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

[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

[HungryHobo]

Short version: there's a few people wandering about, on the street.In the video none of them are obviously carrying anything big, though you can hear the soldiers calling in that the people were carrying AK47's and an RPG.
They shoot and kill/wound them all.

Fast forward a little with a few people bleeding to death on the ground some poor sod driving by in a minivan stopsto help and a kid and I think parents try to carry one of the injured/dead people into the car.
Over the radio you hear the soldiers calling in that more insurgents are picking up all the weapons and rescuing the wounded and they request permission to fire.
Then they shoot and kill them all.

what followed was a coverup and attempts to strongarm wikileaks into not releasing the video.

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

[Wrath0fb0b]

They were clearly evacuating a wounded man, something I thought was pretty much a universal no-no for engagement.

I believe you are mistaken on this point. International law and the current US ROE most certainly allow one to fire on a retreating enemy target until they law down their arms and equipment and surrender. A duty to allow enemy troops to retreat with their weapons and equipment intact in order to regroup and attack again at some future time makes absolutely no sense. Customary international law (according to the Red Cross) states it this way:

http://www.icrc.org/IHL.nsf/WebART/612-047?OpenDocument
Rule 47. Attacking persons who are recognised as hors de combat is prohibited. A person hors de combat is:
            (a) anyone who is in the power of an adverse party;
            (b) anyone who is defenceless because of unconsciousness, shipwreck, wounds or sickness; or
            (c) anyone who clearly expresses an intention to surrender; provided he or she abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape

All of this is moot, of course, if the man is not properly an enemy target to begin with, a question I take no position on here because it is a factual dispute and I just wanted to post on the law as I understand it. I'm not at all claiming that it was proper to attack these folks, only that armed retreat is not and has never been grounds for protection under the laws of war. To claim protection, a combatant must lay down his arms and cease trying to escape.

See also:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1314&dat=19910227&id=rnQfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OPEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5146,4465272
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19910227&id=7k8eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XscEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1239,3716450

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

[Raumkraut]

The video clearly shows them shooting at the people who arrived to help a wounded victim (identified by Wikileaks as one of the Reuters employees). However, when asking for permission to fire on the new arrivals, the American gunship crew repeatedly said that the people were "collecting bodies".
But they weren't "medics" from what I could tell. They were just some passing civilians, trying to help a wounded man.

Re:Video

[Firethorn]

Excuse me, 30mm is NOT allowed for human targets just like WP isn't supposed to be used. Using anti-aircraft/anti-vehicle weaponry against non-armored human targets goes against the Geneva Convention.

Citation, please.

I've actually read the Geneva Conventions. I've had usage of force training, etc... I am military. USAF, to be specific.

The wording of the conventions is that we aren't to use weapons that case 'unnecessary suffering'.

You are allowed to use any weapons available on any target available with very few exceptions.

Stuff considered banned:
1. Non-metallic rounds. Metal rounds work just as well, non-metallic ones designed to be harder to be removed is just being cruel.
2. Nuclear/Biological/Chemical: Comes under 'not discriminary enough', 'militarily ineffective', and 'needlesly cruel'. Especially against militaries prepared for them.
3. Hollowpoints, but only 'sortof', it's actually a prohibition against expanding/explosive rounds below a certain caliber. Plus, this is more by convention than law, since the USA is not a signer to the treaty that actually banned them, and as long as hollowpoints are demostrated to be 'more effective', they'd actually pass the standards of the Geneva conventions rather easily.

WP is more considered a chemical weapon, plus, if you're close enough to use WP, you're close enough to use other weapons, generally speaking, thus the unnecessary suffering part comes into play.

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

[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

[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

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what, we don't have any fucking business over there IN THE FIRST PLACE. Okay? Fuck the MIC that sends them over there to kill and be killed.

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

[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

[kidgenius]

I watched the video and didn't see any weapons. Certainly no RPG's, which have a fairly distinctive profile.

Check out 3:40. The journalists are no longer in frame. One guy has what looks to be a rifle swinging from his hand/arm. Another has a very long object. He even sets one end of it on the ground and leans on it, and it comes up to his chest. Looks like an RPG to me.

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

[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

[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

[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

[bill_mcgonigle]

All this means is that someone in the command structure will be ordered to fall on the sword.

Is that all it means? For me, it means all the stories from the military about what happened in a given battle are suspect. I know they lie and cover up now. The only question is if it's done systematically.

Since there was no correction to date from the military, 'systematic' is the most likely answer.

All trust is gone.

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

[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

[HairyNevus]

Yeah, they mentioned that there were some weapons, but check out 9:30 on the short video. There's a wounded man (the journalist) and the gunner keeps egging him on to pick up a weapon so he can kill him (but a camera would have done the trick, too), then when a rescue team (unarmed) tries to save his life, they kill all of them. There's international treaties the US has signed that forbid killing people involved in taking care of the wounded.

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:How long will this video last?

[fysdt]

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

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.

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?

[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: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.

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

[Jerrei]

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".

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: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.

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: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:How are we supposed to understand this?

[blitzkrieg3]

The Pentagon had their chance to release the video and explain themselves at the press conference covering the attack. In fact, David Petraeus said he would. Then they could have shown from the video footage that there were two guys with assault rifles, and that it would have been impossible to tell that there were two children in the van, and that the camera looks like an RPG from head on, and that they (supposedly) followed the rules of engagement. They could have cut out some of the audio and the images of the Hummer driving over dead bodies. Instead they denied Reuters the video despite repeated FOIA requests, and proceeded to lie about how the children were injured.

My hunch was that Petraeus thought they were following the rules of engagement, and then when they looked at the video later they realized it was worse than they thought, and decided not to release the video. I don't have the experience or understanding to know what's going on either, but those in the Pentagon do. If they're not comfortable releasing the video because they can't justify what happened, and they have to subsequently lie about certain important details, it means that someone screwed up.

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

[QuantumRiff]

Its okay, I am counting on FOX news to be headlining with this soon. They keep stressing that they are not part of the MSM (yes, they abbreviate it, to show how alternative they are)

Re:Conditional Freedom of Speech? Yay!

[Mondorescue]

The tape is, in my opinion, authentic. I was serving in the area at the time. I note four things in the tape:-

1. Double-tap --- engaging an individual or individuals after the threat has been eliminated.

2. Engaging personnel with anti-material weaponry; this isn't illegal but it looks bad. :-p

3. Failing to establish PID (Positive Identification of a threat) before engaging the "bongo truck" full of injured individuals.

4. Failing to establish PID before engaging what is, basically, a group of civilians wandering around the streets.

In essence, they shot some people for carrying weapons, then shot up the ambulance. I'm very saddened by this, since it's not the first violation of the ROE that I've encountered. The last one wasn't caught on tape. I had to put a stop to it myself.

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?

Transcript

[Anonymous Coward]

going to try to post transcript, prolly will get filtered as spam, guess we'll see...

00:03 Okay I got it. 00:05 Last conversation Hotel Two-Six. 00:09 Roger Hotel Two-Six [Apache helicopter 1], uh, [this is] Victor Charlie Alpha. Look, do you want your Hotel Two-Two two el-
00:14 I got a black vehicle under target. It's arriving right to the north of the mosque.
00:17 Yeah, I would like that. Over.
00:21 Moving south by the mosque dome. Down that road.
00:27 Okay we got a target fifteen coming at you. It's a guy with a weapon.
00:32 Roger [acknowledged].
00:39 There's a...
00:42 There's about, ah, four or five...
00:44 Bushmaster Six [ground control] copy [i hear you] One-Six.
00:48 ...this location and there's more that keep walking by and one of them has a weapon.
00:52 Roger received target fifteen.
00:55 K. 00:57 See all those people standing down there. 01:06 Stay firm. And open the courtyard. 01:09 Yeah roger. I just estimate there's probably about twenty of them. 01:13 There's one, yeah.
01:15 Oh yeah.
01:18 I don't know if that's a...
01:19 Hey Bushmaster element [ground forces control], copy on the one-six.
01:21 Thats a weapon.
01:22 Yeah.
01:23 Hotel Two-Six; Crazy Horse One-Eight [second Apache helicopter].
01:29 Copy on the one-six, Bushmaster Six-Romeo. Roger.
01:32 Fucking prick.
01:33 Hotel Two-Six this is Crazy Horse One-Eight [communication between chopper 1 and chopper 2]. Have individuals with weapons.
01:41 Yup. He's got a weapon too.
01:43 Hotel Two-Six; Crazy Horse One-Eight. Have five to six individuals with AK47s [automatic rifles]. Request permission to engage [shoot].
01:51 Roger that. Uh, we have no personnel east of our position. So, uh, you are free to engage. Over.
02:00 All right, we'll be engaging.
02:02 Roger, go ahead.
02:03 I'm gonna... I cant get 'em now because they're behind that building.
02:09 Um, hey Bushmaster element...
02:10 Is that an RPG [Rocket Propelled Grenade]?
02:11 All right, we got a guy with an RPG.
02:13 I'm gonna fire. 02:14 Okay.
02:15 No hold on. Lets come around. Behind buildings right now from our point of view. ... Okay, we're gonna come around.
02:19 Hotel Two-Six; have eyes on individual with RPG. Getting ready to fire. We won't...
02:23 Yeah, we had a guy shoot---and now he's behind the building.
02:26 God damn it.
02:28 Uh, negative, he was, uh, right in front of the Brad [Bradley Fighting Vehicle; an tracked Armored Personal Carrier that looks like a tank]. Uh, 'bout, there, one o'clock. [direction/orientation]
02:34 Haven't seen anything since then.
02:36 Just fuckin', once you get on 'em just open 'em up.
02:38 All right.
02:40 I see your element, uh, got about four Humvees [Armored cars], uh, out along...
02:43 You're clear. 02:44 All right, firing.
02:47 Let me know when you've got them.
02:49 Lets shoot. 02:50 Light 'em all up.
02:52 Come on, fire!
02:57 Keep shoot, keep shoot. [keep shooting]
02:59 keep shoot. 03:02 keep shoot.
03:05 Hotel.. Bushmaster Two-Six, Bushmaster Two-Six, we need to move, time now!
03:10 All right, we just engaged all eight individuals.
03:12 Yeah, we see two birds [helicopters] and we're still fire [not firing].
03:14 Roger.
03:15 I got 'em.
03:16 Two-six, this is Two-Six, we're mobile.
03:19 Oops, I'm sorry what was going on?
03:20 God damn it, Kyle.
03:23 All right, hahaha, I hit [shot] 'em...
03:28 Uh, you're clear.
03:30 All right, I'm just trying to find targets again.
03:38 Bushmaster Six, this is Bushmaster Two-Six.
03:40 Got a bunch of bodies layin' there.
03:42 All right, we got about, uh, eight individuals.
03:46 Yeah, we got one guy crawling around down there, but, uh, you know, we go

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.

My View as a former Bradley gunner and Infantryman

[phoebusQ]

So I've spent about two and a half years deployed to Iraq, and seen my share of combat. I've served in several different infantry positions, both as a dismount and as a gunner in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle (the "Brad" mentioned in the video). I am always skeptical of these sorts of videos, because they lack context. As a third party, one never knows the full tactical situation, the histories of individuals and groups in the area, the mission and orders of the soldiers involved. So everything I say must be understood to be the view of a third party observer, one with a fair amount of boots-on-the-ground experience, but a third party nonetheless. Based solely on what appears in the video, it doesn't look like the gunner(s) had sufficient justification to fire. Simple possession of an AK-47 is legal in Iraq, and having it on the street isn't always enough to warrant immediate termination, and certainly not when the target is standing in a crowd of unarmed personnel. The "RPG" was poorly identified, and didn't appear to be of significant threat to the Crazyhorse element. It does sound like there had been recent combat in the area, so that may be why there was a minimum standard of ID used prior to engaging the targets. One thing to remember is that Bushmaster element can't always see everything that Crazyhorse does; they rely to some degree on the helos' info to inform their commands. If nothing else, this looked like a textbook situation for dismounted troops with air cover. It sounds like they had Bradleys and dismounts nearby, and they probably should have been sent in to deal with the situation. Dismounts have an infinitely superior view of what exactly is happening on the ground, and when combined with top-down info from the birds, they can properly assess a situation. If these RPGs and AKs were really cameras as reported by the site, then that would have been obvious to dismounts. Firing on the van completely blew my mind. This looks like a series of tactical mistakes combined with an overeager air element, combined with total disregard for the normal RoE (and again, I don't know if they were operating on some kind of modified Rules of Engagement). U.S. soldiers, in my experience, go to great lengths to prevent civilian casualties. Maybe things are different in the air, but those of us working on the ground have to look at everything we do, up close and personal. Don't paint U.S. forces with a broad brush based on the actions and mistakes of a few individuals. Also, remember that it's not the line troops that are performing coverups. Talk to your government about that.

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.

This undermines the war

[stimpleton]

Despite this being an illegal war, this event could save lives. Public opinion will count against this. The wife at home espousing his husband is "in the war" and "flies a helicopter" could possibly now be met with silence and a few nods, rather than wholesale overt praise at the dinner party. This sort of thing is akin to the photos from the Vietnam War of the children walking from a village, burned and with skin hanging off them after a napalm attack. That series of photos did more damage than any military attack.

Judge what is right.

[mosb1000]

Most people have no idea what it is like to be in a situation like this (me included). But if you really think about it, it's easy to understand why this kind of thing happens. Most of us would do the same things in the same situations.

The main problem, for everyone involved is thoughtlessness. Soldiers are not in a position where they can consider their actions, because waiting to take action is often fatal. And regardless of their best efforts it is impossible to wage a war without killing innocent people.

The problem is not the soldiers, nor even the military establishment. The problem is, in fact, the thoughtless public who gladly pays soldiers to go out and kill our "enemy" so that they may continue to enjoy the conveniences an active military provides. Don't bother telling me that you "voted" against it and so it is not your fault. That kind of rationalization simply proves how thoughtless you really are. Our participation in a system that causes these things is what truly needs to be judged. Reflecting on the effects of your own actions, and using judgment to decide what actions to take is the only kind of judgment that matters.

Re:How are we supposed to understand this?

[DrJimbo]

... the enemy [does this] ... the enemy [does that] ... the enemy [does this other thing] ... No military has ever tried to fight a counterinsurgency of this scope with this many restrictions on how we behave in combat, ...

I don't consider people my enemy just because they are fighting to oust foreign invaders from their homeland. The repeated use of the word "enemy" is used to de-humanize the people who get killed defending their country from foreign invaders.

Be that as it may, the root of the problem is that the foreign invaders are unable to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. I disagree that the defenders of their homelands are trying to get the invaders to follow the Geneva Conventions. They are making their best effort to kick the invaders out of their country by putting them in a no-win situation. If the invaders obey the Geneva Conventions then they are unable to eradicate the combatants but when the invaders start killing innocent civilians then they create more combatants among the friends and loved ones of the innocent people they killed.

The situation is highly asymmetrical. The invaders stick out like a sore thumb while the defenders are often indistinguishable from the civilians. We can see this asymmetry as an insurmountable problem or we can see it as the key to the solution.

There is no way for the foreign invaders to "win". One approach is to continue the brutality and war crimes until the local population is cowed into submission and then install a puppet dictatorship. Another approach is to back-off on the brutality and war crimes which will keep the invasion + resistance going on indefinitely. The third approach is to declare victory and go home.

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.

oh fuck off

[unity100]

did you actually do military service ? i did. if we used 30 mm rounds on unarmed civilians, we would be in for a looooong series of inquiries and potential repercussions, even only if it was due to needlessly wasting precious ammunition.

and you do not carry a gunship with you. you call it via radio. there is no target necessitating calling of a gunship with anti armor 30 mm ammunition.

this was a great fuck up, and each of the idiots who were involved in that should pay dearly.

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

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.

Fool's hope that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they will be put to a life time sentence without a parole, in a cell.

Americans don't do time for their war crimes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court

As of March 2010[update], 111 states are members of the Court,[7][8][9] and a further 38 countries have signed but not ratified the Rome Statute.[7]
However, a number of states, including China, India, Russia and the United States, are critical of the court and have not joined.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_Parties_to_the_Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Court#United_States

In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA), which contained a number of provisions, including prohibitions on the U.S. providing military aid to countries which had ratified the treaty establishing the court (exceptions granted), and permitting the President to authorize military force to free any U.S. military personnel held by the court, leading opponents to dub it the "Hague Invasion Act."
The act was later modified to permit U.S. cooperation with the ICC when dealing with U.S. enemies.

The U.S. has also made a number of Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs, also known as "Article 98 Agreements") with a number of countries, prohibiting the surrender to the ICC of a broad scope of persons including current or former government officials, military personnel, and U.S. employees (including non-national contractors) and nationals.
None of these agreements preclude the prosecution of Americans by any nation where they are believed to have committed any crime.
As of 2 August 2006, the US Department of State reported that it had signed 101 of these agreements.[30]
The United States has cut aid to many countries which have refused to sign BIAs.[30]

In 2002, the United States threatened to veto the renewal of all United Nations peacekeeping missions unless its troops were granted immunity from prosecution by the Court.[31]
In a compromise move, the Security Council passed Resolution 1422 on 12 July 2002, granting immunity to personnel from ICC non-States Parties involved in United Nations established or authorized missions for a renewable twelve-month period.[31]
This was renewed for twelve months in 2003 but the Security Council refused to renew the exemption again in 2004, after pictures emerged of US troops abusing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and the US withdrew its demand.[32]

And then people ask why would any nation want or need a nuclear program.

Re:Conditional Freedom of Speech? Yay!

[Mondorescue]

First of all, I apologize that it took me so long to reply, and that my reply is so long.

Rules of engagement vary with the specific mission, the unit, the combat theater, and even the year. However, the concept of PID (positive identification of threat) is always crucial. PID is the sine qua non of any ROE.

Double-tap is against ROE, and it always will be, because a "double-tap" consists of neutralizing a threat and then shooting the target again for 'good measure' even when it is no longer a threat. If it's not a threat, you're not allowed to shoot it, even if it WAS a threat earlier. If it's no longer a threat, then you don't have PID. If you don't have PID, you mustn't shoot it, even if ordered to, unless you want to get caught under a pissing contest between your Chain of Command and the ROE of your theater.

Double-tap is not to be confused with a controlled pair. Example: Room-clearing team enters the room. Target is acquired. Target is shot twice - bang, bang - and target goes down. That's a controlled pair. We use controlled pairs because the M4, with its shorter barrel (4" shorter than the M16) and collapsible buttstock, has a tendency to ice-pick the target, rather than giving the tumbling we need in order to make a nice hole. However, two holes in close proximity to one another can really mess up your day. Plus there are those blended-metal rounds that we're not allowed to use anymore. :( But I digress.

Example of double-tap: Room-clearing team enters the room. Target is acquired. Target is shot (controlled pair, whatever, doesn't matter). Target goes down. Target is no longer a threat; incapacitation, surrender, death, doesn't really matter. Target is not a threat AND YET some bozo shoots the target a second time because that's what people do in the movies. BAD.

Whether the foe is wounded or not is irrelevant. The question is, do you (the good guy) still have PID (positive identification of a threat/target)? If the guy is no longer a threat, he's not a valid target. It gets more complicated when you're talking about traffic control points, vehicles, etc. but here we're talking primarily about a bunch of guys who are walking down the road, minding their own business, with their weapons (if that's what they are) slung, NOT in their hands. They weren't a threat to begin with. Therefore, the gunner didn't have PID. Therefore, he shouldn't have even asked for permission to fire, because he didn't have PID. His Higher gave him permission to engage (G-d knows why), and from that point on, it was the responsibility of the gunner to kill the targets, period. He had permission (which he shouldn't have, but whatever); from that point on, KILL THEM. Don't half-ass the job and then come back to finish the job when they don't pose any kind of threat.

The worst thing you can do is engage a non-threat, half-ass the job, engage a non-threat AGAIN, and finally engage the non-threat a third time while someone is ferrying the injured to hospital. I know it didn't have a red cross on the side but it walked, talked, quacked like an ambulance. The gunner knew exactly what was going on -- the injured were being taken to get medical attention -- and he engaged the vehicle anyway.

Engaging a vehicle with 30mm cannon fire is fine: 30mm is anti-materiel, and a vehicle counts as materiel. Engaging a group of men with 30mm cannon fire because they MIGHT have weapons slung across their shoulders? I'm not sure whose bright idea that was.