friends are being shot and killed or blown up on a daily basis, and this weighs heavily on their thoughts. Operating in an environment like this for weeks on end without a break stresses people to the breaking point. It is only a matter of time before combat fatigue sets in and you start getting mistakes. Mistakes are part of war, and this is reflected in the law of war. Killing civilians is a war crime, but the law leaves ample room for these inevitable actions under stress.

Be careful when you rush to judge people's actions under these conditions.

Re:Video

[Firethorn]

Think of the rules of war as a set of behaviors evolved to limit conflict much like how when rutting season hits bucks don't normally kill each other, predators normally manage to keep their territories without killing each other very often. Heck, Meerkats get into a lot of fights(watching Meerkat manor recently), but on average there isn't a lot of casualties every fight.

The 'Laws of War', which predate the conventions, tends to ban certain things that are more likely to stir the population up than to resolve the conflict. Thus, they're counterproductive in the end.

By following the rules, you're only marginally less likely to win, but far more likely to end the conflict sooner, and on better terms.

Re:Video

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes conflict between nations more 'civil'. As long all sides largely follow it, both sides will have less physically and mentally mutilated people, and less civilians killed. (Though not as few as by not having a war at all, of course.) If one side breaks the pact, the other side lose their obligations, making it a "no gain" scenario. Presumably the outcome of the war would be largely the same if they fought 'dirty', only more devastating for everyone involved.

It's kind of the same principle that makes stags headbutt each other for territory instead of brutally tearing each other to death. Game theory and stuff.

It doesn't work so well when you're fighting independents or fanatic tyrants who for one reason or the other do not care about the nation and its people's well-being.

In addition there's that whole ethical "human worth" thing. Opinions differ, but by and large it seems people mostly agree that they don't want other people to get needlessly hurt and killed. Global and domestic opinion can seriously affect both your war and business efforts. War heroes get elected, mass murderers don't.

Re:Video

[NeutronCowboy]

This is what happens in war

This. This is the part that is always missing from certain sections of anti-war protestors and war-supporters alike.

War is messy. War sucks. Sometimes you shoot your own people. Sometimes you miss the enemy and hit some goat farmer in the middle of nowhere; sometimes, you shoot him directly. Sometimes you shoot the goat-farmer because you thought he had a weapon, sometimes you shoot him just because.

War is never clean, can never be clean. Even the old standards of a bunch of guys meeting up in a field to club each other over the head had collateral - how do you think they fed their army on months-long campaigns?

War is not heroic, it's not glorious, and it doesn't solve anything. It just is the standard political discourse, carried on through bullets and bombs. Sometimes, there's a need for that. Sometimes, there isn't.

I like videos like these, because they drive home the point about how messy war exactly is. They start the discussion of "Is our goal worth this cost?" Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But when you get into a war, be ready for these situations. Because they cannot be avoided.

Re:Video

[Angst Badger]

And what's wrong with this?

Entirely aside from the specific issue of deliberately and indiscriminately killing civilians, there's the larger issue that we are still conducting an unprovoked war of aggression. We don't have any legitimate targets in Iraq. Afghanistan is arguably a different situation (though whether it will do us any good is another question), but the only legitimate action we can undertake in Iraq is to get the hell out of their country.

Re:Video

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

In the video you see the people weren't attacking anyone, weren't targeting anyone (hell, all they had was cameras!) and that they were just civilians walking on the street. The military clearly had no idea what they were doing. Now theres plans to employ remotely controlled UAC's too? Make it a video game so that you don't need to care about the people you are murdering. These are people with families, with kids, with a whole lot of their own life, dreams and childhood. Then some idiot with large caliber weapons comes and shoots them without even a blink of an eye or thinking what he is doing. In top of that the truth is held from the public and the families of those who were killed, and US Army admits no mistake. I have no respect for these people - they're scum.

What did you expect from the military? There are two kind of guys that enter the military: Those that are murderers, and those that lie about it. That whole "protecting my country" thing is bullshit. They want to murder people. The only thing the US military has ever done is bombing black/brown/yellow people. Anyone signing up for it is a racist and a murderer, and I have no sympathy for them. And no, I don't feel sorry when I see their coffins arriving on TV.

The US hasn't fought a single Legitimate war since the independence wars. All the others, have been invasions. Not to mention all the wars they have contributed to create by providing armament and by having the CIA stirring up some shit.

So, yes, they are all scum.

Re:Video

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly not. What he does make clear is that it is an inevitable result of fighting a guerilla war. In other words, there is no such thing as a "clean" war and anybody who prattles on about smart bombs and limited collateral damage is trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. That this stuff happens in war shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone; it's par for the course for even the best trained army when put in such a situation.

Re:Video

[Limburgher]

I watched it. He's right. I wish he wasn't.

Re:Video

[HangingChad]

Operating in an environment like this for weeks on end without a break stresses people to the breaking point.

There's some truth to that. We had our fire department fund raiser this weekend where we stay up 36 hours to smoke pork shoulders. Even grabbing a couple hours rack here and there by the end of the next day we have to double and triple check everything we're doing because you make really goofy mistakes. And that's after just a day and a half. Trying to imagine what day after day of that in the relentless heat and constant threat, has to be brutal.

I watched the video and didn't see any weapons. Certainly no RPG's, which have a fairly distinctive profile. It was more than the imaginings of a tired mind. No one in the van was armed or picking up weapons, yet that was how it was called in. Fatigue is one thing, this is something else. Like that episode of South Park when the two hunters kept claiming animals were attacking them.

Re:Video

[RsG]

I don't think it hurts the image of the Apache crew, just of whoever ordered them to fire. I'm willing to assume they were given faulty information of the threat on the ground. The question is who decided it was a good idea to use large caliber weaponry very near civilians?

They weren't given faulty data; they were the ones collecting the data. The Apache's gunner was the one with the first eyeballs on the crowd (consisting of around a dozen people, including two reporters).

It's possible some people in the crowd were in fact armed with rifles. Hell, they may have been an armed escort, given that this was a war zone. However the "RPGs" the gunner thought he saw were, in fact, TV cameras. Bear in mind, this is the assessment of a human being in a moving aircraft, looking through a zoomed in camera, at obscured targets, so that isn't as unlikely as it sounds.

The gunship asked permission to engage. They were given it, based on the assessment of that gunner. That part, at least, was an understandable mistake. The part that got me angry was when a civilian van showed up, started evacuating the wounded survivors, and got blown to smithereens - one of the first rules of warfare is "don't fire on the wounded or the people providing aid". Hell, I'm much more pissed that they fired on the van at all than I am they hurt a couple kids inside - they never should have engaged the van in the first place.

Re:Video

[Anonymous Coward]

Those mistakes cost people their lives and families. If US military came to my country like they did Iraq, and killed people I knew like that - then I wouldn't care less about your excuses, I'd be too busy looking for Americans to kill.

Re:Video

[Carewolf]

The video is quite clear at this point. The soldiers have even admitted on radio that the man has no weapon and no weapon is in sight. One radio voice keeps asking for permission to engage, and someone says "engage", and they engage and kills them. That part is definitely a total fuck-up and at least one soldier who is way too excited and should have been told to back off and relax, or possibly not have been allowed anywhere near a weapon.

Re:Video

[amicusNYCL]

the soldiers are on edge and in a defensive posture, exposed out in the open

Not in this case, in this case they're flying around in a pair of Apaches. I can have empathy for a soldier who's been awake for too long manning a high-traffic checkpoint and shoots at a car when it doesn't stop in time. I don't like that situation, but I can imagine that guy is pretty stressed out and isn't thinking very rationally. I don't imagine the same level of stress when you're flying around in an armored gunship with a 30mm cannon and up to 16 Hellfire missiles. In that case, you're the baddest thing on the block, and you shouldn't be spinning your cannon up against a crowd of people without being damn sure they have weapons pointed at you. If you can't verify that, you call in someone who can. We have all of these surveillance drones for a reason.

Re:Video

[mikerz]

Au contraire: the user is clearly talking about man's natural rights, not American law. Government does not give rights - it restricts certain rights.

This delves into the concept of positive and negative rights -- that you either don't have any rights whatsoever until a government grants them to you, versus that you have the full rights entitled to your naturally-born freedom until they are taken away.

Given that man has been around longer than government, I am inclined to say that governments restrict existing rights and cannot grant anything that does not already exist.

The right in question is essentially the right to self-defense.

Re:Video

[darkmeridian]

The background to the story was that US ground forces that had taken fire from that position called in the Apaches, which found the group of armed men. At least two members of the group had weapons. Look at 3:46 in the extended video. One man is carrying an AK and the other is carrying a long, thin heavy weapon that looks like an RPG. The journalists were carrying large cameras that were mistaken for weapons, especially when one of the journalists knelt at a corner to take a photo in a posture that looks just like a person setting up to fire an RPG. At that point, the chopper pilots were freaking out over the possibility of an attack on friendly forces.

The attack on the minivan seemed like a mistake. There were no weapons in or around the van. Firing on a medical transport seemed immoral. (I'm not sure if it's illegal but no one likes guys who shoot at medics.)

Re:Video

[DG]

I've seen the video.

Yes, the effects of that weapon on people are horrific and not easy to watch, but don't let your horror override your reason.

Those gunships were flying top cover for a ground patrol. (This is all direct from the voice traffic on the video) The ground patrol said they saw people with weapons up ahead, and they asked the air element to have a look.

The air element saw a group of people - not a "crowd" by any means; that's just sensationalism - and saw weapons in the group. According to their ROE, they are allowed to engage armed persons who appear to be a threat (in this case, to the ground patrol) and they did so.

This engagement, as far as I can see, was conducted correctly. They held fire until they were clear of the building and when they IDed that one of the targets was wounded but unarmed, they held fire - exactly as required to by their ROE. The gunner is very keen to have the wounded target pick up a weapon, because that would allow him to open fire again, but he holds fire as required to.

The tragedy here is that the group does not appear to have been an ambush in the making, and that camera equipment was mistaken for weapons. I'm pretty sure I saw at least one AK-47 at one point... but I also saw the camera guy with his camera slung over his shoulder and at that point, it sure looked like a slung weapon.

In other frames, it is more clearly a camera - but I also have the benefit of *knowing* that it *is* a camera. I'm not in a gunship orbiting what I think is an ambush in the making with my buddies' lives in the balance.

From the POV of the ground forces and the gunship, they were seeing an ambush. Based on the activity in the area at the time, which almost certainly had included other, actual ambushes, they were probably pre-disposed to interpret what they saw as an ambush.

So what we have is a tragic case of mistaken identity.

That's terrible, but it happens. It is one of the consequences of guerrilla warfare - when friend and foe look alike, mistakes will be made.

I note too that when the area is deemed secure and the ground patrol shows up, they apply first aid to the wounded and evacuate them. There is a brief question as to where to evacuate them, but there's nothing sinister in that, and it seems like the decision was made to send them to a closer, local hospital rather than wait to get them to an American treatment facility.

This is what war is like. It's not at all pretty, or clean. And when your tools are high-powered weapons, the consequences of mistakes are high and that sucks for all involved. We can, safe behind our computers, armchair-quarterback the decisions made on the ground until the cows come home, but that won't remove the necessity of applying lethal force to the enemies of civilization, nor will it bring back to life those killed in error when mistakes are made.

A tragedy no matter how you slice it.

DG

Re:Video

[HeckRuler]

To be nitpicky, the war in Iraq was over in a couple of weeks. We're REAL good at war. Good job boys.
Since then its been an occupation, not a war. And to be real technical, it was never a Congressional declared war. Which makes Bush a dick for calling it one when it was his own personal quagmire.
We really suck at occupation. We don't want to be there. They don't want us there. And the only reason we ARE there is inertia and the fear that there would be wide-spread sectarian violence. Ok, so MORE wide-spread sectarian violence.

Re:Video

[Anonymous Coward]

...should then not serve to their evil overlords...

That is an ignorant statement to the realities of the world, society and government whether you agree the Iraq war to be justified or not. This was an awful occurrence and wrongful actions should be lawfully addressed. If those responsible are found to be guilty of war crimes they should be punished.

Claiming (or believing) an entire government is an "evil overlord" based on cherry-picked actions however shows a lack of constructive thought.

Re:Video

[David Gerard]

"calling this 'collateral murder' is not appropriate and borders on criminal in itself."

You sound like a Vatican spokesman saying the Pope's hard done by, and ignoring all the child rape.

Re:Video

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't find a source for how powerful the Apache's gunsight magnification is, but from what I remember of the video, the rounds took about a full second to reach their targets. The M230 chaingun has a muzzle velocity of 805 m/s, and the speed probably drops off pretty rapidly. So the chopper was at least 800 metres away, probably more like a kilometre. At that range it's nothing like obvious that the aircraft is paying attention to you, if you even see it.

These guys probably had no idea they were being observed and targeted.

And there weren't guns "scattered around". Maybe one or two of the people had a weapon, *maybe*. The van stopped next to a verifiably unarmed wounded man about 20 metres away from the main bloodbath where any hypothetical weapons would be. Watch the video before talking like this.

Re:Video

[mcornelius]

Because you don't want the other side doing the things banned by the convention to your own soldiers and civilians?

That's funny, because those on "the other side" like to torture people far worse than any allegation against what has been allowed under either the Bush or Obama administrations (not justifying it; just stating facts), have no regard for medical evacuations, deliberately hide behind women and children, disrupt elections in which they would have the ability to seek approval for their policies from their fellow countrymen, have no hesitation about exploding canisters of chlorine or using WP when they can get their hands on it, don't mind mutilating bodies of Americans and rigging them with explosives, and the list goes on and on.

The Geneva Conventions are enforced by the good sense of most people that are in a position to act accordingly. There are always exceptions, and most of the coverage on this incident has been complete bullshit, from both the DoD and from Wikileaks.

This is like all those "pundits" on TV a while ago, claiming that we shouldn't allow torture because it doesn't work. No, that's bullshit. We shouldn't allow torture, because we shouldn't fucking allow torture. For the same reasons, we should not allow targeting of civilians, or force disproportionate to a legitimate military objective.

Clearly, these guys fucked up. Also, clearly, they were reasonably certain that there was a military objective and that they had acted to achieve that. Everything after that is politics, not justice.

Re:Video

[koreaman]

That's the point: we shouldn't be fighting senseless wars. I think if more Americans knew what the human consequences are, we wouldn't be.

Kudos to WikiLeaks.

Re:Video

[JM78]

Thank you for a balanced perspective. The number of people in a supposedly intellectual society who are still unable to widen their view to the realities of this kind of terrible occurrence makes me sad.

From the video alone, there is absolutely no way for anyone to make a fair judgment or come to any conclusion. If a crime has indeed been committed those responsible should be punished. But a rush to judgment based solely on this is absurd.

In a room crowded with pitch-forks, torches and a lack of constructive thought processes - of which there is far too much of these days - your statement is a breath of fresh air for those of us looking for intelligent perspective. It is appreciated.

Re:Video

[Anonymous Coward]

rescuing the wounded

Then they shoot and kill them all.

I haven't seen the video. You sure about that?

Yep, that is correct. The whole thing was like a bunch of poachers goofing off...just shoot anything that moves.

Re:Video

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The "gunship" didn't "ask for permission" to engage. Some fucking hillbilly BEGGED to shoot people, and then begged the final victim to provide a nominal excuse to murder him, once he was down.

At the end, he blamed the rescuers for bringing children into combat! Yeah, they made you HAVE to kill babies, didn't they? These were conscientious people, in a fucking regular neighborhood - doing what you'd hope any one would do, if they found a dying man - drive up quickly and try to get him to help.

Babykillers.

Babykillers, Babykillers, Babykillers.

They are the same - I don't care if it's Nazis bombing Guernica, or Johnny Mainstreet ripping the heads off of nursing mothers in My Lai. Babykillers.

Fuck anyone who makes the dimmest excuse for this. Fuck 'em to hell - 'cos that's where they're going. Talk about "moral relativism".

The good news? The U.S> is headed for the same fate as the Soviets. 12 years from now, people 'round the world will squat in the rubble and say: "Remember America? It seemed like that would last forever..."

Re:Video

[sFurbo]

Surprisingly, the keeping of conventions is to quite a large extend for the psychological health of your own soldiers. Killing people, even in a war, is psychologically taxing, and knowing that you abide by rules to limit unnecessary suffering makes for fewer breakdowns.

Re:Video

[copponex]

The Geneva Conventions clearly delineate willful killing as a grave breach of the agreement.

This video encapsulates the entire problem of American foreign policy: a bunch of idiots who are too scared to put themselves in harm's way to confront and confirm what they think is an enemy, so they make rash decisions that end up killing innocent people and creating more problems for themselves.

Then they lie about their stupidity and cowardice and cover it with words like collateral damage, and try to cover their dishonor with words like freedom and democracy.

It's a sad fucking joke.

Re:Video

[shutdown -p now]

You are a RAGING military apologist. What would it take for you to say something bad about the military?

Shooting targets that are clearly identifiable as civilians would do the trick.

By the way, I'm not an apologist. Attack on the van as taped on the video is clearly wrong - there is no sight of weapons, not even something that can be confused as a weapon, and the people are just evacuating the wounded. I don't know if that counts as a war crime or not from a legal perspective (the van / people didn't have Red Cross emblem, which may be required for this to qualify - I'm not sufficiently well versed in these matters to judge), but it sure as hell looks like one.

However, I think it's a far stretch to say that soldiers attacked van knowing that there were kids inside (which is a fair bit worse than attacking adults), and I do think that the original attack on reporters and their escorts was fair - they were in a warzone in a middle of an ongoing military operations, with shots having been fired at U.S. troops in the vicinity already; and they had things that are either weapons or looking an awful lot like them (and carring them in such a way that makes it look like it's a weapon). In the original Reuters story about this, there's also a mention that, according to witnesses on the ground, "two or three" of the escorts "may have been armed", further corroborating this.

Re:Video

[commodoresloat]

Watch the fucking video. Then come back and tell us what you think.

Re:Video

[Padrino121]

The disappointing theme your comment highlights is your lack of appreciation for the very thing we are supposedly fighting for, the right to democracy and freedom which at their heart value human life. This type of war includes a significant amount of urban warfare and at times collateral damage however regardless of how fatigued one is it is inexcusable to brush off these types of events as mistakes grouped in with the more mundane things we all do when tired. Mistake or not if I fall asleep at the wheel and take someone's life I will be held accountable for it, albeit not the same as if I take a life on purpose but none the less I will be held accountable.

In addition to the points I made above let's discuss one of the issues that applies to your position equally as well as mine. If "mistakes" were made and innocent people died why the obvious cover-up by the military when it was apparent they could not hide the truth?

Re:Video

[chdig]

I disagree with you on the first shooting being understandable -- with the quality of vision the gunmen had, they should not have been able to call the shots they did (and they did). The video made those soldiers look trigger-happy, but far worse showed that the army doesn't seem to have a reasonable set of guidelines on confirming targets.

On the shooting of the van, though, you're bang-on. The exact words of the gunmen leading up to the actual firing on the van were:
"We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly uh, picking up bodies and weapons."
[a van arrived with children in the front seat to pick up a man who'd been gunned down, no weapons in sight]
"Let me engage", was the next request from the gunman, followed by, "Can I shoot", and topped off with a series of requests for permission and a final, "Come on! Let us shoot!"

And then, permission received, they fired on unarmed individuals coming to help a hurt man, who also had children looking out of the front window in (mangled by poor resolution) view of the helicopter.

Nothing much is understandable about these "mistakes".

Re:Video

[shoehornjob]

And we wonder why people "over there" hate us. I wish they could differentiate us from our government. This will never end while we are over there making mistakes like this.

Re:Video

[saider]

Would you also be hunting down your countrymen who plant bombs in public places? Even though those bombs were targeting Americans, they ended up killing a much larger number of their own people.

Re:Video

[Anonymous Coward]

Protocol I, Article 35.

As you are an US military personnel there is no way you can be objective on this matter and as we see you are just trying to justify this war crime. Yes, that's right, shooting unarmed civilian people (Protocol I, Article 50,51), some of the journalists (Protocol I, Article 79) is considered war crime. If you have watched the video, these pyschomaniacs are even shooting the wounded human beings while laughing and swearing. These ... (please do not hesitate to choose your "best words") soldiers and their commanding officers shall pay the price for what they have done. I hope they will be put to a life time sentence without a parole, in a cell. I suggest that, it will be good to make them watch this video along with a short documentary film of lives of victims, at least once everyday.

Re:Video

[tsm_sf]

What exactly do we think will happen when the most powerful military force in our planet's history is employed in what is essentially a police/intelligence capacity? You're taking equipment and personnel designed and trained to utterly destroy large hardware and many, many people and placing them among a civilian population.

How is this massacre a surprising outcome? Put a jittery, sleep-deprived twenty something behind a machine gun in any populated area and something like this is bound to happen eventually. Poor leadership killed these people and, if you believe in this sort of thing, damned a few kids' immortal souls.

Re:Video

[Maxo-Texas]

One of the claimed "RPG"'s looked a lot like a camera with a telephoto lens on it to me. It's where the person is leaning out from behind the edge of the building apparently kneeling.

You know- it occurs to me, this video is a lot more apparent to me on a 24" screen than it may be to the pilots on 4" or 6" screens.

Re:Video

[tibit]

What bothers me is the conversations you hear in the background. The soldiers essentially being happy about the killing. Just listen to that.

I mean, come on, rules of war or not, you're killing people. There's nothing to be happy about. Soldiers who are happy about killing others -- is that what it came to? I thought it was about duty and necessary evil, with full realization it is wrong. No matter how supposedly bad the enemy is. Apparently to them it's just as much fun as playing a video game. And my taxes support that? I'm ashamed.

Re:Video

[kidgenius]

There was mistaken identification on the cameras, but let's look at it this way. There IS an RPG in the group. As the pilot circles around, the guy with the RPG becomes obscured. At that point in time, it's pretty difficult to know if it wasn't handed off to the guy leaning around the corner, aiming it in your general direction. Looking back, yeah, it is a camera, but you've seen weapons now and given your current state of mind, most everything will look like a weapon. It's unfortunate that some innocent people had to die.

Re:Video

[hvm2hvm]

Yeah, I personally 'liked' the parts where the gunner says "come on, let us shoot".

Re:Video

[c6gunner]

This video encapsulates the entire problem of American foreign policy: a bunch of idiots who are too scared to put themselves in harm's way to confront and confirm what they think is an enemy, so they make rash decisions that end up killing innocent people and creating more problems for themselves.

Yep, you're right. Clearly they should have landed those helicopters, walked over, and said "Hi! We're with the US Military, and we'd really appreciate it if you could tell us: are you the bad guys?".

Don't be a tool. Aerial bombardment/attack has been used since the advent of manned flight. The difference is that now:

1. We can be more discriminate about it.
2. We keep recorded evidence of it.

The result is a huge decrease in civilian casualties, but results in MORE bitching by uninformed simpletons.

Re:Video

[nedlohs]

The initial attack isn't the issue. That's fine, you can 100% guarantee someone had an AK47, you'd be an idiot to be doing journalism in a war zone without some security people. And mistakes happen, of course a soldier is going to see anything that looks like a weapon as a weapon - those that don't die or see their friends die.

But there was never a claim made about weapons when they opened up on the vehicle assisting the wounded guy. A "collecting weapons" throw away when they first arrived but they clearly weren't doing so and that wasn't mentioned again when asking for permission to fire.

They just shot to kill the unarmed wounded guy and the unarmed people assisting him. And no one raised a concern at all.

Re:Video

[masouds]

I personally think the pilots/gunners were overeager and jumped into action way early. Like all other sting operations you'd see in your local TV show, it was better to establish intent from the people on the ground (Photographer and other people with AK-47) by just doing a fly-by and tempting them to take a shot at the helicopter. After they fire at the helicopters they would have been fair game. But shooting them before being fired upon is what caused this war to last longer than necessary.

Re:Video

[digitalunity]

Afghanistan is a war with a purpose. The taliban were very much worthy of america's wrath for harboring not just terrorists but the training camps as well. The taliban were repressive for religious reasons which is worthy of despising.

Saddam was repressive, but only as was necessary to repress an underlying tendency towards civil war. I'm sure a lot of people in Iraq miss Saddam because he brought them relative peace(and tyranny). When the violence is really bad, the fear of predictable tyranny is better than unpredictable guerrilla warfare.

We never should have gone to Iraq, but politicians are like marshmallows in the the face of a president calling for military action in the name of "national security" and "terrorism". I wish they had a brain as big as their hubris.

Re:Video

[jdoverholt]

I think it's the Hague Conventions (specifically, 1899) that you're looking for, not the Geneva Conventions.

Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague II); July 29, 1899
Section II, Chapter I, Article 23

Besides the phohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially prohibited:--
[...]
To employ arms, projectiles, or material of a nature to cause superfluous injury;
Citation

Superfluous may be too subjective a term, but I think this is the line typically thought to deal with this sort of thing.

Personally, I'd like to see an army of giant wrecker robots used to smash the enemy, but I guess I'm impractical.

Re:Video

[feepness]

And we wonder why people "over there" hate us. I wish they could differentiate us from our government. This will never end while we are over there making mistakes like this.

In the last election, 99% of our electorate voted for one of the parties that supports continuing the conflict. In the initial entry, all but two of our Senators supported the use of force.

What are they supposed to think?

Re:Video

[Stephan Schulz]

Keep in mind this was three years ago during some of the most violent times in Iraq. What you are seeing is guerrilla warfare. The enemy does not stand out with "bad guy" uniforms and because of this, the soldiers are on edge and in a defensive posture, exposed out in the open. ... Operating in an environment like this for weeks on end without a break stresses people to the breaking point. It is only a matter of time before combat fatigue sets in and you start getting mistakes. Mistakes are part of war, and this is reflected in the law of war. Killing civilians is a war crime, but the law leaves ample room for these inevitable actions under stress.

These guys were having fun killing people. This is not and can never be ok. Indeed, they are in a bad place - but its the responsibility of the political leadership that sends them there to ensure that people are not kept in a position that puts them under so much strain that they will break. In fact, the ultimate responsibility lies with the Bush government that started the war without any idea of how to end it. But everyone down to the guy who pulls the trigger can say no to such illegal acts.

And, of course, keeping such fuck-ups secret is completely and utterly unacceptable in a democracy. How can voters be expected to cast informed votes if the government blatantly lies to them?

Re:Video

[Ecuador]

I see a lot of posts about how the camera looked like an RPG especially if you didn't already know it etc. That is no excuse. We are watching a low resolution b/w video, yet from the soldier comments it is obvious they can see details that are not visible to us, i.e. they can see pretty well and I would think they would be in a much better position than us to recognise weaponry (soldiers get some training in weapons, right?).
From their actions later in the video (saying a van stopped to pick up weapons) it is quite obvious to me that the trigger-happy immoral hicks on that hellicopter were simply making things up to get permission to shoot. It was mass murder, not war.

Re:Video

[VON-MAN]

Typical insurgent tactics include a getaway vehicle.

That is just cynical excuse to kill more people. Many activities include a vehicle. This was a van with men, small children, probably one or more women that arrived at the scene well after the shooting. They did what you would hope many people would do: they tried to help one of the survivors.
The soldiers first claim the van is there to help the insurgents and pick up the weapons. However, we don not see them picking up any weapons. The people from the van start to help the wounded man. Then we hear the one of the soldiers thinking\hoping aloud: "pick up the weapon. come one, pick it up". Somewhat later, we hear the question "are they picking up weapons?", and this is maybe the only questions that is never answered. We do hear the crew repeatedly ask for permission to fire, and to me it starts to sound like pestering. Until someone gives in.

Re:Video

[mikkelm]

It's the gunner identifying the targets, identifying the weapons, and asking for permission to fire. It's the people on the ground asking the pilot what the situation is, and the pilot returning the gunner's assessment.

Re:Video

[crush]

Mod parent up. This is the single most important point about the whole thing. Incidents like the above are just one INEVITABLE consequence of invading and occupying OTHER PEOPLE'S COUNTRIES.

Re:Video

[mikkelm]

His isn't a balanced perspective. His is the opposite perspective, the apologetic advocacy. 'X, but Y,' is no better than 'Y, but X.' You aren't balanced without the Z.

Re:Video

[martyros]

I'd be too busy looking for Americans to kill.

Then you'd be a sucker, falling for the very trap that Al Qaida set for you.

There's a reason the laws of war require combatants to dress in an obvious uniform and avoid civilian areas unless unavoidable: because not doing so endangers the lives of civilians. By dressing up like the locals, you cause this kind of mistake.

If these "insurgents" cared about Iraqi people, they would avoid civilian areas and dress in a clearly identifiable uniform. But the "insurgents" don't actually care about civilians. This kind of a mistake is actually good for them. They try to make incidents like this happen on purpose. Why? Because it causes a reaction just like you're having. They are more cynical about PR than the US military. While the US military just tried to bury this video to save face, the insurgents purposely do things to cause things like this to happen so the US military would lose face.

Obviously this was a screwed up situation. The guy who made the call to shoot made a mistake, and people died because of it. But the guys who do have weapons, and do have RPGs, caused that mistake; and they did it on purpose. They have the greater blame.

Re:Video

[Runaway1956]

The part that so many commenter miss entirely, is that the gunship was called in by ground troops who were FIRED ON. Watch the video again, and pay attention to the chatter. Read the captions. Hotel 26 was fired on from this location, or from a location so close to it that it looked like this particular place. When the gunship came over, they spotted multiple people armed with AK-47 rifles, and one who appeared to be armed with an RPG. Moments before the gunship opened fire, that RPG was aimed toward Hotel 26, and that was the reason they maneuvered quickly into a good firing position. They were reacting to a percieved threat to their troops on the ground.

Go ahead, watch again, and pay attention to the radio traffic.

Later, when they opened fire on the van, their reasoning is less clear, but there was chatter between the gunship, their commander, and Hotel 26. I need to watch it again, and try to understand all the chatter - the reason for firing again may become clear.

Was it the "right" decision? Maybe not - but it was almost certainly NOT WRONG.

Re:Video

[Jedi Alec]

There's a reason the laws of war require combatants to dress in an obvious uniform and avoid civilian areas unless unavoidable: because not doing so endangers the lives of civilians. By dressing up like the locals, you cause this kind of mistake.

Uh oh, someone better retroactively inform all those resistance cells in WWII. Oh wait, those are the good guys in our book.

When going up against an opponent that has pretty much every advantage you can think of, guerilla is the way to go. And yes, doing so will cost the lives of your countrymen. But from the point of view of the guerilla, his tree of liberty needs watering as well.

Re:Video

[pjt48108]

"I was waiting for someone speak out against all this liberal drivel..."

What a way to begin...

"War sucks. Period. The problem we have here, is terrorist scum hiding amongst the population and using them as shields."

No, the problem we have here is a helicopter GUNSHIP, manned by soldiers eager to kill, taking on civilians. At best, they might have been taking on a rag-tag group of ne'er-do-wells. But, really, what does a gunship have to fear from AKs?

"I am proud of the soldiers we have in our armed forces. Would you be willing to do what they do, for the pay they receive, the time away from your family, and the thanks they get from our newspapers and the public? Sounds like a suck job now doesn't it?"

To be honest, they weren't drafted, and their reasons for choosing such a line of work is beyond the magisteria of most people back home. It seems, however, that you are countering the "liberal drivel" with "conservative drivel." Fair and balanced, I guess: accuse those critical of a wartime clusterfuck of not being sufficiently proud of the troops.

"You still want to blame them for making the wrong call that ultimately is trying to save Iraqi and American lives?"

Yes. Who else do you blame for making the wrong call? Santa Claus? Lenin? No, you blame the eager beavers begging that they be allowed to shoot, and who then have a chuckle in the process. If they were indeed trying to save lives, I think, as the kids would say, they were "Full of fail."

"I'm not even sure I really blame the military for trying to cover this up"

Yeah, cuz at home, they don't have a helicopter-fucking-gunship to defend (HA!) themselves.

"...reading the reactions of MOST of the slashdot crowd, it was best for them to cover this up and hope it never got out, because everyone is yelling about how savage and murderous our soldiers are."

No, they are yelling about how savage and murderous THESE PARTICULAR SOLDIERS were, and how the Iraq War was a masterful piece of clusterfuckery from the very beginning. And why is this best covered up? To protect people who fucked up? To project a false image of a clean war? To protect the archetype of the honorable soldier?

"Once again, war sucks, and mistakes get made. Its easy to judge when you're here on American soil in your damn easy-chair."

As you have shown.

Re:Video

[NeutronCowboy]

In a nation where the vast majority of the population has never served, and where most people have never even held a weapon, it simply makes no sense. If your goal is propaganda, then sure, it works great. Otherwise it's completely pointless.

On the contrary. The biggest danger in a nation where the population has never served is that War becomes idealized: either as a clean, simple affair, or as a cruel campaign that is never appropriate. Both are clearly wrong. Videos like these are necessary because they epitomize the daily struggle that soldiers have in a battlefield. Just watch the discussion: were there or were there not weapons in the crowd? Could the cameraman be positively identified as presenting no-risk? Heck, even the van rescuing wounded civilians is not a clear-cut situation. Only through a vigorous discussion centered around videos like these can people gain a better understanding of what it means to be in a war zone.

Similarly, videos of surgeries gone wrong and of massive crash pile-ups are regularly shown, and both with the same goal: to demonstrate what happens in certain situations. Surgeries gone wrong less frequently, but I got my drivers license after a course that included the dangers of driving - and you ain't seen nothing yet if you haven't seen the results of cars going at 150 mph into an embankment.

Finally, on the subject of context: if you think it is missing, feel free to provide it. I've seen a number of posts by people in either active service or who have retired, and they provided great context. Where's yours?

The simplest propaganda is to shut down discussion and label it propaganda. Then you can say whatever you want and no one can challenge it.

Re:Video

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what war is like. It's not at all pretty, or clean.

And the public should be made aware of this. They need to see videos like this, so that they know that terrible things happen in war, lest they grow too fond of it.

Re:Video

[Lehk228]

did you listen to the radio chatter? they weren't scared they were having fun.

this was sadistic murder for entertainment. everyone on the scene should be charged with war crimes and murder, and everyone who helped cover it up and harass wikileaks should be charged with conspiracy and accessory to murder after the fact

Re:Video

[Thiez]

Well that doesn't really matter does it? I'm sure it's possible to hate Al Qaida and the guys invading your country at the same time. Given the fact that Al Qaida didn't start this war, it's easier to hate the invaders, they're the ones attacking.

Re:Video

[MartinSchou]

Shooting targets that are clearly identifiable as civilians would do the trick.

Congratulation - you've won the Catch 22 award.

Is this taking place in a city? Yes.
Do civilians tend to live in cities? Yes.
Are there lots of civilians in this particular city? Yes, 6.5 million
Do some of these civilians take up arms against the Coalition Forces? Yes.
Do these people wear anything that makes them distinguished? No

So you're pretty much saying it's alright to just shoot all 6.5 million people in Baghdad. You cannot clearly identify someone as a civilian. The only difference between a civilian and a rebel is the weapon in the hand of the rebel. And since we only see three or four suspect weapons in the initial group of twelve, the other eight or nine are what? Out of luck?

And as for it being okay to shoot people who happen to be in an area, where shots have been fired previously. It's in a CITY. That city has five thousand people per square kilometer. Are they all just supposed to sit indoors all day long, starving to death? Are the reporters supposed to only go with the occupation forces, covering only their point of view? Are the reporters supposed to just ignore the plight of the civilians who have done nothing at all, and not report on the unfortunate consequences they suffer under?

And as for the van not being a marked Red Cresent vehicle (Muslim countries use the cresent instead of the cross) ... ask yourself this question: You are somewhere where ambulance service is spotty to non-existant. You see someone who's bleeding to death on the sidewalk. Are you really callous enough to look at that situation and go "fuck it, I'm not helping him"?

I'm not. And there's nothing to indicate that the van driver even knew the Apache was the one responsible for the shooting. They could easily have assumed that the Apache had chased away the people responsible, and it was providing cover for them.

Which brings up another point - why the fuck haven't the US mounted speakers on their gunships? Just use some prerecorded phrases like "place the weapons on the ground and lie down next to them". Add a powerfull spotlight to it, like you get on the tiny Bell police helicopters, and stuff like this could easily be avoided. And it'd add a lot more weight to the suggestion that the Coalition is there to bring about law and order until the Iraqi police can take over.

Re:Video

[gweihir]

Last I checked, Brits didn't use gunships in Northern Ireland.

The Brits very sensible did not use overwhelming fore in Northern Ireland. It means your casualties will about match that of the enemy and that in turn gives a possibility to start negotiations on an equal footing at any time. The US way of doing this highly asymmetrical (they will accept a high number of enemy casualties for each one of their own) is by now known to boost support for the underdog side tremendously and typically results in a long, drawn out all-out war. Face it, you have to show respect to the enemy to get respect in return and that means giving the enemy a real chance to kill you.

Of course doing something like this requires warriors, not killers. The US military forces seems to be mainly comprised of cowardly killers today. People that do place getting home alive again over everything else are not warriors. While this is understandable on an individual level, it does more damage than good in the real world.

Re:Video

[shutdown -p now]

So you're pretty much saying it's alright to just shoot all 6.5 million people in Baghdad. You cannot clearly identify someone as a civilian.

No, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying that it's okay to shoot people who may or may not be civilians, provided that you have reasonable grounds to believe that they are not. What is "reasonable" largely depends on the circumstances, and in this case, having watched the video, and knowing the background (ongoing operation in the area, chopper specifically requested to locate enemy infantry in this direction because shots have just been fired from there) - yes, I do think that it was reasonable during the initial attack. It was clearly not reasonable to attack the van, though.

And since we only see three or four suspect weapons in the initial group of twelve, the other eight or nine are what? Out of luck?

Well, yes, sticking around armed people in a conflict zone tend to mean you're a bit short of luck, yes. For one thing, if you're holding something that looks vaguely like a weapon alongside a guy who is holding something that's definitely a weapon, it's quite reasonable to assume that your thingy is a weapon as well. Even you don't hold anything, if you clearly look like a part of a single cooperating group (rather than, say, combatants herding civilians at a gunpoint), then you'll be treated as such.

It's in a CITY. That city has five thousand people per square kilometer. Are they all just supposed to sit indoors all day long, starving to death?

They don't have to sit indoors all day long. They are, however, advised to stay indoors while active fighting is ongoing on the streets immediately outside.

Are the reporters supposed to only go with the occupation forces, covering only their point of view? Are the reporters supposed to just ignore the plight of the civilians who have done nothing at all, and not report on the unfortunate consequences they suffer under?

Reporters should make that decision for themselves, but they have to understand the risks of travelling with an armed, non-uniformed escort in combat zone. It's practically inviting an incident like that. I wonder, in fact, if they warned the coalition forces about their excursion (in which case they're in the clear), or were entirely on their own. If the latter, then they shouldn't be surprised when they're shot at.

Which brings up another point - why the fuck haven't the US mounted speakers on their gunships? Just use some prerecorded phrases like "place the weapons on the ground and lie down next to them".

Other people have already corrected my (and your) mistake, noting that, given the bullet speed and the delay between gun firing and bullets hitting, the chopper was likely around a kilometer away.

Re:Video

[chrb]

If these "insurgents" were totally crazy suicidal, they would avoid civilian areas and dress in a clearly identifiable uniform.

There, fixed that for you.

Seriously, the French resistance did not avoid civilian areas or wear uniforms. Neither did the Belgians, or the Greeks, or any resistance force, ever.

But the guys who do have weapons, and do have RPGs, caused that mistake; and they did it on purpose. They have the greater blame.

That is the same logic that the Nazis used in occupied Europe to justify violence against the civilian population following attacks on German forces. Don't gun proponents always say that ultimate responsibility lies with the man holding the gun, and with nobody else? Why in this case are the men firing the weapons not held responsible for their actions?

This abdication of military responsibility and projection onto a third party is reminiscent of Bloody Sunday, where British forces opened fire on civil rights protesters and then blamed the IRA. It is the same excuse that the Serbian forces used whenever they killed civilians - that the KLA were ultimately to blame. The fact that a third party may somehow benefit from soldiers killing civilians does not make it okay to do so. Blaming the third party is a poor excuse - it is the fault of the soldier pulling the trigger, and of his superiors for providing inadequate rules of engagement. Soldiers operating in civilian areas have a duty different from those operating in a war zone - a role more akin to a police force than an invading army, and the rules of engagement need to make that clear.

This was not an active war. This was an occupying military force. The roles and rules of engagement are supposed to be different. Opening fire on civilians without verifying that they are even armed is not supposed to be allowed. Most Americans would go crazy if U.S. police officers or National Guard troops opened fire on some innocent people walking down the street. There was no warning. There was no provocation. This wasn't even some protest. If this happened in the U.S. there would be a hundred posts here decrying government force and suggesting violent revolution. Why do you makes excuses for excessive government and military force being used to kill civilians in Iraq, when you would not excuse it in your own country?

Re:Video

[bolthole]

These guys were having fun killing people. This is not and can never be ok.

As opposed to building an army of people, who hate killing people?
That does not make for a particularly functional army.

two things to consider:

1. the army has to train a certain amount of aggresion into soldiers

2. The solders DID THE RIGHT THING. They stayed mentally "combat ready", but WAITED FOR CLEARANCE TO FIRE.

They got the clearance, they opened fire.

the fact that you dont like what they were muttering in order to psyche themselves up for the very nasty business of killing another human being, is irrelevant.
Try to think in the real world, instead of a fairy tale.

Re:Video

[OrangeCatholic]

>We can, safe behind our computers, armchair-quarterback the decisions

But that's exactly how these people were killed....safe, behind our computers.

Re:Video

[Sprouticus]

Im not going to make a full set of comments, it seems like we have some people in the thread with more tactical expience than me.. But to your point, if there were troops within a few hundred meters of the people, that means they were 'at risk' and thus their desire to engage and kill the people with the 'RPG' was valid.

War is sad.

Re:Video

[Anonymous Coward]

Your assessment here appears rational and objective due to language of your logic, but your clinical assessment of the circumstances is *contrived* with the same lack of objectivity inherent to any operation carried out by a military force, such as the use of the word "target" to describe a human being, or the use of the word "neutralize" in place of kill or murder, which are all distancing techniques designed to suppress what would otherwise be a validated emotional response from the public as a result of their less clinical but equally significant objective assessment;
--That the use of overwhelming force against such a lightly armed group of "threats", especially using such advanced weaponry from distances great enough to cause a delay between the sound of the high caliber and high velocity munitions being fired and the visible impact of those munitions (seconds) upon "combatants" not even engaged minimally enough to take cover as they were behaving as such "threats", appeared to have been unjustified and unprovoked considering the appearance of a lack of a time component and the tone and content of the dialog taking place in the background before and after the event in question took place, not to mention the degree of deception inherent to the official statements made in response to questions posed by REUTERS constituants.

I find it hard to accept your position on the matter because it absolutely fails to consider that anyone might have a valid and rational expectation - civilian or not - that there must be a material purpose in matters of War when operational action leads to the loss of human life.

The word "civilian" use to be significant toward the operational goals of our military I once thought, but now that the institution of journalism in America has virtually lost its spine thanks to their advertising business model, I think the definition of "collateral" has broadened enough to establish an effectively clandestine operational purpose. ...But what do I know, I'm just and Anonymous Coward...

Re:Video

[SETIGuy]

So your fine with foreign intelligence agencies telling foreign governments how to manipulate the opinion of your countries people then?

No, but it's going to happen anyway. You didn't think Rupert Murdoch was an American, did you?

Re:Video

[Q-Hack!]

Possession of "a very long object" is a great fucking reason to end a man's life.

In a war zone, you better believe it. What I see in this video is US military personnel following the rules of engagement. Sucks that it was a group of innocents... But it is a war zone. They have to make split second decisions in battle... With the equipment available. On a 14 inch monitor, it sure looks like a couple of guys carrying AK-47's and the guy peeking around the corner could be an RPG... hind sight shows that it was probably just a camera, but I will never fault them for thinking it was an RPG. Better to be wrong rather than letting them fire an RPG at our guys on the ground. Yes, I really said that. If you want to be a journalist in a war zone with a really large camera, go right ahead... Just don't be surprised when somebody mistakes you for a combatant.

We have the best equipped military in the world, but the fog of war is still there. These guys were following the rules of engagement for that battle. Would you rather us bring back carpet bombing? Seems like Americans took less flak back in the day when we used this barbaric technique.

Re:Video

[Rei]

The gunship here is literally at least a mile away from the targets; look at how long it is between when fire retorts and impacts. RPGs have an effective range of, what, 200-300m? They self detonate at, what, ~900m or so? And AK-47s, at a mile range+ range? Give me a break. These people posed ZERO threat to that gunship and they knew it. Otherwise, they'd be a heck of a lot less relaxed about calling in the weapons that they saw.

Furthermore, the gunners didn't just hit the people who were suspected to be carrying guns. Or even try to. Big crowd of unarmed people visibly chatting with each other? A good enough cause to unload and then cheer at the aftermath like a series of frags in a video game, apparently. And a van of rescuers? Not only cause to disable the van, but to flatten it and everyone inside.

These are not proper rules of engagement. It shames our military to behave like this. We're supposed to be better than they are.

Re:Video

[Boldoran]

Yes he deserves an award alright but it should be a f*** medal. What he did to report from a warzone took way more courage than sitting in an apache and hoping to find some guy that carries something that could pass as a weapon so you can push a button to blow him into pieces.

Re:Video

[Anonymous Coward]

"That got mistaken for sighting in with a rifle."

A rifle is no threat to an Apache. The helicopter is armored for at least 12.7mm, and all flight systems and crew compartment (except the glass) is armored for 23mm fire.

"The photographer gets the same kind of Darwin award that goes to kids that point water guns at cops."

No, this is more like a cop killing a kid for spraying a can of silly string at them.

Re:Video

[Stephan Schulz]

These guys were having fun killing people. This is not and can never be ok.

As opposed to building an army of people, who hate killing people? That does not make for a particularly functional army.

On the contrary. Building an army of people hating killing is the only way an enlightened democracy can build an army and keep the moral high ground. The aim of an army is not to kill people. It's to avoid war, or, if wars have to be fought, to win them. Winning is not achieved by simply killing people. It's only achieved by killing more than you piss off enough to join the fight.

Re:Video

[evocarti]

And we wonder why people "over there" hate us. I wish they could differentiate us from our government. This will never end while we are over there making mistakes like this.

Should people differentiate the American people from its government?

It's a democracy. We're responsible for the actions of the people we vote for; collectively that's the American government. If and when they act in ways that the public disapproves of, it's the public's job to remove them via the political process. If the public is too apathetic or unmotivated to do so, I believe that is implicit approval.

Mistakes will be made. Undoubtedly, some will be tragic. I feel heartbroken by this story.

Conditional Freedom of Speech? Yay!

[Zixaphir]

Awesome, we need to have a completely anonymous leak site to even know how corrupt our government even is. What a statement!

Re:Conditional Freedom of Speech? Yay!

[Capt James McCarthy]

Awesome, we need to have a completely anonymous leak site to even know how corrupt our government even is. What a statement!

I always find it interesting that folks are so quick to jump on the band wagon on stuff like this. I mean you suspect everything from any government (and rightfully so), along with any large corporation, but the moment one source puts out one piece of potential evidence everyone is all over how corrupt the entire process is. Really? The whole process of government? Wow. Well, good luck with that.

Let the facts come out and be reviewed. Cover up or not, that too shall be vetted. Perhaps there is more here then what is in the video. We still only see one side of a story here.

Re:Conditional Freedom of Speech? Yay!

[Hyppy]

It's not that all government is inherently corrupt. The point is that a government is corrupt if its citizens need to be completely anonymous in order to safely question their government or present damning evidence about it. The harassment and detainment that Wikileaks editors have had to endure is a very telling point in this debate. The anti-Wikileaks documents that have been leaked by, well, Wikileaks, are also an interesting point to note.

Well, I'm going to make my first donation.

[synthesizerpatel]

For anyone who complains that the main-stream (or alternative media) aren't doing their job, perhaps you should make a donation too. The truth needs to be known and if wikileaks is the only entity out there willing to take that risk, the least we can do is support them.

Re:Well, I'm going to make my first donation.

[Kell Bengal]

Reuters, if I recall, counts as main-stream media. Those people put their lives on the line to bring us news, and they paid the price so that we might know. It's one thing to go to war and lose your life in service of your country. It's another thing entirely to go to war and lose your life in service of the truth. Rest in peace, Reuters reporters - your sacrifice will not go unremarked.

Re:Well, I'm going to make my first donation.

[isorox]

For anyone who complains that the main-stream (or alternative media) aren't doing their job

Mainstream media are often the ones that get shot at by American yahoos. Alternative media are often fat lardasses that blog about "how terrible mainstream media" is while drinking a latte at their local starbucks. Sure, you get some bloggers that simply report on events where they live, but they are typically intelligent enough to stay out of any real on-the-ground danger, its "just" the government.

I work for mainstream media - I'm not a journalist, so I only need to travel airport->office->hotel, but I had to go on a hostile environment course a couple of months ago. One of the things you think about when you talk to people that have been kidnapped and watch videos of people that have had their foot blown off, is "why the fuck am I here".

Re:Well, I'm going to make my first donation.

[Stradivarius]

You know, I've looked at and appreciated a bunch of Wikileaks material before, and thus was predisposed to like them.

But then I saw how they handled this video, and I did a 180. I would've understood if they just posted the video. But the lengthy preface to the video, putting it on a site called "collateralmurder.com", the zooming/highlighting of easy-to-miss details (the benefit of which the soldiers lacked in real-time), just seemed design to prejudice us against the soldiers rather than help us determine the truth.

The truth here was the soldiers made a big mistake (identifying camera equipment as a RPG), and innocent civilians lost their lives as a result. But Wikileaks seems intent on pushing beyond that truth and into manipulating our emotions. Which is where they lost me. We don't need any more 24-hour emotion machines in this world.

Re:Well, I'm going to make my first donation.

[martas]

your sacrifice will not go unremarked.

it almost did, though

Context?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really feel like watching people getting gunned down at the moment. Where was this, when was this, and why isn't this on CNN.com, NYtimes.com, msnbc.com, etc.?

Re:Context?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Probably because they are too busy running basically content-free "analysts" who just so happen to be retired military of various flavors, with current ties to a variety of defense contractors?

Re:Context?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Also, I meant why isn't the MSM covering the leak on wikilinks, not the incident itself.

Because the MSM have been willing participants in the propaganda machine?

Outrage of the week

[MaXintosh]

I find this all sorts of appalling. As someone else who started watching it said, "That's really screwed up." But that said, I have almost no hope that this will ever go anywhere. We've seen a seemingly never ending parade of illegal and barbaric behaviour come to light in both Iraq and Afghanistan, on the part of US forces, but each time nothing ever happens because of it. We all seem to just shrug our shoulders and go on with our lives.

Wikileaks is just peeing into the wind. Nothing will probably come of this, because outrage is dead.

I'm really hoping someone proves my cynical attitude wrong.

Re:Outrage of the week

[royallthefourth]

Americans don't really have ways to participate in organizations that will stop this sort of thing from happening.

Republicans endorse it, Democrats endorse it, and third parties are barely even a sideshow. As far as I know, there's no group of "stop sending our military to kill browns" that I can give money to.

I can do all kinds of stuff about domestic policy, try to encourage foreign policy to increase intervention (Darfur (no thanks)), but there's nothing I can do to decrease foreign intervention. It's ugly and the citizens are powerless.
I can't even really blame the troops that much because it's basically a trap for poor people who can't find a job to do the bidding of our imperialist leaders.

I highly recommend everyone read Killing Hope by William Blum to get a good rundown of how much this has been happening in just the last 60 years.

Re:Outrage of the week

[MaXintosh]

I think the problem is that Republicans (I speak as if they're a vague monolithic organization) feel they have to go gangbusters on the war, no matter what. Because it started under their tenure as president.
Democrats (generalization!) feel like that they have to support it, or else risk alienating voters by appearing 'soft' on security.

And the public is very distractable, is the problem. It seems like political views are more hereditary now, instead of come to through introspection.
I think you got a good point about there being nothing to we little people can do to decrease foreign intervetion. But I guess what I'd say is that maybe we can try to lessen the effects of foreign intervention. Give money to try and help the people who's country/lives have gone to hell in a hand-basket. I'm not sure what NPOs are doing work in Afganistan and Iraq...

Re:Outrage of the week

[hondo77]

By questioning anything that happens in Iraq or Afghanistan, you are being an unpatriotic traitor to the US and should be hanged!

There's a Democrat in the White House so it's now okay to do those things.

Re:Outrage of the week

[jabithew]

When did this take place? Under Obama or Bush?

Does it matter?

Re:Outrage of the week

[dkleinsc]

As far as I know, there's no group of "stop sending our military to kill browns" that I can give money to.

Actually, there are, but they aren't political parties. One of the longest-running and effective is FCNL, a Quaker lobbying group that's been pushing for a more peaceful stance since 1943. There are also specific candidates you can support on these issues, most notably Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul (what's interesting is that they arrive at the same conclusions for entirely different reasons).

Of course, the trouble is that these guys only have morality, justice, religion, and sense on their side, whereas the pro-war side has billions of dollars in defense contractor money.

Re:Outrage of the week

[Slider451]

"I can't even really blame the troops that much because it's basically a trap for poor people who can't find a job to do the bidding of our imperialist leaders."

1973 called. They want their draft-era mentality back. Way to demean our servicemembers. The fact is our brave men and women come from all walks of life and represent all economic and political demographics. They continue to volunteer for many reasons, only some of which are financial. "They" are "Us". Ask journalists who've embedded with them for any length of time. Even the most anti-war skeptics speak about our servicemembers with admiration.

I'm glad you don't blame our troops when things like this happen (it's almost always a senior leader or politician trying to hide something). But save your pity. It's pathetic.

How are we supposed to understand this?

[Skyshadow]

I always feel like the key trouble with video of any military operation is that the general public has absolutely no basis from which to really understand what they're seeing -- the context of civilian day-to-day just doesn't create the sort of base of experience you need to watch this sort of video and draw decent conclusions from it.

What was the situation? What were these guys trained to do in this sort of situation? What had happened the hour or day or week before in this area, what was happening in the region, what sort of tactics had the bad guys been using, what were other patrols telling these guys? These details are actually more important than what we see in the video towards understanding the events, but we have none of it.

I don't want to make apologies if these guys screwed up -- I'm not of the mindset that out men and women in uniform are all heroes who can do no wrong or anything of that nature. That said, I'm also willing to accept that I don't have the experience or understanding to understand what I'm seeing... I'd be interested to hear from someone who does.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[Anonymous Coward]

What could possibly be said to justify firing into a crowd of unarmed people?

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[MozeeToby]

I'll grant you there may be reasons why this happened. Maybe a suicide bomber hit their squad mate in that square just a week ago. Maybe the rules of engagement said to fire if you felt threatened (I highly doubt that but maybe). Maybe some in the crowd looked suspicious, maybe a camera looked like a gun for a second.

None of that would change the fact that a fully automatic weapon was discharged into an unarmed crowd of civilians. If it was a mistake, fine, warfare is ugly and brutal. But the soldiers involved should have been investigated, public apologies should have been made, rules of engagement should have been changed, training should have been improved. Instead, the incident was lied about, covered up, denied, and ignored and that is unforgivable in my opinion.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the video it seems that the soldiers involved genuinely thought there was a present threat, so I don't hold them at fault that much. What they did might have been totally justified by the circumstances surrounding the events.

However, there is a huge amount of blame to be placed in how the government dealt with this situation after the fact. Being open about the situation and not doing what amounts to a cover-up would have helped. A statement of apology and explanation should have been made.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[Jerrei]

I see civilians being shot, I hear officials on comms laughing about the truck driving in there to attempt to save those shot running over a corpse and I see us being told that Iraqi insurgents were responsible. How the fuck is this open to interpretation?

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[darjen]

the general public has absolutely no basis from which to really understand what they're seeing

sure we do. we see the military killing innocent people. and when this happens, our leaders do their best to cover it up and not let their media lapdogs talk about it. what else is there to it? innocent people die needlessly in EVERY war.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[Skyshadow]

What could possibly be said to justify firing into a crowd of unarmed people?

I suppose my base assumption is that this patrol wasn't just walking down the street one day, saw a group of people and thought to themselves, "Hey, let's blast away at these motherfuckers! I haven't gotten to shoot anyone all day, and I just can't get an erection anymore if I don't do so. Also, maybe we can punch a baby or two when we're done."

For example, why exactly did people have video cameras? I admit that my sole experience in this is having seen 'Hurt Locker', but it seems to me that's the sort of thing that would set off certain alarm bells for me if I were a soldier. What was being said on the ground? What sort of behavior preceded attacks in this area in the past, what sort of warning signs were these guys responding to?

Again, these guys may well have screwed up and may well be deserving of punishment. Assuming, however, that my base assumption (that these guys aren't all evil merciless killing machines) is correct, there must be factors we don't, as civilians, understand.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[burkmat]

Even so, firing at the van stopping to assist the wounded is something I simply cannot wrap my head around.

Say for sake of argument that the crowd of people really were bad guys.
Someone comes driving along, and finds a large amount of dead bodies, with a wounded man writhing at the side of the road. The driver pulls over, and runs out to help the person - and this grants the coalition forces the right to engage? Someone finds a wounded person and tries to help, and for this they deserve to die?
Even if that was a Really Evil Terrorist I can't grasp how the ROE would permit engaging someone to stops to help a wounded person.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[Jawn98685]

I'm sorry, but what military objective was obtained by gunning down a dozen people from a helicopter? Were they armed "bad guys"? OK, fine. Let's assume that at least some of them were. So we have less than 12 armed bad guys standing around in a street. Again, what military objective was gained?

Answer: None. There was no objective for which military force was the right tool. Suppressing insurgency from an Apache, a thousand yards off, is the wrong approach with the wrong tool. Fucking stupid.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[TheCarp]

Thats a problem, and a real one. However, in the end, one thing is true. The military exists at the desire of, and is paid for by, the civilian administration and, who is answerable to the people.

Whether these soldiers did right or wrong is a matter for the military, civilian administration, and courts to decide.

Regardless of whether the individual action was right or wrong, an attempt to cover up an atrocity that the public or civilian administration may need to review and use to form their opnion as to how to make war and how and whether to support war is inexcusable, whether the atrocity is judged to be an actual atrocity or not.

We pay the checks, we support the people who make the laws. It is our opinion that matters in the end, attempting to lie to us and keep from us the information that we need to have an opinion is an offence against the very democratic ideals that they are supposed to be defending.

-Steve

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[Bakkster]

Again, these guys may well have screwed up and may well be deserving of punishment. Assuming, however, that my base assumption (that these guys aren't all evil merciless killing machines) is correct, there must be factors we don't, as civilians, understand.

Even if they did nothing wrong, the question then becomes "why cover it up in the first place?" That is far more troubling to me than the fact that the mistake happened.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's at least one rifle being carried: the guy to with the horizontal-striped shirt has a rifle in his right hand. I'm not sure what the ROEs would be, but in a town like Baghdad, if carrying a gun were grounds for being shot on sight, we'd finally be rid of those troublesome security contractors. How one guy with a rifle becomes men with AK-47s, and how a 300mm lens becomes an RPG is a mystery only the darkest mysteries of confirmation bias can explain. The crew of the Apache should be disciplined for that. On the other hand, they requested and received authorization for shooting unarmed civilians trying to help another unarmed civilian bleeding to death in the street. Then they shot them. For that, they and their controller should be sent to the firing squad.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[medcalf]

It is not uncommon for the enemy to drive up in vans and jump out. In fact, in places like Palestine (and previously in Iraq, when they had more resources) it is not unusual for jihadis to use ambulances to transport fighters. They try to use our rules against us, which is why it's common for the enemy to deliberately fire at us from within crowds of civilians. (If you want to know why the soldiers didn't stop just because there were also obvious civilians in the crowd, you have an answer now.)

Look, the enemy wants to win. I want for us to win. You want for us to fight clean. Your and the enemy's goals are compatible. My goal is not compatible with the enemy's, and it's far from clear if my goal is compatible with yours. No military has ever tried to fight a counterinsurgency of this scope with this many restrictions on how we behave in combat, and it's not clear if the enemy's exploitation of our rules, and our general determination to adhere to them, prevents us from winning or not. I sincerely hope that we can both minimize civilian (and "civilian") losses, and still win; I am unconvinced that we can.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[FrozenFOXX]

Mod parent up. In a situation like this, hard as it is to believe on Slashdot, mistakes happen. ROE can be not what you expect, and as noted earlier you simply don't know. I always thought the concept of places like this was to hold things in doubt, not to jump onto a bandwagon.

From my wife's experience in the Air Force she had to man the machine-gun pit in front of her Air Base out in Iraq. Her orders were that if anyone stepped beyond the signs she'd shout a single warning. If the person, man, woman, child, car, whomever did not stop, turn around, or otherwise, she was supposed to blow them to kingdom come. Mercifully she never had to, but consider the following:

Same scenario, area is set up as a kill zone. Large group of journalists with cameras walk down the road. She shouts a warning to turn around, they don't heed it (maybe they don't speak English, doesn't matter why). Insert video of blowing away unarmed journalists on a street from a machine gun pit. A van rolls into the kill zone, also does not heed the warning, ALSO gets blasted to Hell and back. What the video would never show you are her orders, the kill zone perimeter warnings, or the situation (in this case extremely hostile area, heavily fortified entrance, no expected visitors except at specific times during which that would not be one of them, so on and so forth).

Now you the viewer know nothing beyond what you've seen. You can make any assumption you want, but the fact is that a video of that doesn't tell you anything beyond a fact, not the WHY it happened. It's appalling, but not for the reasons you'd imagine.


Again, mod the parent up. Why were people blown away? We DO NOT KNOW. What we DO know is that it was covered up by those who shouldn't be covering it up. Now THAT is appalling and deserves a lot of investigation. What were the troops' orders? Who GAVE those orders? Was this a clearly designated kill zone? Was a large group of people with cameras (and later a van dropping in) viewed as a threat? If so, why? Who noted it was a threat? These are the kinds of questions we need answers to first.

It's appalling, yes, but I find covering it up more appalling. If it's a screw-up it's a screw-up and we take it from there. If it's NOT a screw-up then we need to know that, too. We need more info, IMHO. But hey, I could be wrong, maybe our military is just chock full of ruthless barbarians going rogue and itching to kill people. From meeting quite a few of said barbarians I don't think that's true, so I'd like more info first.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[vux984]

I always feel like the key trouble with video of any military operation is that the general public has absolutely no basis from which to really understand what they're seeing -- the context of civilian day-to-day just doesn't create the sort of base of experience you need to watch this sort of video and draw decent conclusions from it.

So what?

1) This is what war looks like. 'The public' should bloody well be exposed to it. If they can't understand it, fine. If it makes them coil away in revulsion, even better. We'd be involved in fewer pointless wars if the public was faced with what it really looked like on a regular basis.

2) If the soldiers had a good reason to fire, a target had been identified, orders had been issued, etc. Then there is nothing to hide. They did the right thing, and the military can bloody well justify it. War is ugly. If this 'had to be done' then let them defend their actions.

3) If this was a mistake. Own up to it, investigate it, and find ways to reduce mistakes like this.

Hiding behind an excuse like the 'public wouldn't understand it' is the most puerile self serving bullshit I can imagine. If anything it argues that the public needs to be exposed to it MORE, not less.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[Zironic]

Isn't the entire fucking reason we're there in the first place to prove that we're better then them? If we start shooting civilians that just shows that we're morally corrupt and it's right of them to drive airplanes into our buildings.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I sincerely hope that we can both minimize civilian (and "civilian") losses, and still win; I am unconvinced that we can.

The problem with your analysis is your definition of "win." It's a modern version of "win the battle, lose the war" approach. Failing to minimize civilian causalities will lose us the war, full stop. That's why there are so many new restrictions on combat, not out of some sort of dogooder ideal that's "compatible with the enemy's goals."

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

Crowds fired upon are always "unarmed civilians". With no real context to the larger situation going on, we have no idea what the real story is. If I'm in a gunship and a guy in a crowd of civilians has a stinger (or the like), the people in that crowd are about to have a really bad day. Sucks, but that's life.

if you're in a gunship and have only that crappy camera to base your decisions, you either get close enough to be able to read the fucking "nikon" on the camera's body, or let the job to the infantry.

gunships were created to attack vehicles, a situation where it's pretty damn hard to confuse a pickup truck with civilians to a tank with a big ass cannon on top. using an apache to engage people on foot from a kilometer away is pretty fucked up.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[hipp5]

Ahhh where are my mod points when I need them. Spot on.

Back in the day, winning the war meant killing the general and routing their troops. Even in more recent times it meant destroying their industrial production to the point where they couldn't put up a fight.

However, war has changed. There is no longer an obvious head of command to chop off. There is no industrial production supporting the war. The enemy is made up of pissed off people with $45 guns and rigged-up bombs. They happen to be hugely effective because they are decentralized and aren't afraid to die. To date, the US has fought these wars like catching Hussein or Bin Laden would end things. Like it was chess. It's not.

Winning today's war is fundamentally anchored in not creating more pissed off people that will pick up a cheap gun or build a bomb. It's about convincing people that there's something better than insurgency. It's not about stomping them into the ground.

Every incident like this is one step back in winning the war. I guarantee that this situation just created more angry people with guns. It doesn't matter if it was handled by the book. The book is outdated. War has changed. The army better change too

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[evilviper]

If it makes them coil away in revulsion, even better. We'd be involved in fewer pointless wars if the public was faced with what it really looked like on a regular basis.

The history of public executions says the exact opposite is true, actually.

Hiding behind an excuse like the 'public wouldn't understand it' is the most puerile self serving bullshit I can imagine.

I don't think he suggested "hiding." His statement sounds more like a counterpoint to all the others here, screaming "war crime!" at the top of their lungs.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[Anonymous Coward]

even worse, it wasn't really them flying airplanes into your buildings in the first place...

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, BECAUSE WE DIDN'T GO TO WAR OVER A MORAL IMPERATIVE.

The sooner people stop associating "us" with the "good side" the sooner people will start to realize that there is no such thing as a "morally justifiable war"

Re:How long will this video last?

[fysdt]

It's gone viral.. they can't take it down

Re:Americans

[binarylarry]

No, you hate us because have and control the world's money and cultural trends.

Minor military fuckups like this happen all over the world everyday, it's not a problem unique to the US.

Re:How long will this video last?

[MozeeToby]

Dude, it's on the internet. It's been downloaded, uploaded, torrented, copied, cleaned up, trimmed down, analyzed, re-analyzed, commented on, posted, and removed dozens of times already. Even if you somehow identified every website that currently has it posted and somehow forced them to pull the video, it would live on and be recovered from people's caches and be re-posted to an order of magnitude more websites tomorrow. It's over. If the DoD has any intelligence whatsoever they'll ignore the video and hope it goes away, such is the only possible defense to something you don't like hitting the internet.

Simply put you don't shoot wounded and unarmed

[assemblerex]

Did some have weapons? YES. Kills authorized? YES. It's the people in the van helping the wounded that are the crime.
You never shoot wounded, ever, ever, ever.

Re:Simply put you don't shoot wounded and unarmed

[shutdown -p now]

Which is actually rather reassuring, since he didn't fire then. Which means that, no matter what his personal take on it is (he may be thinking that a good enemy is a dead enemy - which is very common among those who watch the war unfold among them, and not on TV), he's still obeying by the rules of engagement and laws of war.

Re:Simply put you don't shoot wounded and unarmed

[Jeffrey Baker]

Maybe you can make a screen shot that shows the rifles and the RPG. All I see is two men with camera lenses and one with a tripod.

Re:Simply put you don't shoot wounded and unarmed

[smash]

What a hero. :-\

Re:Simply put you don't shoot wounded and unarmed

[elnyka]

At 8 minutes 30 seconds you can hear the guy in the Apache, crosshair hovering over a gravely wounded individual that is clearly struggling to even get anywhere saying and I quote "Come on buddy all you gotta do is pick up a weapon".

...which sort of runs counter to the point, since he didn't just drill the guy and move on to the next target like he would have if these troops were just engaging in a spot of wanton murder.

Where was the weapon that the wounded man got wounded for to begin with?

Re:Americans

[rsborg]

Minor military fuckups like this happen all over the world everyday, it's not a problem unique to the US.

Yeah, and it's the US's hypocrisy that really chaps people's hide - "You should stand for freedom of the press!" while their military gunning down journalists and hides/denies the action.

Noone says that the US is the most brutal government (far from it), but when it does not practice what it preaches, scorn, derision and hatred ensues.

Mistakes

[SkankinMonkey]

In wartime there are bound to be accidents by those on the ground. That is no excuse, however, to cover things like this up. Huge mistakes like this should be used to make sure that they don't happen again. Top brass lying and changing the story around just makes the US look dishonest and 'evil' and prevents any good work that is being done from getting the credit it deserves.

Now I see why they hate us

[bogaboga]

That video is disturbing. I just did not have the stomach to watch it all.

The trouble too is that we "preach" democracy but when a democratic process puts those we "hate" in power, we (read the US government), then treat the democratically elected administration as parties not to be dealt with in any way. Hamas anyone?

Re:Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you hate us because have and control the world's money and cultural trends.

Minor military fuckups like this happen all over the world everyday, it's not a problem unique to the US.

"Minor" military fuck-ups like this happens all over the world in totalitarian states. Also pointing out that you arent the only one doesn't put you in a better light. Wanna be a moral leader? Act like one.

Re:How long will this video last?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet none of the real news outlets are mentioning it. This will have as much affect on the main public perception as a facebook rumor.

Re:Americans

[Lord Ender]

To hate millions of people because of the actions of a few is pretty ignorant, Mr. Coward.

Re:Americans

[Hyppy]

Minor military fuckups like this happen all over the world everyday, it's not a problem unique to the US.

The problem isn't with the collateral damage, though blatantly blowing away children and people evacuating the wounded is deplorable. The big problem is the cover-up that followed it.

Re:Listen Up Tools

[Beelzebud]

Wow you're a real tough guy! I'm impressed! I'm so glad that brave heroes like you are protecting me while I sleep from some guys on a street corner in Iraq!

Re:Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

"This was an ACCIDENT"

Maybe, but the coverup was not.

In defense of the military...

[Tei]

It looks to me, from the video, that the military detected or gueses weapon like rpg and ak47.

Soldiers are (probably) trained to shot to other army people. This could be a false positive, but in a battlefield, is best to shot to something like a tractor, than to get shot by a tank.

The problem here is having a militar force patroling a city. Thats whas WTF about it. But maybe you can't have something less letal than this so, false positives will happend.

C'mon! Let me shoot!

[erroneus]

That was all I needed to hear.

To me the difference between a murderer and a soldier is that a murderer wants to kill. The vast majority of my family and myself included have been or are currently in the U.S. armed services. I am not "anti-military." This is a group of yahoos shooting fish in a barrel. Reminds me of that scene in full metal jacket -- "How can you shoot women and children?" "Easy, you just don't lead 'em as much!"

Re:Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

This was an ACCIDENT. Watch the video, they thought they had an AK and an RPG.

They thought hey might have weapons, and reported that they did. The people posed no threat to them and having weapons is not illegal there, rather it's kind of necessary much of the time. But aside from all of that, they opened fire twice, once at the people they thought had weapons and a second time at a van with children visible in it, when all those people were doing was trying to load an injured person into said van, presumably to help the person. How would you feel if you and your family came upon a scene of a slaughter and tried to help an injured person, while posing no threat to anyone, only to be shot down?

On top of all of that is the callous and downright cruel commentary by the helicopter crew. What ever happened to honor and the idea that we could have noble soldiers that did not stoop to the same level as our enemy? Laughing and joking while you kill people who pose no threat to you is sick. Lying to over it up from higher up the food chain is unethical and contrary to service oaths. If that's the state of our military we need to start the firings at the top and reboot with a fresh crop of officers who have some semblance of ethics.

Re:Americans

[fbjon]

Coverups of the fuckups also happen, as the video shows. But more importantly, saying "they do it too" is the most cynical, small-minded excuse possible.

Video: Why apache gunners are horrible policemen

[BobMcD]

This video clearly demonstrates why policemen do not operate from behind the gun mount on an Apache helicopter.

1) Were or were there not any guns? I didn't see any. If there were, were these guns illegal? Is it really legal to fire on a crowd of people because one or two might be armed? Remember the men with weapons outside the Obamacare townhalls? Would it be okay to turn automatic (anti-vehicle) weapons on that crowd? Did the men on the ground know this was the case before they got shot? Did they even know who was doing the shooting? None of this is clear.

2) Was opening fire on the crowd the only option? Could the choppers have moved away, evading the range of the 'RPG', until the ground forces arrived? Was anyone's life in immediate jeopardy to the point that the military had to open fire?

3) Was this a 'battlefield', as the soldiers claim it was, or was it 'Thursday'? See number 1, but what reasonable chance did the deceased have to avoid getting shot that day?

Police procedure is filled with examples of how do deal with situations such as these. Also, they tend to arrest, rather than assassinate.

My point - You cannot police Iraq with soldiers, unless you just don't care about guilt or innocence, life or death.

Re:Can someone explain what they did wrong?

[OzPeter]

I might have missed something in the video, anyone care to explain?

Ask yourself this .. if American soldiers were attacked and defeated .. and then the attackers came back and creamed the wounded, how would you feel? What sort of outrage would you see in the American press?

Mistake

[cloakedpegasus]

The gunner in the helicopter fucked up, I wonder how he lives knowing this everyday.

Re:Mistake

[Khashishi]

You listen to him speaking--do you really think he gives a fuck? This is what he does everyday.

Why would they?

[Valdrax]

Yes I read the summary. The summary didn't say "this incident happened 3 years ago in Baghdad". Also, I meant why isn't the MSM covering the leak on wikilinks, not the incident itself. Or is that being covered up as well?

No, it just makes them look bad -- like the empty shells of the Fourth Estate that they are. Plus, investigative journalism that makes the military look bad is far too much effort with far too much backlash (from conservative viewers and the government both) to bother with in a modern, advertisement-driven instead of product-driven ethos. The news today is about "infotainment," not about delivering the hard facts.

They won't touch it until momentum builds up on the internet to the point where some feel that it makes them look worse not to cover it. The days when the media would stand up when the government did something wrong are long gone, to the point where they don't even stand up if one of their own is killed through negligence.

Re:Americans

[H0p313ss]

Noone says that the US is the most brutal government (far from it), but when it does not practice what it preaches, scorn, derision and hatred ensues.

Exactly. The U.S. has set themselves a higher standard for morality and freedom for decades and for good reason. I have a great deal of respect for them because of it. When they fail to deliver, which they do, they should be called on it and have the issues aired out in public so they can do better next time.

We should expect people to fail from time to time and when they do it needs be recognized and compensated for so that it can be corrected and improved apon. Hiding such mistakes is as un-American as the communist manhunt was and carpet bombing and torture continues to be.

I'd like to think that this is not anti-American thinking, I think that the world would just like America to do what it does well even better and own up when it fails.

Re:Listen Up Tools

[elnyka]

Just go back to your button pushing and put your feeble brains absent of logic capable of anything other than whinning like the pussys you are, away and back in that little box you keep for your balls.

Rough men stand in the ready to do violence on your behalf so that YOU can sleep peacably in your fucking miserable bed- George Orwell dickwads

Lastly, to avoid death as a journalist in a war zone, stay away from the enemy dumbshit

I'm sure you feel all rough and manly and strong and awesome as the soldiers you somehow think you are praising and quoting Orwell out of context, but dude, you don't get those attributes by association or verbal quoting.

I could understand how soldiers fighting the war in Afghanistan and Al Qaida fight and die to protect our peace. That I understand, that I support.

However, I don't see how our soldiers fighting a military adventure cooked by Bush' chicken hawks, invading a country that had no ties to the *real* enemy, bombing it back to the stone age and put into a terrible situation among civilians is a fight for our peace.

Explain that one to me in a logical, non-rhetorical, non dumbshit way.

I haven't watched the video

[jeko]

I haven't watched the video

You really need to watch the video before speaking this time.

Got any advice that works?

[Valdrax]

It's a war, people die. If you don't want to die, don't hang out with people who carry around AK 47's and RPGs.

Didn't seem to work for those cameramen and their attempted rescuers. Got any better advice for not getting yourself killed when under the watch of jumpy, paranoid, armed soldiers?

Situations like these are why I'm sometimes scared of dealing with cops. It doesn't matter that I expect that 99%+ of the force are solid, level-headed professionals. There's always the chance that you've got the one jumpy guy that's liable to empty their clip into you for pulling your wallet out the wrong way because he thinks you're pulling a gun.

Iraqis have to deal with an armed force of young people who suspect each Iraqi to be a potential terrorist that could jump them at any moment. (This fear isn't unjustified, mind you.) Imagine living with that every day, from either POV. It's no wonder this happened, but the military's reaction to its fatal mistake is utterly unforgivable -- as is the actions of the soldiers who continued to fire past the point where confusion was reasonable, and as is their blaming the victims.

Re:America!

[sznupi]

I can't really see how shooting from an Apache at a distant, casually behaving group of people...some of which only appear to you like they might be armed...calssifies under "kill or be killed"

Especially you speak things like "Come on buddy all you gotta do is pick up a weapon" or "Well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle"

Re:I don't see the problem

[Clandestine_Blaze]

So journalists are only supposed to interview "the good guys" and never, ever, ever talk to the other side so that we get a clear understanding of both sides of the war?

Embedded journalism IS PROPAGANDA. When you're filtered to only hearing one side of the story, IT IS PROPAGANDA.

By the way, please watch the video again. If you can't tell the difference between Cameras / Tripods and RPGs / AK 47's, then you need to turn in your geek card.

Mistakes

[twoallbeefpatties]

Mistakes are part of war, and this is reflected in the law of war.

One of the surest differences between incompetence and talent is how you deal with your mistakes - not whether or not you never make mistakes, but whether or not you own up to them, learn from them, and adapt to fix the situation or clean up the mess you made as a result.

It is not simply enough to say, oh, it's war, and in war, mistakes are made. If mistakes are covered up, ignored, and lied about, that is not a good sign to any operation.

Why the US is hated.

[VShael]

Remember this, the next time you hear someone push the "they hate us for our freedoms" meme.

Just because this stuff is covered up in the US, doesn't mean it's covered up elsewhere.

The people of the United States are often the most ignorant of the atrocities being carried out in their name.

Re:Why the US is hated.

[copponex]

The people of the United States are often the most ignorant of the atrocities being carried out in their name.

The real problem is that once they found out, they rationalize their brutality and pretty much pretend that it doesn't exist. That's why the guys who fire from gun ships a mile a way are heroes, and the suicide bombers are terrorists. It's why 24 is a number one show. It's why we can see gun violence 24/7 on American television, but a single nipple is a national tragedy of exposing our children to immorality.

Fighting the good fight has nothing to do with the courage it takes, or how much you put on the line to defend your country, especially if your home country is Iraq. It's entirely dependent on what side you are on, and Americans of course always have God on our side. We're always right. We'll never apologize for our crimes. We live in the greatest country God ever gave Man, according to the top three TV personalities on Fox News, which is the top "news" source on American television.

Until we suffer an invasion on our home soil, someone is going to be angling to send our standing army off to die to make a buck or two invading someone else's. And that's not a good prerequisite for becoming a prosperous and peaceful nation.

Hindsight

[nurb432]

Is always 2020. Just because we think we now know they were not dangerous does not mean they were not a perceived threat at that time in that situation.

Furthermore, until you have proven that you are perfect under a stressful situation like being in the middle of a war, shut your face. Yes, its sad innocents got killed, but it does happen and it wasnt intentional.

Did you watch the video? they beg to fire

[SmallFurryCreature]

Listen to the comments by the pilots, they beg to fire on clearly unarmed people in civilian clothing. Then when they learn they fire on kids, they say "well that should teach them not to take kids into battle".

America is in Vietnam 2. And it will loose this war again because its soldiers and leaders are unable to see non-americans as human beings.

Re:Did you watch the video? they beg to fire

[fyoder]

Their level of hatred and eagerness to kill was conspicuous, and their laughter at the desecration of a body being run over by a vehicle chilling.

You can see that there is a command and control structure in place no doubt designed to prevent this sort of thing where they have to request permission to engage, but when they lie saying that they've encountered hostiles with AK47s and RPGs, then of course they get permission and that check is totally bypassed, allowing them the slaughter they're so obviously craving. The structure is professional, but it is totally subverted by the butchers on the trigger.

But the commitment to professionalism of the higher ups also comes into question when they cover this up rather than bringing these bastards up on charges. In so doing they subvert the very structures they've set in place. In a situation like that, truth is sacred not for any philosophical reasons, but because it is essential to operations, the system depends on it so completely.
 

Re:Did you watch the video? they beg to fire

[Doctor_Jest]

you are proceeding from a false premise. You assume because after the fact there were not weapons that they deliberately lied to get permission to fire on known-unarmed civilians. That is unproven and characterizes everything else you say as politically charged nonsense.

Impressive

[Aphoxema]

Just watched it...

They enjoyed it, they were looking for a chance to slaughter. The people on the ground were just waddling around without any sign of hostility.

There was nothing that looked like a weapon. I know it's a shitty black and white image, but even the cameras barely showed up as anything that could be distinguishable from a piece of cloth or anything.

Regardless, just having weapons didn't make these people acceptable targets.

The mistake here was putting these idiots in charge of these machines.

Re:Americans

[BobMcD]

I'd like to think that this is not anti-American thinking, I think that the world would just like America to do what it does well even better and own up when it fails.

I'm an American, and I see it exactly this way as well.

Re:My View as a former Bradley gunner and Infantry

[phoebusQ]

Definitely. That's not how we've done things in any of my units, and honestly I don't understand how those actions could ever have passed muster. You know how when you are given an award, they always say "...reflects great credit upon yourself, your unit, and the United States Army"? This kind of thing does the exact opposite.

Re:C'mon! Let me shoot!

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like a guy who's never been in a war. The pilot wants to shoot because he thinks his guys on the ground were in mortal danger.

No, they were not. It took the nearest ground crew about 10 minutes to rush there and it is clearly overheard in the radio chat that no ground crew is in that area. And the helicopter crew keeps on insisting on an authorization to shoot the dying journalist and pushed for an authorization to shoot at people who had the audacity of aiding dying men and "picking up bodies". No one was threatened and there was no mortal danger. Well, that is... Besides the Reuter's journalists, their crew and the people who had the audacity of aiding injured civilians.

First off, members of the group were armed with RPGs and AKs. Look at 3:46 in the long clip.

You should check your eye sight. The only mention of an RPG is when the pilot keeps referring to the journalist and his telescopic lens camera. The only mention of an AK is whe the pilot keeps referring to the crew member carrying a camera tripod. And I don't see how anyone in their right mind can mistake the journalist's camera as a weapon. Other than those two instances no other weapons are mentioned, not even when the squirming journalist, shot with the 30mm autocannon, is being targeted for a kill while being helped by the "bongo van" people.

But the photographer aimed his camera from a crouching position behind a corner, just like insurgents do when firing an RPG.

Are you aware of any RPG which can be safely fired with a dozen men immediately behind it? There is a journalist taking photos and there are a dozen guys calmly standing behind that person. If the guy was really firing a RPG then everyone standing behind it would be injured by the rocket and yet no one seemed to mind standing there, without a hint of worry. Even if it was possible to confuse a photographic camera with a RPG launcher, which even in that video isn't possible, and even while ignoring that no one, particularly US crews, was in danger of being shot at by that imaginary RPG, the way people are acting around the imaginary RPG makes it at least doubtful that what that guy is holding a RPG launcher. And as there is quite a lot of doubt hanging around, what forces that AH-64 crew to just fire without taking a second look?

At that moment, the pilot became very nervous, agitated, and couldn't wait to circle his chopper around to get the shot.

That's called "trigger-happy".

He reasonably believed that the photographers were carrying RPGs.

There is nothing reasonable in that. And even if there was any doubt, he only had to finish circling around to be able to get a positive ID. Yet, that trigger-happy idiot, who even wanted to gun down a wounded, unarmed journalist and later gunned down a group of people aiding dead and dying civilians, just wanted to kill'em all, no questions asked.

You do not expect journalists with cameras to be walking around.

No? In the most media-covered war in the history of mankind? You don't expect any journalists in Iraq? How naive. How cold-blooded, brutal, barbarically naive.

US waiting for another 9/11

[jbssm]

Probably will be ranked down to oblivions but still I have to say it.

Just remember that the only way the brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers of these innocent people you just killed here have to get back at you, is to do stuff like it happened in 9/11.

You are both the victims and the guilty ones for all the terrorist attacks you receive.

Disgusting

[Ritual]

At the end of the unedited video it shows the Apache's engaging a building with three hellfire missiles. Their justification was that they seen one person with a machine gun enter inside it. While they are setting up their aim for the missile you can see civilians in and around the building. They had no idea how many people were inside. Even knowing that the building was surrounded by civilians and not having any intel on how many civilians were inside, they still were given and executed orders to engage. This video was simply disgusting MURDER by the U.S. The soldiers show no remorse or hesitation to kill civilians. There was absolutely zero concern for the safety of bystanders. They actually enjoyed it and cheered on the higher the bodycount went up, irregardless if they had killed combatants, children, or civilians. These soldiers are endangering my safety as a United States citizen. They were killing in my country's name and breeding hatred for my country with these evil acts. We can no longer call the Iraqi's terrorists since we are obviously exterminating their people freely. DISGUSTING VIDEO. We have ZERO moral highground. Shame on the US Military! I thought we were better then this. With the technology we have this is UNEXCUSABLE. And the SICK SICK SICK SICK part is the US Military will probably stand for this as excusable. Thats scary, sick, twisted shit. The end of days deserve to be upon us.

Re:I can't believe that people actually *defend* t

[KPexEA]

I agree 100%, the Irony is Fox news covered this better than CNN. Go figure.