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How Did Wikileaks Do It?
grassy_knoll writes "Related to the Wikileaks video recently released and discussed here, the NY Times reports: 'Somehow — it will not say how — WikiLeaks found the necessary computer time to decrypt a graphic video, released Monday, of a United States Army assault in Baghdad in 2007 that left 12 people dead, including two employees of the news agency Reuters. The video has been viewed more than two million times on YouTube, and has been replayed hundreds of times in television news reports.'
The article is light on details; what encryption algorithm was used? Was this a brute force attack? Did someone pass the decryption keys to Wikileaks along with the video? Something else?"
they got it unencrypted
The question isn't why, but how.
Wikilieaks have not been playing this up, the media has. And they should. This is what is known as 'an important news story.' The fact that wikileaks is asking for donations is irrelevant. They have always asked for donations, and they don't have control over how popular a leaked document becomes.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's not why they did anything, but how they did it. They have employees, need to pay for servers and other services. If some organization in the world should get donations, it's Wikileaks. Even democratic nations should support them, but I can clearly see why not. Instead even US tries to shut them down and have been spying and interrogating their workers.
The article states they posted this three months ago:
“Have encrypted videos of U.S. bomb strikes on civilians. We need super computer time,"
It seems to me that whoever leaked the video must have been able to view it, since they knew what was on it. So they would have had the video, as well as the decryption keys. If they're going to leak the video, why not leak the keys too?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
No sources say how the video was encrypted. Maybe it used weak crypto. Bad algorithm, a key based on a weak password that was easy to guess, or the key was available in some way from some source. I doubt that the story is about bruteforcing the key to AES 128 or something similar.
Judge White said at the time, “We live in an age when people can do some good things and people can do some terrible things without accountability necessarily in a court of law.”
Obviously, the ability to do some terrible things without accountability should be reserved for the government.
Whoever was willing to leak them the video either unencrypted it for them or was probably willing to leak the key too. In for a penny in for a pound.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
They need it. They should get attention and money for trying to investigate and report much needed transparency in government. As opposed to most news outlets which have turned into spineless shadows of journalism. I hope this sparks demand for the rebirth of investigatory journalism.
maybe this has something to do with it?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
WikiLeaks claims they decrypted the material. While that's certainly possible, we have no way to know if this is true. They might have received it unencrypted, but made these assertions (including the Internet posts requesting supercomputer time) to throw investigators off-track.
I hope they find who did it and erect a statue in his honor. Sometime breaking the law is the only way to get justice. This video was not classified for any legitimate reason except to cover someone's ass.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Going to war in Iraq is what's putting our soldiers in danger, not exposing their subsequent war crimes.
Who kills people (even if at war if it is done without any reason) must be be punished by the law as the law states. Especially if you are a soldier and think that's funny to kill everything you see
No, shooting up a country we don't belong in puts all of our American soldiers in danger. They wouldn't be in danger if we weren't playing "we have the biggest cock in the world."
Living With a Nerd
If you understood just how gratuitously censor-happy our document-classifying authorities are, you might revise that position.
It matters what the document is, and why it was classified.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
This entire post seems suspiciously like a honeypot to me! Don't post the real answer unless you want to get caught!
So, it is this supposed 'bias' you object to, not the appeals for money. Thanks for clearing that up, now we know your bias.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Wikileak Editor said clearly that they did it via bruteforce password guessing here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QEdAykXxoM
Presumably someone was able to grab a copy of the encrypted file, but didn't know the password?
Was this a brute force attack?
I have seen the video and I can positively confirm that it was indeed a brute force attack.
Ezekiel 23:20
I disagree. It's really easy to increase key sizes (2048-bit, 4096-bit...) making brute forcing exponentially harder. Adding more GPUs in linear, same as increased speed.
Weak encryption (e.g. 512-bit RSA) can be cracked, and 1024-bit in theory (last I heard), but 2048-bit is still in the "not in the forseeable future".
The only way to change this is to create better algorithms, not faster hardware.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
They used a farm of PS3s running Linux to crack the encryption. This is why Sony, acting in behalf of the US DOD, removed the "Other OS" installation option and randomly bricked consoles through last week's firmware update, (albeit too late to prevent the video from being released). Also, as documented in FCC filings, Apple's iPad has a secret built-in front camera used to spy on the American people to find the person who leaked the data. That's why the wifi connection is so poor, most of it is saturated sending live video to DHS. Finally. Microsoft is also involved somehow. I'm not sure how, but I'm sure the OOXML file format is somehow involved.
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
Brute-forcing problems are exponential in key size, though. Add a few more bits to your key, and even if you could turn the entire mass of the sun into Tesla blades, cool it, and power it, then that still wouldn't help you. It's true that the last few years have seen the emergence of commodity hardware with some truly terrifying amounts of compute power, but these security standards are engineered against "turn-the-solar-system-into-a-supercomputer" assuptions of adersarial compute power just to account for semi-unexpected revolutions such as these.
Something else is probably afoot here.
Another early attempt to shut down the site involved a United States District Court judge in California. In 2008, Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered the American version of the site shut down after it published confidential documents concerning a subsidiary of a Swiss bank. Two weeks later he reversed himself, in part recognizing that the order had little effect because the same material could be accessed on a number of other "mirror sites."
Judge White said at the time, "We live in an age when people can do some good things and people can do some terrible things without accountability necessarily in a court of law."
yes, Judge, you are obviously doing one of those terrible things without accountability in a court of law when you silence the truth.
You can't handle the truth.
Yeah...get back to me when you manage to bruteforce a 128-bit AES key on your GPU farm. Only then can you claim that "Encryption is far behind the current power of hardware these days."
"WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video..."
I hope they find out who leaked this and put them in a locked cell. Releasing classified material puts all of our American soldiers in danger -- not to mention our country.
Explain to me how the release of this particular video puts all of our American soldiers in danger. Do you understand the difference between classified and 'military sensitive'? Do you realize that some (not all) things marked as 'classified' are done so just to cover some ass?
I can understand the difference between leaking, for example, the engineering details (and possible achille's heel) of one of our military pieces of equipment, or security details regarding the protection of our nuclear plants and leaking a video that has no security value beyond PR damage control.
You are just sensationalizing a logical fallacy, in a very highschoolish fashion. Pure hand waving. Not buying it.
Here you can find the original file
http://leaks.telecomix.org/
http://leaks.telecomix.org/cm.rda
Did not analyze
14,000 CPUs haven't cracked RC5-72 in over 2 600 days. http://distributed.net/
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
They kind of screwed up the facts.
Here's some shots of the video with the so called "civilians" (actually armed insurgents) and shots of the Pentagon report explaining the results of the research:
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/201878.php
This is a non story, a grab for attention.
In the run up to the release, they posted some stuff to make it seem like they uncovered a secret plot to target and murder journalists. Instead it was a mistake made in wartime.
But as usual, are they brute-forcing the key, or the passphrase? If it's a passphrase, that's almost always weaker than the key. Even if it's twenty ascii chars, that might not translate to 140 bits entropy depending on how strong and complex the passphrase is.
Can you construct some sort of rudimentary lathe?
Better question is why where these people killed when they were unarmed?
Wikileaks lost a lot of respect from me. Instead of actually, you know, leaking the video, they are using it as a campaign with bias.
I fully support the idea of wikileaks. I fully look down on them for the way they released this with an opinionated campaign. They should not be in the job of interpreting their leaks. They should not be in the job of making sites like collateralmurder.com to publicize their leaks. They should be in the business of actually leaking newsworthy items with confidentiality.
Interesting. The only thing I'd disagree with at that linked site is that journalists are fair game if they are embedded with enemy forces. You can't shoot journalists just because you don't like the side they are reporting from.
If the transmission of the video from the helicopters is similar to systems used on the drones then getting the video may have been trivial: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html
such as, the FACT that the "civilians" were actually enemy combatants. For more details:
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/201878.php
So Reuters is now considered to be the journalistic branch of Al Qaeda?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
What makes you think the video was encrypted in the first place? When I was deployed, I watched several aerial videos of our missions and none of them were encrypted...they were just plain old AVI's. Assuming the Unit operating the helicopters in the video used some kind of encryption, whoever leaked the video to Wikileaks probably decrypted it first.
Rule 34.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
This is plus five INFORMATIVE? mypetjawa is a site dedicated to catching Muslim terrorists that it calls "Jawa" (aka, a racial slur). Their decision that the video was a hoax was because someone had an AK-47, therefore the soldiers were totally justified. Are there really 5 conservatives that couldn't RTFA linked by this AC? Jesus Christ people.
Overpaid geeks reading this: GIVE WIKILEAKS MONEY.
I know Julian Assange slightly. He used to be the sysadmin at Suburbia.net. That's where my critic of Scientology website lives. He and Mark Dorset of Suburbia have assiduously defended that site against baseless legal threats from Scientology for the past fifteen years. The guy's got balls of titanium.
The newspapers whine about "who's going to do journalism without us around?" The answer is the same as who'll do it with them around, i.e. someone else. So far it's Wikileaks.
I gave 'em GBP50 (~US$100) last pay and will again this pay. So should you.
Overpaid geeks reading this: GIVE WIKILEAKS MONEY.
Thank you.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I hope they find out who leaked this and put them in a locked cell. Releasing classified material puts all of our American soldiers in danger -- not to mention our country.
How? Were we counting on the terrorists thinking they would be completely safe, on base if you will, if they were unarmed, in a van with kids? Or are you implying the bad guys didn't know we had helicopters with guns?
After watching this video, I can think of a few soldiers (and officers) who probably could use some more risk & danger in their lives.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=NBKaAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
They had to kill Michael Uy after the patent was filed so he wouldn't tell anybody about it. RIP Michael. Excuse me, someone is knocking on my do
What run up to the release? This was posted months before there was any kind of media frenzy. Rather than leave yourself open to charges of 'making shit up' or 'spreading misinformation,' you could post links to these sources.
And to be clear, what I saw on those tapes was not 'a mistake made in wartime' any more than My Lai was. It was a deliberate massacre of civilians.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Yes, password guessing is typically way faster than brute force.
that the military have lost their original of the video. So I assume the encryption was some kind of spooky quantum encryption that destroyed the original as a consequence of being decoded by wikileaks.
Nullius in verba
How many civilians do you know that carry RPGs around with them around town?
Thank freaking christ they did do it. It is extremely important for us to understand what exactly our guys are doing/did over there. In a democracy, it is incumbent that the voting citizenry understand the impact of the decisions it makes.
12 hours? Dude, you need to upgrade.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Nobody in the group had RPGs or anything that looked remotely like them. Nobody made any kind of threatening move. No one was frightened of US military helicopters, because they were not enemy combatants and probably believed, up until the first bullet hit, that the US were there to help them.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I would question who classified the video and why.
Explicit guidance exists that you are not to classify something just because it is embarrassing. What national secret is protected by classifying this video? Security Guidance says that the use of the SECRET classification is to prevent harm to the security of the US.
I believe an investigation needs to be opened into the misuse of classification for this video.
In that case, you might be interested in this article in which a Fox News reporter talks to one of the Wikileaks editors associated with the release of this video. That editor states that it appears that one of the people killed in the video was carrying an AK-47 while another was carrying an RPG, even though Wikileaks neglected to include this in their commentary on the video.
I know, I know, this is Slashdot, and dishing on Fox News is the most effective form of karma-whoring. Have at it, folks. Nevertheless, the substance of the article calls into question the veracity of (and the motives behind) the video and commentary.
If we assume this is correct, it in no way absolves the government for the subsequent coverup and use of gestapo intimidation tactics on the wikileaks staff.
Wikileaks edited out 17 minutes of the video
Both the short (edited) and full (unedited) versions are available on the front page of the site they released it from.
So when people carry weapons in public, we immediately assume they are enemy combatants? I know there was fighting in the area: you still have ZERO proof these were insurgents.
I would assume that most Iraqi civilians are armed for self defense. There are plenty of stories about Iraqis using their own guns -- even AK-47s -- to fend of insurgents trying to kidnap them or plant bombs. The "RPG" you keep pointing out looks a lot like a pro camera lens to me. And there is zero evidence that these people were engaged in any warfare, or about to fire an RPG: the pilots made that shit up.
Finally, this quote from your link: "But you drive your van into an active military engagement?" As I understand it, most of Baghdad in 2007 was pretty dangerous. A passing family would have little idea of how recently a group of people were shot. For all we know, they were in the process of fleeing an active engagement elsewhere, saw wounded Iraqis in a scene that appeared calm at the moment, and attempted to rescue them. The link says "You are stupid. Innocent, but stupid. You're asking to be killed." -- you might as well call all Iraqi civilians that, then. Why live in Iraq at all? Let's move them to the U.S.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
such as, the FACT that the "civilians" were actually enemy combatants. For more details: http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/201878.php
What disturbs me is how quickly people judge a video when they were two airships meaning you're only seeing one view from one of the apaches. Other people are calling in RPGs and AK47s ... and those that were pulling the triggers were acting on that information. Personally, from watching the video, I saw very unfortunate movement by a photographer with a very large camera (405-415 on the wikileaks site) that at first looks exactly like an insurgent with an RPG trying to get an unseen angle on a gunship. Only after I was told that they were photographers was my imagination allowed to see that as a very large lens camera (and you conveniently can't see those frames where the RPG looks more like a camera at the site you linked to). And even then, with the low resolution Youtube footage, who's to say what it looked like to those there? Missing something like that could cost not only your life but also the lives of people flying with you.
I'm not trying to excuse what happened but I am saying that a series of mistakes were most likely made in those videos that lead to the unfortunate deaths of at least a couple innocent people.
And this is war.
If you're a United States citizen, you paid for that gunship. You paid for that scenario. Don't get me wrong, you also paid for the scenario when real insurgents trying to kill innocent people were stopped. That scenario just isn't interesting to us though. You see it as a byline on a newspaper but those stories are just something to yawn at these days. I was for the war in Afghanistan and I knew that things like this video would happen. I was not for the Iraq war because these scenarios were not worth ousting Saddam. Friendly fire happened in Desert Storm and probably every large scale conflict before that as long as guns have been involved. Do you think a reporter was never killed accidentally by United States forces in Vietnam or even World War II (commonly viewed as one of the few 'justified' war)?
I'm glad everyone got to see one of the faces of war. I'm sad that these people wrongfully died but I'm glad that this rightful outrage might cause us to really reconsider what half or more of us had decided when our elected Commander in Chief brought us into both these wars. I don't get it. I was ~20 years old during our invasion of Afghanistan and people just seemed humdrum "Hey, let's go to war, I won't be dying in it" and I'm still a little bit confused about that sentiment. How many of these conflicts must we have before we realize that declaring war means that civilians -- not just soldiers but women and children -- will die as some direct result of this war?
War is war. At some point the US populace just decided that war is different today. And then once we started two wars, we forgot about them. Just declared victory and tucked them away. Our soldiers are still dying, this is still happening. Wake up.
And lastly, I would like to point out that like soldiers, these reporters did know what they were entering when they entered a war zone. Again, not to absolve the Coalition forces but to quote Reuter's official word on the footage:
There is no better evidence of the dangers each and every journalist in a war zone faces at any time.
And as Newsweek added:
These newsmen knew what they were getting into; it's the public watching the video now that has been caught unawares.
My work here is dung.
Most asymmetric encryption schemes use hybrid encryption. The RSA key encrypts the randomly generated session key. So if you're only trying to crack a single document, and not a person's actual key so you can access any document encrypted to that key, you can bypass the RSA key and brute force the session key. That could be something like 128 bit CAST5 or 3DES, which still shouldn't be easily crackable, but the complexity of that attack won't change no matter how big the RSA key is.
Can you construct some sort of rudimentary lathe?
Everyone I've discussed the video with has agreed that it does look like the guy was preparing to fire an RPG from around the corner. It's really unfortunate if it was actually a camera with a telephoto lens, but I still think it was a reasonable assumption to make.
It's the second half of that video -- the part that seems to be ignored by that website of yours -- that baffles me. A van rides up to recover the last limping guy -- both the van and him showing no signs of hostility -- and the guys still beg their superiors for an OK to fire.
You know what's funny about that opinion piece? It is wrong. That is NOT an RPG, those are NOT AK-47s. I can understand why someone would think so, but they are obviously not, I know a telephoto lensed camera profile when I see one. Also since when does embedding yourself with a group, as a reporter, make YOU an enemy combatant? I reported on a group of local homeless crack users in HS, does that make ME a homeless crack head? I would also like to ask, when has reporting on a CRIME committed by armed forces made you anti-American? Not to mention that you have to be attacked or protecting US Forces under attack to engage an enemy group according to the US Rules of Engagement, violating those rules IS in fact a crime under military law. Also if you listen you will hear the pilot lie, saying they were under RPG fire, he said this AFTER practically begging for permission to shoot. So, where is this RPG? Watch the video again, carefully, before you show yourself to be an even bigger idiot than they guy who posted the above article.
It's obvious they used monkeys to do it.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
They continue to identify the zoom lens being pointed around a corner as an RPG. It was a LENS! In any case, these guys were not taking aim at US troops or the helicopters. They were just standing around. Those guys with AK-47s could be bodyguards for the reporters, for all you know.
If this attack by the Apache helicopter was pre-emptive, then it easily could have been made by ground-interception by nearby US troops. These half-dozen would have had no hope facing Bradley IFVs and their mounted and heavily armed infantry.
No, it's definitely better to know.
They're not calling for wikileaks to reveal anything. They're asking slashdot how it was done.
And your questions are kind of vague. For this video, there might be some information gleamed from the time at which the video goes live, but it's not like waiting really hides anything. But I'd wait 2d6 days just to be safe. And I think any harm that this video does will be outweighed by the good it will do. It'll hopefully hurt the people who tried to cover it up, but hurting them is good for the system. It's kind of that whole "justice" thing at work.
if it exists, there is goatse of it?
The teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.
Wikileaks made a public request for computer time to help decrypt it, and announced they had succeeded some six weeks later.
This is odd because it seems slow for a very weak encryption and far, far too fast for strong encryption.
Likewise, why would a whistleblower leak an encrypted video without the key?
I'm not doubting Wikileaks' claims about the origin, but it is odd.
I hope they find out who did it, determine their motivations and the trade-offs that have resulted from their actions, and then decide whether to honor them or execute them.
Leaking a document does not necessarily translate into casualties or hardship for anyone, especially when the classification level is merely a pretext for a cover-up. Clearly the law can hide injustice or protect those of ill intent.
At the same time, simply Standing up to The Man is not sufficient justification to break the law. Like it or not, military classification does have a purpose, and if you are an outsider, some very good reasons for the classification level will not be apparent to you. Data that has nothing to do with the actual content of the video, such as the capabilities of the weapons systems, or the general operating area of the units involved can be determined from some video evidence. There is always the possibility that while you might be righting an injustice, you could at the same time be consigning other people in the field to their deaths with the very same action. The two end results are not mutually exclusive with the release of classified material.
So, if you are planning to be a "hero", consider very carefully the total result of your actions. For my part, until I know about the leaker and their position and motivations, my opinion is decidedly out on whether they have done good with this action.
Maybe something else is going on, maybe not. It was only a few months ago that slashdot was reporting that the wireless video feeds on UAVs were trivial to listen in on.
fake edit: found the orginal article here:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/12/17/1311218/26-of-Software-Defeats-American-Military?from=rss
$26 software to "decrypt" the satellite video feed on a UAV. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that the US military didn't do a better job of covering itself this time too.
First, someone had an RPG (or, what sure looks like one). I think they were pretty justified in firing, then.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
Personally, I may not agree with their interpretation of the issue but what makes them different (and, in my opinion, important) is that, regardless of any editorial they may add to the story, they always post all the original material they receive unedited. As long as they do that, I can view it myself and develop my own opinion. What the mainstream media and the military do is highly limit your direct access to the original evidence then tell you to "trust us" that they are giving you an honest description. As this case, and other such as the death of Pat Tillman, the military has proven that, as an organization, they are pathological liers that cannot be trusted.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Classification is about hiding tactical details and to some extent strategic planning and capabilities from real and potential enemies, to improve the effectiveness and reduce the vulnerability of military units. It is about troop movements, attack sites and times, resource levels, weapons construction, and so on.
It is NOT about hiding evidence of crime and allowing the perpetrators to escape justice- even if letting the existence or details of the crime be known puts troops at risk. Misusing it in this way is an additional criminal activity, making those who do so accessories after the fact, members of a conspiracy to obstruct justice.
There are rules for "civilized warfare". They include limits on the acceptable activities - especially against bystanders. They also include the participating groups taking credit and blame for their actions. If personnel of the US military or the US' hirelings broke the rules, it is up to the US to bring them to justice and take the heat. If it instead actively covers up the events it is institutionalizing them, effectively making them policy. This rates a lot more heat.
To the extent that the "increased risk to the troops" from the disclosure is just the righteous "blowback" from people's anger about, and rational planning changes based on, activity disclosed, it's the fault of the perpetrators, not the whistleblower.
The way to avoid or mitigate blowback, when training fails and atrocities are committed by our own personnel, is to VISIBLY punish it, making it clear that it is NOT policy, NOT acceptable, NOT a way to achieve success and advancement, and NOT to be done in the future.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They asked Chuck Norris to do it.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
Would the leak about how the leak happened be hosted on wikileaks, or do we need a WikiLeaksLeaks?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I think they were pretty justified in firing, then.
And how about when they lit up the "bongo truck?" The one with the locals trying to give aid to the people that were shot.
You know, the one with the kids in it.
Lemme guess... [crickets]
From here they mention a hacker named Rop Gonggrijp, who has some background in crypto, but other articles mention a crowd-source of hackers.
If they did indeed break the encryption, I can imagine that it's likely a very old block cypher, such as a standard DES/3DES stream.
Whatever it is, or how well it was protected - it's likely very bad news. I'm sure it's a crime, somewhere..
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Not having much background on the various sources of information here, I'm not going to say much about whether any given action in this video was or was not justified.
But I do have to question what you appear to be assserting here, which is that a journalist who chooses to move with a combat unit should somehow expect to be "more protected" than the soldiers around him or her. Consider the implications of that.
Want to make sure the enemy can't use heavy weapons against you? Travel with an embedded journalist so they'll fear the colateral damage. Want to make sure the enemy has to act and react more slowly? Same solution; can't shoot as fast when you have to constantly make sure you're not going to take out particular individuals in the formation you're targetting.
Better yet, dress your key personel up as journalists and hope nobody catches on until they've pulled the trigger.
An embedded journalist better know the score, because no enemy unit is going to make a priority out of keeping him or her safe. Even the unit in which he or she is embedded shouldn't be taking any particular risks on his or her behalf. In short, the front line really isn't a great place to hang out if you're a journalist, no matter how catchy the idea has become.
Like the rolls of photos missing from Srebrenica, where the US airforce responsible for providing air support for dutch forces mysteriously failed to show up, and an american general now blames american cowardice on dutch homosexuals.
How do you know the US is your alley? By the bullet holes in your back.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That editor states that it appears that one of the people killed in the video was carrying an AK-47 while another was carrying an RPG
That's funny, the people that were murdered while giving aid in the truck didn't appear to have any RPGs.
Oh, did FOX fail to mention that small detail in their quest to cover the complete story?
I'm extremely disappointed that this was covered up, but I don't understand all the spin. Wikileaks claimed they have video showing the US government murdered someone.
The video is brutal. You see an injured reporter crawl, trying to survive. They shoot him again. But you also clearly see on the video a group with rifles, and an RPG. When the RPG is first visible, it appears to be pointed at the gunship.
The soldiers in question call, describe the situation and request permission to engage. They were told to engage. When they first see the reporter crawl away, they say on the video so long as he doesn't reach for a weapon, they're not going to shoot him again.
They're fighting insurgents who aren't wearing uniforms. The lines between insurgents and civilians isn't very clear.
It is no doubt disturbing to hear people take pleasure in killing others, but that is the reality of warfare. They believed they killed the enemy. After the fact, it is discovered that at least two of those individuals worked for Reuters and may be innocent civilians killed in the incident.
"Collateral damage" happens in every military conflict. It is unfortunate and should not be overlooked. But this isn't a video of people just randomly killing inoocent civilians for no good reason. Murder is unlawful killing. The soldiers in this video followed protocol and opened fire on an armed group when they were ordered to do so.
My problem with the video is two-fold. The US government shouldn't have covered it up. And it is against the Geneva convention to fire those high-caliber weapons at people. It is an odd rule, but apparently it is humane to kill someone with an M-16, but not a 30mm mounted gun. It happens all the time. Someone could make a stink about breaching the Geneva convention, but I really don't understand all the spin I'm reading about random wanton murder of innocents in this video.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
If those links are legit, it's probably OpenSSL with the 8 bytes of salt included. So you just have to brute force the password with the given salt. You don't even have to decrypt the whole file - do the first 16 bytes or so and look for a legit file header. I doubt they stripped the header. Send the first 16 bytes to a file identification tool or something like VLC so you don't have to even program that part.
I don't think this is revealing any secrets any idiot could have found on his own - they needed supercomputer time (or something equivalent) to brute-force it, just like everyone's reporting. I'm an idiot and I found it.
http://juliusdavies.ca/commons-ssl/pbe.html
I love how so many people clearly and definitively state that there's no way anything could have been mistaken for a hostile act, that everyone was definitively unarmed, etc. and state unequivocally that they would have made the "proper" decision. And they say this sitting in the comfort of their chair, in a climate-controlled room, with the luxury of zoom, rewind, image enhancement, and the little detail of not having to constantly wonder if someone is going to pop out from around the corner and send a couple pounds of RPG your way. 99% of them have probably never been in combat or had some kind of active role in any other life-or-death, make-a-decision-right-the-hell-now situation (police and fire/EMS, for example).
Was it ever confirmed that the non-reporters were, in fact, unarmed? That nobody really had an RPG or three? Or is it just people stating what they want to see and making absolute statements with only a single grainy image feed from one source, in much the same way that a soldier in a combat zone and under those conditions will tend to interpret many things (whether actually threatening or not) as threats, and react accordingly? Are they the ones actually making the mistake that they're accusing the troops of doing?
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Unless you're funding them through your tax system (and you're not), what right have you got to tell them what they should and should not do?
If you don't like their site, nobody is preventing you from setting up your own.
I hope in the future you don't get murdered after your country is arbitrariously invaded.
No. They didn't break RSA or CAST5 or 3DES. That would be way bigger news than this and nobody would try to keep it secret but risk leaking the news of the break by leaking something like this.
Encryption is far behind the current power of hardware these days.
Wow, you really have no idea how cryptography works, do you? Adding one bit to the key length doubles[1] the search space. My computer can test about a million AES keys a second. It's a bit old now, so a recent GPU could probably do a couple of orders of magnitude more than that. If you are brute forcing AES-128 then you need to test 2^128 keys. A hundred million is about 2^26. Let's say 2^28 (assume we have a few GPUs). That gives 2^100 seconds, or around 4x10^22 years. Well, on average you only need to check half of the keys, so that gives you 2x10^22 years. Let's assume computers get 1000 times faster in the next few days, now we're down to 2x10^19 years. There are around half a billion computers in the world, so let's use all of them. Let's round up to a billion (10^8) to make it easier. Now we're down to 2x10^11 years.
For reference, the age of the universe is around 1.3x10^9 years. So, if computers were a couple of orders of magnitude faster than they are and you were able to use all of them, it would take about a hundred times the current age of the universe to crack a single AES-128 key (with a brute force attack).
Now, you might be saying, Moore's law tells us that the available computing power doubles every 18 months. How many times would it have to double for us to be able to crack AES in one year (with all of the computers in the world working on it). Take the base 2 log of our time and we get 37.5, or around 56 years (if Moore's Law holds).
In practical terms, there are some attacks that are better than brute force, but on the other hand you probably aren't allowed to use all of the computers in the world when hunting for the key. AES-128 is probably good for a few decades yet though. Adding one bit to the key length of a symmetric cypher doubles the time taken to crack it normally, but this isn't quite true for AES (some attacks work better on the longer-keyed variants).
Cracking a random AES key at the moment, however, is completely unfeasible.
[1] In theory. For some attacks it multiplies it by some constant factor slightly less than two.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I have every right to tell them what they should and should not do. And they have a right not to listen. And people's opinions have a right to change based on the back and forth, or not at all.
What part of that didn't you understand before you posted?
You are correct, I did pay for that gunship with my tax dollars. I also paid for the training of those soldiers. Finally, the world opinion of America and Americans (including me) is affected by how we fight in Iraq.
So I feel I am justified in seeking an answer to this question:
What policy is in place that considers shooting an obvious makeshift ambulance a good idea?
Everything up to that point is a terrible misunderstanding. Having watched the video, if I were looking for AK47s and RPGs instead of cameras, I would have seen them. I'm not even going to second guess if the way to build a healthy Iraq is to destroy a group of people standing in a street with gunfire from a mile away, though I don't think that's the decision I would make.
But as for the van: everyone on the radio is clear that the van is picking up wounded. Very seriously wounded. Permission to fire was still asked for, and still given. Why? Even if everyone involved was 100% convinced those were bad guys, why? If this kind of conflict could be won purely by being the meanest guy on the block, Algeria would still be French.
Probably the same part of "If you don't like their site, nobody is preventing you from setting up your own." that you're struggling with.
Well, next time you get something you can leak, you can upload it to liveleaks, or distribute it yourself, or whatever. When actual journalists get the videos distributed by wikileaks, the journalists are the ones in charge of non biased reporting. The job of wikileaks is to let everyone know that if you want to disclose something, going through them is the safest way to do it.
5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
What is non-factual about this ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Multiple people had AKs along with at least one RPG-7 less than 5 blocks away from a US ground patrol.
They could have been bodyguards. Besides, there were only a half-dozen of these guys; the US troops, who were armed with a Bradley IFV could have easily handled this posse.
Am I the only one who saw two guys carrying cameras and a third carrying an RPG?
The only thing I'd disagree with at that linked site is that journalists are fair game if they are embedded with enemy forces. You can't shoot journalists just because you don't like the side they are reporting from.
This calls into question these "Jawa" guys' whole attitude. Here's a good quote:
Whatever happened to the good old fashioned military pool reporter?
Basically, the are for taking the military at their word about the conditions on the ground and how it is executing operations, which allows the military a blank check to do what Jawa Report wants most -- dead Muslims.
(1) Brute forcing a single key doesn't equal 'breaking' an algorithm.
(2) I don't think they brute forced the keys.
All I was saying is that if you're going to attempt to do so, and do so on a single document, you could attack the potentially weaker session key, making the size of the RSA key irrelevant.
So don't just generate your 4096-bit RSA OpenPGP key, and say, "problem solved, no one can hack that." You'll also want to set your symmetric key prefs to use AES-256 or Twofish.
Can you construct some sort of rudimentary lathe?
Wikileaks would probably receive more support if they ditched their attempts at analyzing the materials they leak. I believe I can trust them to release the full context of whatever they publish, but I don't believe I can trust their analysis of that media to be independent of their political agenda. In other words, I trust them about the same as any other source of information: with skepticism.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
I seem to recall they ship them around on networks rather than physically. So it stands to reason they'd be encrypted by default.
Surveillance videos automatically have information of interest to the enemy. In addition to whatever information they record, they disclose where (and typically when, thanks to automatic annotation) the surveillance occurred. Knowing where the "eyes" are/were tells the enemy how to avoid them.
Meanwhile, practically ANY information can be of tactical significance, so the default is to hide it. Example from WW II: Tracking shipments of toilet paper exposed troop disposition and movements. Related example from a military training exercise: Leader of one side didn't like to use latrines. Intelligence guy on the other side knew that, monitored the communications of the local porta-potty vendor, found out where they delivered a potty, and thus was able to stage a surprise attack on the first side's HQ, winning the exercise.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Right, and when you don't like the service you got at McDonald's you should never say anything because you can go to Burger King and get one.
Oh wait, because I paid for the burger I get to complain.
OK, so if I'm in a store and I see a misleading ad, even though I don't plain to buy the product, I shouldn't say anything because I didn't pay?
Or, if I'm watching TV and I see a show that's completely full of misinformation I should never say anything because I can always start my own TV show?
Oh, wait, the world's not the garbage you tried to paint it. I can voice my opinion about anything I want and don't have to be willing to "make my own" to do so.
Thanks for clearing that up, now we know your bias.
You really think your post doesn't expose your bias?
Yes. I have an anti-massacre-of-civilians bias.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Sorry, but no.
I think there's too many "unbiased" people out there. People shouldn't be unbiased. They should be biased towards justice, fairness, and doing TheRightThing(tm). Killing unarmerd civilians is not TheRightThing(tm), so I'm actually damned glad that WikiLeaks isn't biased, but rather -- for a change -- biased towards the right thing.
In other words: being good is biased, just aswell as being evil is biased. Being unbiased it's not the same as being good, it's being indifferent. And that can be evil, too, given the right circumstances.
It is not against the Geneva Conventions to fire cannon from an aircraft against people on the ground.
The Hague Convention of 1923 would have covered it, but it wasn't adopted.
http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Hague_Rules_of_Air_Warfare
The same caliber weapons were used on vehicles against infantry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-propelled_anti-aircraft_weapon
"On occasion SPAAGs have been used as very effective direct fire weapons against infantry, for example by American forces during late World War II, in Korea against mass infantry assault, and extensively during the Vietnam War, where for example the U.S. M42 Duster SPAAG (based on a light tank) was employed purely for this purpose."
This might cover what you are talking about
1980 United Nations Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects (CCW)
But the M-1 tank has an anti-personal round and that is a 120mm gun.
M1028 120 mm anti-personnel canister cartridge was brought into service early for use in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It contains 1,098 38-inch (9.5 mm) tungsten balls which spread from the muzzle to produce a shotgun effect lethal out to 600 meters (2,000 ft). The tungsten balls can be used to clear enemy dismounts, break up hasty ambush sites in urban areas, clear defiles, stop infantry attacks and counter-attacks and support friendly infantry assaults by providing covering fire. The canister round is also a highly effective breaching round and can level cinder block walls and knock man-sized holes in reinforced concrete walls for infantry raids at distances up to 75 meters (246 ft).
And this is war.
No it's not. If we'd actually, you know, declare war on a country that would be a different story. This was a UN police action that spiraled horribly out of control & has frankly, gone on way longer than it should have.
There is a war going on for your mind.
What is non-factual about this ?
"Guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in 'reality'. And reality has a well-known liberal bias."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879#
It's not that hard.
All you need to do is build a hardware unit that runs at 5 GHz, can test a million keys per clock cycle, embed them into every cellphone on the planet (4,100,000,000), have all of them work on the problem at once and wait 526,006,236 years.
Easy as pi.
If you are comparing those intimidation tactics with that of Geheime Staatspolizei then you should read some more books on World War II. If the Geheime Staatspolizei had paid Mr. Assange or any Wikileaks staff a visit, they would be rotting in a ditch by now. And their family members would be too afraid to ask any questions. That is the definition of 'gestapo.' It is obvious that the Wikileaks staff were non-compliant. That's not something the gestapo would just walk away from. You should spend the time to appreciate the people who actually suffered through that shit. Or even those repressed under the secret police in East Germany before the Berlin Wall fell. It appears that someone put a tail on the staff and then detained him and repeatedly asked him not to release the video. This is laughable (Hello Kitty's Rent-A-Cop laughable) compared to the gestapo. Your local police may do worse to you in the United States and detain you for a full 24 hours without pressing charges. And trust me when I say that in that 24 hours you will spend time with less than reputable people -- listening to them complain and watching them utilize toiletries in front of you.
...
Is his hand broken beyond repair? Is his family disowning him? Has he lost his job and any work prospects? Has he been blacklisted? Are his contacts monitored? The real gestapo controlled the populace through fear. If your mother found you with data like this in World War II Berlin, she'd bring you to the concentration camp herself out of fear that you both might go if she doesn't. I'm not afraid after reading about what happened to the Wikileaks staff -- especially considering this video most likely is classified information. You might consider what they did to the staff unfair until you realize that it's totally legal if law enforcement is doing it and considering the material they had it was probably just a reminder that they would face legal issues if they hosted it. It was a gamble for Wikileaks and it paid off big time. At this point, it's so newsworthy and the public viewership so great that I doubt the US Government dares try to prosecute. It's been up for a day after all
My work here is dung.
And, where is the raw video? The timestamps are almost unreadable, it's obviously been reduced in size and re-encoded. Wikileaks put it into a boxed frame with titles and subtitles. The MP4 they provided is larger but is still blurry and obviously not the source video. Why are they not leaking that???
The raw video is here: http://collateralmurder.com/file/CollateralMurder_full.mp4.torrent
The RPG was seen earlier on in the clip. The pilot then mistook the camera lens for the RPG.
The world is far from garbage. This is mainly due to people who take action upon their beliefs, whatever those beliefs might be, despite the endless ranks of know-everything-do-nothing fools who sit on internet messageboards and whine about it.
The word "indiscriminate" in the first line, and "unprovoked" in the second last sentence. Both of those express an opinion as to the *motive* of the attack. That is opinion, it is biased against the soldiers who clearly (listen to the audio) go through the correct chain of command and rules of engagement before opening fire.
Also the term "rescue" and "rescuer" bias the reader that the van that just happened to enter the area with three men who jump out immediately and attempt to put the wounded man into the van while the van is rapidly turning and moving to provide a getaway was some good Samaritan, and not at all involved despite everyone in Iraq knowing to stay away from where the Apaches are circling.
That, and naming the site, "Collateral Murder" as well.
That puts it outside the provenance of just factually "leaking" the data.
A factual release would have been, "5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting a military action in Iraq which resulted in the deaths of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and the riders in a van apparently coming to remove him from the scene. Two young children seated in the van were also seriously wounded in the attack."
The difference is subtle, but important. The factual version lets you decide whether it is indiscriminate or not -- by watching the video. The original version acts as judge and jury on the actions of the Apache crew -- a crew vindicated as meeting all the rules of engagement by a Pentagon review of their actions.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
I guess that's why you posted AC, you don't want anyone knowing you read hate sites calling for the death of all 'sand people.'
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You're obviously not a Star Wars person. There are many other sites with competent analysis.
Here's one:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/collateral-murder-baghdad-anything
And here is another post at the mypetjawa site that CLEARLY shows an insurgent carrying an RPG:
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/201889.php
If your a civilian you would be smart enough to walk/run away fromt eh dude with the rpgs and ak-47s in a war zone where it's illegal to have said weapons.
sooo 95,000-105,000 civilians dead, and 1034 US soldiers dead? It's probabaly not a bad thing to put thoes soldiers in danger, it'd even out the ratios a bit.
Penguins can be fascists too
This isn't about the bravery of the troops.
This is about their commanders putting them at risk by doing coverups which, when they eventually fail, feed the enemys' ability to recruit, rather than actively and transparently enforcing the "rules of war" and thus pulling the enemys' teeth.
It's time for YOU to grow up. There's more to war than tactical details and bravery under fire.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I stand corrected. When I was trained on certain weapons (such as the .50 cal) in the Marine Corps, I was told that the Geneva Convention dictated I could only use them against vehicles, not people. But I wasn't infantry, and my training in this matter was very brief.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Oh, did FOX fail to mention that small detail in their quest to cover the complete story?
Of course not. Conservatives (who aren't actually conservative at all, but wild-eyed radicals who want to make government more invasive and intrusive than ever before) are liars and cowards.
The rightwingnutjob press has covered every little detail of the video except the part where the soldiers open fire on the unarmed noncombatant from the van who is exercising his natural right--protected under all recognized laws of war--to give aid to the wounded.
If Conservatives weren't liars and cowards they would face that part of the video openly. But they don't have the guts.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
...and sometimes highly editing then releasing a stolen video (aka lying) is the only way to get support for a leftist political cause.
Notice how the video slowed to show camera tripods but quickly skipped on past the guy carrying an RPG and another toting an AK? Notice how there's no description of the firefight that took place before the video or an explanation that the guys carrying the weapons had just been in it?
As for the Reuters reporters...when you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas.
This is a manufactured story, and the people who did it did so to undermine the United States. They are just as much our enemies as the guys shooting at us, only less trustworthy.
So, if you are thinking about planning to be a "hero", consider very carefully the total result of your actions. For my part, I will remind you that thoughtcrime is punishable by death. The Party is the only entity capable of discerning what the truth is, or what it was, or who indeed should know it.
Sincerely,
Citizen O'Brien
Inner Party
WHO CONTROLS THE PAST CONTROLS THE FUTURE. WHO CONTROLS THE PRESENT CONTROLS THE PAST.
do you even know what a telephoto lens is?
They don't usually analyze anything, it's only in a few cases like the recent killing of those reporters. Almost 99% time you can just download the original material and do your judgment yourself.
Remember, we are not seeing what the soldiers see here here. We can watch the video fifty times on slow-mo, squinting to see if that dude's carrying an RPG or a camera: the soldiers are making snap decisions on half-second glimpses. Contrariwise, the soldiers have a much wider perspective on the entire battlefront, and see things we can't. Our hindsight second-guessing is pointless.
But my point here is not to defend the soldiers or the military: it's to say that since hindsight is useless, we should try foresight. BEFORE we send troops into a country, we should understand that shit like this WILL happen. Absolute precision in warfare is impossible: conflict WILL result in innocents getting slaughtered by terrified boys with heavy weapons.
So when the option of war starts being discussed, we should not ask, "is our cause righteous? Are we prepared to sacrifice our sons' lives for it?" but rather, "Is our cause righteous enough that we can watch the mass slaughter of innocents, and still say we did the right thing?"
I have a problem with the guy on the linked site declaring journalists as fair game because they are siding with the enemy. They are non-combatants, even if they are reporting from the enemy side. The author of the linked blog has it wrong in stating just by being embedded with enemy forces, they too become valid enemy targets.
There has been alot of that, I think its a selling point "This gun is so powerful and the bullet so BIG that you can't shoot a human with it!!!" in training.
Then you find 50 caliber sniper rifles...sorry anti-material rifles, used against infantry and guys like Hathcock using 50 calibers all over Vietnam against infantry.
It seems that all forms of journalism feel the need to be more and more biased these days.
You are massively ignorant of the history of journalism, which has always been a hotbed of bias and sensationalism.
It ain't perfect, but it's what we've got, and your argument is a textbook example of "the best is the enemy of the good", which as every engineer knows is one of the very worst characteristics a person can have.
Is Wikileaks pure and blinding white, unadulterated by any baser motives than the desire to tell the truth? Of course not. Only an idiot would expect them to be, and only an idiot would think that it is any way interesting to point out that they aren't. Nothing is. Everyone who has been paying attention to anything knows this, and yet banal critics keep trotting it out as if was new and interesting whenever they have nothing substantive to say, but want to try to sway public opinion regardless.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
It's the second half of that video -- the part that seems to be ignored by that website of yours -- that baffles me. A van rides up to recover the last limping guy -- both the van and him showing no signs of hostility -- and the guys still beg their superiors for an OK to fire.
Wait, so once the bank robbers are running away, the police should stop chasing them? After all, they aren't showing any signs of hostility. Ok, that's a strawman because shooting is not the same as chasing, but you get the idea. Everybody's heard "run away and live to fight another day" (emphasis mine), but there is a flip side to that - if your enemy gets to run away, they also get to live to fight (and kill your friends) another day. While the attack may have been unwarranted in whole, preventing the enemy from escaping makes absolute sense.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
As the sibling post notes, the Fox News article mentions that the truck that pulled up was unmarked. No red cross/crescent, no "ambulance", no nothing. If they're assuming that the people they just killed were enemy combatants because they had AKs and RPGs, then the next logical assumption is that the unmarked van that pulls up is affiliated with those people and is therefore also a target.
So, no, Fox didn't fail to mention that small detail.
Do note that WikiLeaks spent real money to send real journalists to the actual Iraq to speak to real eyewitnesses and the very children who survived the attack. This was part of the verification process, and I do not see why this additional information gathered to provide context to the video should not also be used to voice some sort of opinion about the ongoing injustices that happen as part of wars. We civilians, removed from the locus of this conflict, tend to marginalize the innocent victims in our own personal evaluations of the war.
FWIW, I don't think that the pilots should ever be punished harshly at this point, as they likely were indeed operating within rules of engagement, as the military concluded. The root cause of the errors lies farther up the chain of command.
Also, remember that this is also about the CYA actions on the part of the military. If they had told Reuters, "Hey, our guys seriously fucked up," and perhaps paid the families of the journalists restitution (which would be the least they could do to somehow attempt to make right), and made significant changes to the rules of engagement, it wouldn't be quite as bad. But of course, this is probably not an isolated incident, and Wikileaks has footage of something in Afghanistan IIRC.
And again, they need money to operate. There is enough of a PR component in all of this that one might consider whether money potentially derived through increased exposure played a factor in this. If so, that's one hell of a calculated gamble.
We need to know that we look what it is more familiar to us.
Now, the less biased person would be the one who is a huge Bob Marley fan AND an expert on christian iconography and is familiar with pareidolia.
But definitely, it is highly unlikely that the reporters were carrying RPGs. Common sense + observation of video + identification of the subject in the video = Definitely telephoto lens.
If they don't wish to be targets, they should be wearing a designated fluorescent press vest, specifically issued to journalists in Iraq to prevent exactly what happened here. Because they were not wearing this identification, they became part of the group of insurgents. Insurgents in Iraq often use cameras to take pictures of their attacks for propaganda purposes.
The pictures recovered from their cameras show that they were sitting one block from a group of vehicles that were under small arms fire. The perfect place from which to launch an RPG attack. The cameraman was even found lying on top of an RPG round. All that can be found in the report and sworn statements of the soldiers who came on scene.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Remember, you are watching the video with preknowledge of the contents. You know its a camera, and thus will see it as such. This is a war zone, and frankly, the soldiers in the line deserve the benefit of the doubt. Mistakes will, regrettably, occur when in a zone of hostilities. There is NO WAY to conduct any war where you eliminate the possibilities of things like this happening. Hesitate too much, wait too long, in order to get conclusive proof of what you believe you are seeing can result in loss of lives, often much larger loss of lives than the number lost in this regrettable and unfortunate error. Lastly, the leaking of confidential and top secret material, regardless of the motivation, is and should always be treated as a serious criminal matter. The person leaking has no idea of what the full consequences of those leaks may end up being, regardless of whatever idealistic justifications they feel in doing it.
I wonder who's biased here. The American who sees any criticism as anti-americanism, that must be objective.
They spy, break into systems, lie and threaten employees.
There is a difference between revealing leaked documents and this.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hey now, I'm a conservative, and I face the entire video openly. I also want my government as small as logistically possible, which is just about the opposite of invasive.
Please stop attempting to represent my interests. You're really bad at it.
Well said. Points often missed by the large number of people on this site who feel that slanted news is justified when it supports their views.
Crap, I was not logged in.
That is NOT the raw video, that's the "MP4 they provided [that is] larger but is still blurry and obviously not the source video." The file is an mp4 (do helicopter cameras use that? Doubt it.) Are the timestamps clear? No. Is it still in a boxed frame in a lossy codec with titles? Yes. Is this file in the format they received it in? Maybe, but I'd still like to have it without any of the tampering they did to it to add titles, etc.
... do i have to explain my joke?
"...and sometimes highly editing then releasing a stolen video (aka lying) is the only way to get support for a leftist political cause. "
Leftist wasn't needed in the sentence. Any political cause can use lying to support their claims.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Especially if you are a soldier and think that's funny to kill everything you see"
What kind of world do we live in when someone can't even enjoy their job?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Again, the choppers were not threatened by that alleged weapon at any time.
A van, racing into a combat zone, with two men coming from the courtyard they were in to meet the van and pull a suspected terrorist into the van, while the van is quickly maneuvering to make a getaway. In a city where such "bongo" trucks are often used by insurgents to gather up weapons, and ammo, and other incriminating evidence from bodies at an attack site to create the illusion that "civilians" were massacred.
Yes, I can't imagine why these pilots would think that someone driving into a courtyard, with the dust still settling from the two Apaches pouring fire into it, would be anything but an innocent civilian. I mean, I'm sure if you were driving, and you saw a helicopter mow down an entire group of people in front of you and repeatedly pound the area with machine gun fire, that you would look over at your two kids and say, "You know, I should really stop and see if I can help the guys the helicopter was shooting at, even though he's still circling the area."
Sorry, most people would stomp the accelerator down and be gone. I'm not risking my kids in a combat zone.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
A) It reveals military tactics
B) It reveals military hardware capability.
C) It reveals location and power of the military ins a specific location.
D)To people trained to watch for it, it reveals a lot.
One of the thing it reveals is how it's been edited a specific way, and it reeks of propaganda. The way ti was released, further details, it's reception in other countries.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes, and it still reeks of propaganda.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So, you'd rather see a slaughter of innocent civilians by Bradleys than by attack choppers? Not seeing how ground interception would make a difference.
Wow -- you really teed that one up for me; thanks!
Ground personnel can easily identify whether Iraqis on the ground are actually threatening. Though they may choose to shoot even though the guys were just milling around, they will certainly have a better perspective as to whether they are actually milling around.
When non-combatants are killed, it is because of a lack of discrimination between combatants and non-combatants. This is "indiscriminate." When a person is killed who posed no threat to the people doing the killing, it is "unprovoked." These are both statements of FACT, which can easily be confirmed by viewing the video. The wording is a summary, not an opinion.
Apropos of anything else, I laughed.
I seem to recall our soldiers swearing oaths on statements made to military investigators, courts martial, and so on, that nothing untoward or unprofessional happened at Abu Ghraib.
A little while later, some of those soldiers were revealed as posing in some photos that gained quite a bit of infamy...
Are you suggesting I'm biased and wanted to see an RPG? I watched a video that was presented to me under a certain assumption. I assumed the preamble to the video, and all the stories I read were factual. If I had any bias going in, I had bias that the video did depict a fairly random murder of innocent reporters.
However, what I observed in the video did not match the accountings I was reading.
The individual identified as holding an RPG comes peeking out from around a corner. Earlier in the video, the reporter is identified with a camera. The camera is fairly small and does not look anything like an RPG.
As the gunship moves around, we lose the group behind the building. It is impossible to tell at this point if that person is the reporter. When they open fire, the area is filled with dust. We later see the reporter crawl away, but he does not have a large object with him.
There was a large group of people. Only one was a reporter. The other was a driver. The others no one seems to know anything about, except they were in fact holding rifles.
You're suggesting that an RPG would be out of place for a group that only included reporters. But that isn't the case here.
If it was a telephoto lens, it magically appeared because the reporter isn't carrying a large case, nor a massive lens when we see him earlier. Are you suggesting an RPG-sized lens magically appeared out of nowhere when the reporter wasn't carrying it 20 seconds earlier?
Do you have any explanation for all the rifles being carried at that moment?
Several of the news outlets reporting on the story are saying there was an RPG present. Can you provide evidence that there wasn't an RPG?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Everyone has a bias. The idea is to be truthful and open about your bias. That's why news reports say things like (this company's parent company is also the parent company of CNN). Also, just because someone has a bias does not negate the truth of what they are saying.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Agreed. It was two days after I watched the video before I happened to visit Fox and see it. I make my opinion based upon fact and logic, not what someone feeds me.
Learn about Photography Basics.
Perhaps those in the gunship don't know telephoto lenses when they see them...especially if they see RPGs day after day and are expecting more of them because their lives are potentially in danger all of the time. As far as the pilot crying out that they are under RPG fire, he was calling that out right as you watched the guy with the "rpg" crouch right behind the corner of the building. Not only is that a perfectly reasonable assumption in a war-zone, but he was acting preemptively when lives might potentially be in danger. Moreover, the video made reference to a previous enemy engagement nearby, putting the entire episode in that context for any viewers that are paying attention
While the actions concerning the van are a little more difficult to justify (I can honestly say I'm a little torn as I saw the actions as being a little more drastic; however, if I was to assume that I had just shot some terrorists, then maybe it could have been somewhat logical that those who came to collect the wounded were sympathizers and could, potentially be hostile as well), they also do not strike me as being out of control either. War is Hell - mistakes will be made and innocent lives will be lost. To expect otherwise from someone is idealism blinding someone to rational thinking.
This, in NO way, excuses the actions of our government or the conclusions of that opinion piece which are quite extreme, but the actions of those there in the situation at the time seem to be at least reasonable given the fact that most of them probably aren't reporters of any kind. I would suggest you re-watch the video again, trying to see the video from the eyes of someone making decisions based off of the fact that people are potentially in real-life danger, not sitting cozy in the United States reading slash-dot all day. Get a grip man. While we deal with the oppressiveness of our home government, they act, aware or not, as the face of our government, and some people want to rip them a new one over there. Those reporters were not wearing anything easily identifiable to make themselves known and they or the people they were with were carrying what appeared (to the soldiers) to potentially be weapons. These were soldiers who were probably looking for remnants of a recent engagement and saw what they were expecting when it wasn't there. Fault needs to be dealt with on both sides - it's a pity that we, as a culture can't seem to realize that blame doesn't have to all fall on one entity's shoulders all the time...
I certainly don't find reporters reporting on crimes perpetrated by the American military to be Anti-American, but I think it is dishonest if they don't take the time to consider more than just their own personal viewpoint on an issue of this caliber. There are certainly more than enough plausible explanations to the actions of those involved that your outrage is a little quick to the punch. Nonetheless, IMHO, I think we do deserve an explanation for the actions of the government in covering this up.
It's common knowledge that UAV feeds and some gunship video feeds are transmitted unencrypted over the air. I really don't see the point of encrypting plaintext that has been obviously compromised already.
Perhaps Wikileaks ( or the submitter ) simply setup a few receiver stations to capture the video footage over the air.
Now regarding this "encryption" buzzword being thrown around by Wikileak's PR and journalist, I'm guessing they heard something like "the video feed was transmitted as 64QAM over Ku-band 12.8475Ghz" and thinks all those technical jargons means "encryption".
It is a shame that so many people (like you) expect that our military act with the same level of due process as the police and/or courts.
You will note that they are separate organizations... and with completely different rules... right? Once you do... things actually begin to make a wee bit more sense.
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You're ignoring the very valid point that you watched that video sitting in your leather office chair, on your 27" LCD, without the fear that someone is shooting at you, as probably happens every day to these crews. They are FLYING A HELICOPTER and watching a grainy b&w video on a small display, and forced to make judgments that may cost them or others their lives. In your full-time role as router-jockey (or whatever you do), can you claim to understand even a fraction of the fear, danger, and difficulty these men deal with daily? The answer to that is NO, in case you were thinking anything else.
Have someone try to kill you every day for a year, THEN look at a grainy video while you fly through the air, and if you haven't shit your pants by then, well you *might* have the cred to start judging. Until then, STFU.
(And yes, I know Apache's have two pilots, one to fly and the other to handle the weapons. Doesn't change the point. And no, I don't support the slaughter of innocents; I was horrified to watch it unfold, but I KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON IN ADVANCE. These guys have to make a judgment unlike anything you've ever had to do.)
-- You can't drink all day. (Unless you start in the morning...)
There also exists the possibility that even if they were armed, that they were not hostiles.
Replying to my own post....
Judge the release of the video, and/or the cover up if there was one, all you want. Not that we have THOSE facts either, but it doesn't seem to stop anyone on here...
-- You can't drink all day. (Unless you start in the morning...)
That being said, if you're not sure, you're not sure. You don't open up with a cannon "just in case". There were several gray areas in that video (some less gray than others - I felt the entire operation seemed a little less than professional), but to use your analogy:
If you are a police sniper, and you are watching a hostage scenario through your scope, and are currently unable to determine if the soul in your sights is a 'viable target', that means you don't shoot. It doesn't mean you shoot, just in case it is.
Sometimes, unfortunately, this means you forgo a good angle, a good shot, a righteous shot. Sometimes that might even lead to further injury, even death, perhaps even to innocents.
That, unfortunately, is the way of things.
"Because the evil isn't as great, you are not permitted to complain".
I disagree on principle.
REDRUM
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
The civilians didn't have any weapons. Perhaps you are right, and someone did, but not the group of civilians and children who were massacred. And they live there, you know? Are you saying they should run from their homes? Why, so we don't shoot them? Is that just how we roll?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Assuming that the soldiers weren't certain, it seems they could have gathered more information before taking action. There was no exigent threat of any kind. Even if every one of them had an RPG, the Apaches were beyond their effective range.
Occam's razor says they wanted to kill those men.
This is undeniable when the 'bongo van' comes into the equation.
It gets even more damning when they switch to missles after running out of bullets.
You might get some comfort out of focusing on all the ways that make the initial contact palatable, but it won't get you to the truth.
And while I might be wrong in my assessment, sitting here in my climate-controlled comfort, note that NO ONE WILL DIE due to my own errors of judgement. To me, this makes all the difference in the world.
And none in photojournalism ...
A Canon 1Ds measures 6 x 6 x 4" deep. A Canon 400mm 2.8/L IS lens, which I have used, is 14" long, BEFORE you put a lens hood on it, like you might in a desert in the middle of the day. The aperture of said lens hood is a circular hole close to 10" in diameter.
Don't even start me on a 600mm lens, at 18"+...
Why can't say 65536 bit keys or even 16-256x that be used to prevent unauthorized decryption from ever happening?
Eh, maybe if that's what you want to see. Watch it with a more objective eye and you'll realize, as military professionals should certainly realize, you hold an RPG over your shoulder, not up to your face. And if you can see enough perspective to think that the length warrants consideration as a weapon, then you'll see that you can see it is held to his face...
No, it is an after-action summary with near perfect knowledge of the situation. You know, going into the video, that these are non-combatants embedded in a group of combatants. The pilot and gunner did not know this. Under the Rules of Engagement, when some of a group is armed, they are all combatants.
Secondly, the Reuters reporters failed to wear their officially issued retro-reflective "Press" vests, that would have identified them as non-combatants. They made this choice knowing the consequences. Thus, they intentionally, and knowingly, put themselves into a situation where they were endangering their lives. They also had failed to report to Reuters that they would be in the area, or even in the city of Bagdhad. It was only because one of the reporters was talking to a third man on his cell phone that Reuters found out where they were.
Third, recovered from the scene were one (or more) AK-47 fully automatic rifles, and two RPG7 rocket launchers with two warheads. One of the RPG rounds was actually found under the body of the cameraman.
Fourth, also recovered were the two Canon EOS cameras used by the reporters. The last images on the cameraman at the corner (the one found on the RPG round) were beautiful pictures of the lightly armored side of a Humvee about a block away from them. These are included in the investigative report. Were an RPG to have been fired from his position, those American soldiers would have died.
Again, with perfect knowledge, we know that the guy leaning around the corner is holding a camera with a long lens. To an Apache gunner, guarding the convoy below, it looks like a big tube, and the guy is standing over an RPG round (remember, it was found under him) pointing right down the street at the troops the Apache is supposed to be protecting.
That convoy had already received small arms fire (the reason for calling in the Apache air support) and was attempting to move through the area.
Now, consider what the Apache pilot knew. He has been called in to protect an armored column that has been taking fire from insurgents in the area. He (and a second Apache) spot a group of armed men, one holding an RPG (which rules out the idea of "bodyguards" floated so often in this discussion.) approaching the route of the column he's been called in to protect. These men brandish the weapons, and then gather around a blind corner on the route of the column. One of them, apparently holding a long, straight tube, leans around the corner and sights down the tube directly at the column of soldiers.
Still think that "unprovoked" applies? The mere presence of an RPG means that this is not just a bunch of guys taking pictures. So the attack is provoked.
As for "indiscriminate"? Seriously? When the guy is down and wounded, and not carrying a weapon, they do not fire. Admittedly they beg for him to "give them a reason," but they do not fire. "Indiscriminate?" I think not.
At every step of the way, they are getting cleared by commanders watching the same video feed, the commanders have the feed from two different Apaches to make those decisions (and apparently a UAV in the area as well.) We are seeing a single viewpoint. And we can slow-mo and zoom in on the video in a light-controlled office environment, with all the leisure to scroll back and forth and take closer looks. We are not in the heat, light, and adrenaline rush of a helicopter cockpit, buffeted by noise, smoke,and wind, and fearing for the lives of the men below who are counting on us to protect them.
The "FACT" can only come with perfect knowledge after the facts are known, and even then, you have to ignore most of the facts to come to that conclusion.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
You have no idea why it was classified.
Rule of thumb: if classified information is leaked, and no one can explain why it was classified in the first place, then it should never have been classified.
Troop locations? No. Security codes? No. Reveals an undiscovered weakness in the Army's defenses? I'm pretty sure everyone realizes that helicopters are vulnerable to RPGs already, especially those who would be interested in that.
Seriously, someone suggest why what I'm looking at should be secret to protect our troops. Play devil's advocate. I haven't even heard a -bad- reason why this should be classified. What, the callsigns haven't changed, and they're worried an insurgent will get on the comm and tell them to bomb the wrong place?
This is not anything that should have been classified, whoever released it was doing a everyone a service by breaking that law and exposing this criminal act.
The rifles are pretty clear.
And as I responded to someone above you, you can see the reporter earlier walking down the street with a camera. It isn't a huge camera. When an RPG is visible later, it is much larger than the camera seen previously.
I'd wager you haven't watched the video.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
classifying things is easy.
iv got a CD with a document on it. i tagged the CD with SECRET markings. now its SECRET and it doesnt go on unclassified systems or get seen/handled by people without proper clearance and need to know.
of course that wouldnt neccesarily hold up to scrutiny if the document was controversial and not actually SECRET, but the fact remains that its that easy to do it in the army.
It wouldn't have mattered if they were wearing the press vests...the still would have been fired upon because they were mixed in with valid military targets. I have no problem with that aspect of the story. AS I was saying, my problem is with the author of the blog who blatantly considers journalists to be valid targets just because they are reporting from the enemy side.
The first time they engage the group it's pretty clearly a case of extremely poor and unfortunate target identification, but it's pretty far from "premeditated murder" or whatever it was called.
However, there is simply no acceptable explanation whatsoever for the following two times the crew engages ground targets. A civilian van pulls up and two unarmed guys get out to pick up the clearly unarmed, wounded man. We know this because:
Then they lie about them picking up weapons when they clearly only tried to get the photographer, whine for permission to fire, and obliterate the van complete with the two new guys, the wounded man, and two children. Admittedly the children survived and were basically impossible to see, but still there was no reason at all to fire at that van.
The next part is just as bad - they get permission to shoot a building, and the gunner launches a hellfire missile a few seconds after an unarmed civilian walks into the frame and past the bulding, scoring a direct hit on him. Oh, and I think the building only housed three normal families, who were killed by this missile. To be fair that's not the crew's fault, but they've done enough by this point.
This isn't collateral damage, because for collateral damage there have to be legitimate targets there in the first place. Here, it was just the unlucky civilians. While the first case could maybe be explained away by the context and incompetence, these last two cases are clearly unlawful killing. Thus, the murder part.
But as for the van: everyone on the radio is clear that the van is picking up wounded. Very seriously wounded. Permission to fire was still asked for, and still given. Why? Even if everyone involved was 100% convinced those were bad guys, why?
The Apache crew lied about the van. Just plain lied.
"Yeah Bushmaster we have a van that's approaching and picking up the bodies" - lie. The van hadn't yet even stopped. No one had picked up anything whatsoever when this was radioed into the man making the firing decisions.
"...possibly picking up bodies and weapons..." - lie. They never got within 15 feet of where the alleged weapons were blown to smithereens by the 30 mil fire.
So the permission to engage was based on a falsehood. The Apache team depicted the van as belonging to the same group of individuals, and as attempting to some how hide what had happened, or something.
Further it seems that Bushmaster Seven was assuming they would disable the truck. They did a hell of a lot more than that. They actively pursued every moving person with rounds, trying to kill as many as possible.
This clearly did not meet with the minimum necessary force guideline within the Rules of Engagement, and it seems that Bushmaster Seven was checking to see if they had successfully disabled the truck.
There clearly should have been punishment attached to this event.
Normal GPG/PGP setup, the private key is stored encrypted, so it takes with a passphrase to use it. That's probably what they had, the encrypted key without the passphrase. You have to store it somewhere. If I recall, in that situation, the passphrase is certainly the weak point.
Though I don't know much (anything) about FIPS and physical keys.
Of course that possibility exists. But if they're not hostiles they sure are dumb.
If you're not a hostile who walks around with AK-47s and RPGs in the streets of a City in the middle of a warzone. Sorry...if your not hostile dont dress like someone who is.
Likewise if your a reporter why would you walk casually with those people in the middle of a warzone with enemy in route. Why would you kneel down in an RPG launching position to take video of a helicopter with someone standing near you who had an RPG or AK47.
Sorry but at some point you have to think. Wow if they arent hostile then they sure made some strange choices.
Its almost as if they were posing for a photo, isn't it?
But maybe that's just me. Maybe you'd stay out of harm's way and watch the poor guy bleed to death because you're suspicious of the Americans. Hell, this'll probably be used by terrorist recruiters. "Oh, you think the Americans are here to save you? Look at this! A family tried to save a wounded man, and they shot down the entire family and the wounded man! They justified it by calling it a battle zone!"
There is zero justification for being pumped full of adrenaline and begging to shoot at a vehicle that picked up a wounded man. They seriously couldn't wait half a second to see if the vehicle actually picked up any bodies or weapons?
If your a civilian you would be smart enough to walk/run away fromt eh dude with the rpgs and ak-47s in a war zone where it's illegal to have said weapons.
It's perfectly legal, and quite common, to own and carry an AK-47 in Iraq.
You'll have that sometimes...
First of all, this wasn't a war zone. It was a neighborhood. They hadn't cleared all the civilians out, and had no reasonable assumption that everyone still on the streets was an enemy. Also, this part of the raid, during the surge, was a complete surprise. They intended to flush out insurgents, and knew full well that they would be intermixed with civilians. They should have been MORE cautious, not less.
So you're saying the chopper needs to have an RPG shot at it before it can engage the enemy?
That's actually what the Rules of Engagement say as well. Shots have to be fired, or at least threatened, before PID is possible and engagement is legal. Wikileaks has them, go read them for yourself.
In my opinion...
Light them all up is the last thing that would go through any sane persons mind.
Watch the rest, then go back and put the first part in context. Look at the 'bongo truck' situation. Or that poor bastard walking in front of the building when it takes a missile. Or all the rubber-neck-ers who bite it when the next two missiles hit. Did they deserve to die as well? Boondoggle, from start to finish.
And whither where or when? Won't somebody think of the prepositions?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
No sources say how the video was encrypted. Maybe it used weak crypto.
So you're saying we shouldn't follow the military's example and use ROT26 just because nobody else is using else, thus cunningly combining cryptography and obscurity ?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I suppose it depends on your point of view. Which did more damage to the U.S.' reputation in the world? A group of Iraqi Insurgents or the photos of Abu Grahib? Propaganda has always been one of the most powerful weapons in a war. In that respect, a journalist with enemy sympathies could easily do more damage than any enemy soldier. So, I can understand his point of view.
That said, if they're out there wearing their press vest, and not hanging out with armed enemy combatants threatening our troops, then I agree with you, they're off limits.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Remember, you are watching the video at 320p youtube quality. The people that actually did the killing? They were there. They had multiple views. They had a ground view, too. It might be a small comfort to you that they reacted quickly, but it sure as hell doesn't comfort me, or justify this. They slaughtered civilians, they had no remorse for blowing holes into kids. When people fled, they filled them with lead. If the guys doing the firing had waited for a split second when they came around the building, anyone on board could have noticed that it was just a camera. Hell, in the split second before the bullets started flying, I was able to positively ID it. On a low quality video. No squinting necessary. They had the high-def experience. No excuse, especially not when they hit the van.
Two men came from the same building the insurgents had just come out of and grabbed the wounded man. They were clearly known to the van driver. The driver jumped out, opened the sliding door and jumped back in. This wasn't just a guy pulling up to render aid. There was clearly a sense of organization about this. Yes, they'd only picked up the wounded guy. Now assume that you're there. Once the wounded guy is in the van, it takes only a few seconds for the two men to grab the three weapons at the scene and run in opposite directions while the van rushes away, leaving you with an apparent civilian massacre. Remember, they often leave the bodies, with no weapons, because then it looks like a bunch of unarmed civilians. Propaganda heaven!
Can you really wait for that to happen, knowing the standard operating procedure of insurgents in the area? Or, do you do as the commander does, and say, "They know they're in a combat area and picking up combatants," and give the clear to fire.
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Because, nature abbhors a hoover.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If anyone is interested I was part of the decryption effort back in December, the original file was merely a encrypted zip file with a single wmv file in it.
brute forcing it using fzipcrack is by no means easy but still doable with enough resources as well as decent dictionary attacks.
indiscriminate - not marked by careful distinction : deficient in discrimination and discernment
The US army killed everyone in the group since 1 may have had a gun and 1 may have had an RPG. That may be called prudent even. But it certainly was indiscriminate.
unprovoked - occurring without motivation or provocation
The men on the ground didn't shoot. They weren't close enough to swear at or give the finger. Hell there was no indication that they were aware of the helicopter.
rescuer - a person who rescues you from harm or danger
In this case you are right. Attempted rescuer would be better. I think you could say with confidence in a strict a situation as a legal court that they were rescuers. There was a man laying on the ground riddled with bullets and they tried to drive off with him. Would you describe them as kidnappers?
The title I will give you! It is clearly a leading title.
Though i find it ironic that you don't want wikileaks to act as jury. But you are cool with the us gov acting as judge, jury and executioner in this case. Do remember that the US gov pretty clearly lied about this action in cover up and refused to release the footage. That is pretty evil.
and put our men and women at risk.
They are in plenty of risk already, wouldn't you say? I'd say that their commanders put them more at risk than this video does. Same goes for th POTUS.
You'll have that sometimes...
They're fighting insurgents who aren't wearing uniforms. The lines between insurgents and civilians isn't very clear.
This would call for more discretion, more reluctance to fire, more honest and accurate assessments - never less.
...and sometimes highly editing then releasing a stolen video (aka lying) is the only way to get support for a leftist political cause.
You sir, are a dumbass. Did you not see them shoot up the van? Picking up the wounded? You know that's a war crime right?
You'll have that sometimes...
Flamebait or no, there's an important response to this.
Releasing this video did not put American soldiers or your country in danger. It's what is being done in the video doing that. Maybe, hopefully, the outrage in the US over this video will convince them this is not a reflection of America, that the wanton murder of Iraqis is not considered acceptable. Just maybe the release of this video is enough to prevent them deciding America is the enemy, because you can be sure that is what they were thinking when they saw this through their home window, or heard about it on the street. This video brings news to Americans, it is not news to Iraqis. What is news to Iraqis is that Americans are upset about it.
There was a lot of assumption done. A lot of assumption. None of which benefited anyone. It was seriously more damaging to them to leave three survivors? They had superior numbers, superior weaponry, and literally no way to be hit by those in the van. It was literally 100% impossible for them to wait and see if just the wounded man was taken away? You really want to argue the semantics of this with me? After they covered it up for 3 bloody years, you seriously feel that they were justified at all? According to their actions on the cover up, they sure as hell disagree with you.
But since when does Wikileaks not take sides? Where did you get this idea?
Again, you can't judge what you would have done versus what they did, because you can't exclude your advance knowledge of what you seeing from your evaluation. They did not have that benefit. And did you see the raw video footage? Not exactly hidef, so perhaps we shouldnt be jumping to conclusions when you have absolutely no basis to justify them.
Personally, I may not agree with their interpretation of the issue but what makes them different (and, in my opinion, important) is that, regardless of any editorial they may add to the story, they always post all the original material they receive unedited.
The only links I've seen from wikileaks on the military footage is edited and editorialized. Did I miss something?
Cover up? You know they released a full written report with pictures and statements and other items in which they fully admit that this event took place. The only thing they didn't do was release the video (probably for exactly the reason that this release is stirring up.)
We are not trained in the rules of war. We do not face these life or death decisions every day and hold the lives of other men in the palms of our hands. We will not take the video and watch it once, in real time, with no foreknowledge, and try to make decisions based on that. We, who are not in that position, will do what has been done with this video.
We will go through the video in slow motion. We will use the after-action report to point out the civilians (but not the identified RPG toting fellow.) We will zoom in to insane levels and use our after-knowledge to point out that maybe, just maybe, you can separate the blurry blob in the passenger window into two individuals. We have the luxury to scroll back and forth through the video. We don't have the sword of Damocles hanging over our friend's heads ready to plunge down if we make a wrong decision so we can be leisurely in our perusal and consideration. And someone who has spent weeks going over the video can give us a nice written opinion of what to think before we even view it.
The military knew this video would be used for propaganda by the insurgents. "Look, they shoot unarmed cameramen and children!"
The highest number of casualties in 2007 was still coming from RPG attacks against vehicles. This group had an RPG and multiple rounds. The pictures from the reporter's camera show the side of a humvee about a block away. The very vehicles the Apache was there to protect.
I will not engage in Monday Morning Quarterbacking on this video. If you can go back and watch it without preconceptions, you'd probably come to the same conclusion. It is clear, however, that you do not come to this without preconceptions. You assume that the non-release of the video was a "coverup" rather than any other possibility (For example, it demonstrates exactly how accurate [or inaccurate] the Apache's gun is, how good our FLIR video cameras are, what zoom level we can reach, how to use buildings to block the line-of-sight, etc, etc. that could be very useful to the insurgents. Not to mention a lot of information about when they will be cleared to fire, etc.) You assume the military is embarrassed by the video, even though, having worked with former military, that the most telling thing about this video is that the American troops came through it unharmed which is considered a "win" by command. You also assume that all the video the military has must be just like this. Why hasn't wikileaks put out the videos of Apaches gunning down roadside bombers burying IEDs and the ones with pickup trucks full of high explosives? Where are the videos of them gunning down clear militants on WikiLeaks? The answer is that those can't be "Monday Morning Quarterbacked" the same way. We watch those and they're just as completely justified no matter how many times it's watched.
How many of those have you seen? Or do you assume they don't exist because you haven't seen them. I have, and it puts this one in context. It's a war, in a war zone. People die. Sometimes people who shouldn't. It's an ugly truth. I assume that, since you're outraged at these reporters' deaths, that you also have watched the Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg videos? Ask yourself which set of people were killed more unjustly.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
I'd like to add that foresight also does include consideration of the risk of mass slaughter of innocents and taking every reasonable step to minimize that risk. Sometimes it takes a little hindsight to realize that this should also be a necessary component of planning military action in a region where the majority of residents are civilians. Regardless of the righteousness of the endeavor, it's a very difficult balance to strike between protecting the lives of innocents and protecting the lives of our troops. Analyzing events like this in hindsight allow us to pinpoint where things went wrong and how we might best prevent them from going wrong in the future without compromising the safety of our troops.
As a matter of opinion regarding your last point, though, if we'd rather slaughter innocents than risk the safety of our troops how can what we're doing be the right thing? why are our troops even there? As I understand it, there are two stated goals in continuing to be involved in Iraq: securing the safety and freedom of the Iraqi people and securing the safety and freedom of the American people. I believe that both are necessarily intertwined and slaughtering the very people we don't want to become anti-Americans and terrorists is counter-productive even if you do not consider the ethical and moral ramifications of any military action and only consider American interests in the matter.
Everyone is so quick to believe that the government has covered up willful **murder** of civilians, but nobody cares to do any oversight on Wikileaks?
I'm not talking about the content of the video, etc... but all this stuff about being followed and having encrypted military videos that they somehow were able to decrypt in such a short time smells very funny. ...and hot on the heels of a big drive for donations? I'm skeptical.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
From memory (you can look it up on his blog). The NSA has come up with drastic requirements for key management for encryption, and every time the military encrypts something it has to obey them. That's not such a problem for control data, such as commands from the operator to the drone; but it's unusable for high bandwidth, high maintenance stuff like the video feed. Local support has to be able to access it, but they can't handle the requirements for key management; so they had to forgo encryption for that altogether. The solution would be for the NSA to establish another tier for encryption requirement with lesser requirements.
I hope they find out who did it, determine their motivations and the trade-offs that have resulted from their actions, and then decide whether to honor them or execute them.
I hope "they" here is an impartial third party with no connection to the US Government.
Right, but no assholes have gotten fucked in Iraq. The American military contractors got an orgasm, and the country just got AIDS. // continuing the metaphor
The fact remains they were wrong. They didn't even try to be sure, they just started shooting and laughed about it.
Screw you for trying to protect trailer park trash like this which shouldn't even be allowed access to weapons of any kind, never mind heavily armed assault choppers.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Yet another member of the blame America crowd. Those in the blame America crowd will always see and hear exactly what they want, and use regrettable mistakes like this to proclaim that this is proof they were always right about America. Get off the high horse and remember you've never had to be in a combat zone, and worry about if that possible threat you see is about to shoot down one of your fellow soldiers.
These situations have happened before, and have been captured on video.
The shooting of British troops by A-10 pilots.
Missionary family shot out of sky by anti-drug smuggling operations
Usually they had some doubt but still made the decision.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Don't you mean "half-breed muslin?"
Exactly, dehumanizing the enemy is a necessary part of war if your soldiers aren't sociopaths (and the US military is fairly good at weeding those out).
Mo, the US military has almost nothing else. How, the fuck do you think they keep managing to find scum to send all around the world fucking America in the ass?
Keep in mind, the US military hasn't been used for anything except fucking the world for the sake of a few very rich sociopaths since world war 2. So given that, your assertion that the members of the US military are anything but sociopathic traitors is batshit insane. If they had a scrap of integrity they would have killed themselves long before obeying criminal, treasonous orders to fuck their country.
Seriously, try thinking not just spouting the idiotic militaristic propaganda you've been spoonfed.
I agree with you that in recent decades the U.S. military has mostly been used as a beatstick to protect the interests of a small handful of wealthy sociopathic elite. However, most of the soldiers aren't bad people. They are mostly ignorant, uneducated people who truly believe the lie that they are fighting the good fight and doing what needs to be done. It's not that they lack integrity, they genuinely don't know that what they are doing is traitorous to their country and their planet. Only a small handful at the very top qualify as "sociopathic traitors".
Knowledge != Intelligence
Of course, you can't be a thinking man or woman and not have a bias.
Psst, 1 GBP = 1.5271 USD. We aren't in 2008 anymore.
Yeesh.
The point was that saying "Oh, but they swore that there were weapons/they did nothing wrong", in and of itself, means somewhere between diddly and squat.
"Person accused of wrongdoing is willing to swear they're innocent. News at 11!"
If you were put in that situation what would you do?
Not join a military that is randomly invading foreign countries.
I'd open fire considering I saw 2 people with weapons in the middle of a war torn city.
Which is for all we know perfectly legal in Iraq.
One of which can take my helicopter down.
Nope, RPG range: 1000 meter, Distance to Apache: 1600 meter
That would just make it easier to shoot them. A lot of war correspondents have been deliberately murdered by a variety of different armed forces in recent years.
Also looking like a civilian should never be enough to make someone a legitimate target.
Arguments like yours are counterproductive - if you pretend a military force is perfect you get the exact opposite. Carrying out this attack on civilians would be breaking several orders and letting the perpetrators get away with it weakens military discipline let alone the moral implications and creating problems for other units.
If things devolve to the same point as the French had in Algeria we'll get the same results. They killed everyone they could find that might have been a terrorist, but for every one they killed two or three others joined up. The more brutal they got the more resistance they faced, and now decades later the place is still a hellhole.
unprovoked - occurring without motivation or provocation
The men on the ground didn't shoot. They weren't close enough to swear at or give the finger. Hell there was no indication that they were aware of the helicopter.
For the 200th time today (it feels like) -- they weren't a threat to the Apache. They were a threat to the column of vehicles, already under fire, a block away. That's why the Apaches were called in for air support. Please go look at the lovely pictures from the reporter's camera that show just how close these guys with guns and RPGs were to the ground troops and a column of 4 unarmored humvees.
Link to the Report See page 41.
Do remember that the US gov pretty clearly lied about this action in cover up and refused to release the footage. That is pretty evil.
Really? Did you know that Reuters was shown the video on July 25th, 2007 in an off-the-record briefing? Did you know that their FOIA request is based not on, "this shows they were murdered," but rather Reuters filed it because they wanted to use it to show their reporters how not to get into that situation. Go look up the original Reuters articles on it. They admit they saw the video back in 2007.
The official report with footage from the video, pictures from the scene, and all the sworn testimony of the pilots and gunner is also available. Here it is. I've linked to the ground squad report above. The report here follows everything you see on the video exactly. It includes captured frames. There was no "cover-up" of what happened. They just didn't release the video.
The Army proceeded to put this entire incident through an investigation, and determined that the actions, given the circumstances, were vindicated. The video doesn't show you the convoy under fire for 49 minutes leading up to this video, it doesn't show you that they were taking small arms fire a block away when the insurgent with the RPG comes up on this corner that is giving a clear shot at the side of the humvee. (See the reporter's own photos from the corner, just before he was shot -- Page 41 above)
The only thing "indiscriminate" is that a bullet shot into a group doesn't seek out those who "deserve" it.
The gunner did the best he could with limited information, in a high-pressure situation, protecting ground troops who were under fire and apparently about to be RPG'ed. He used the best discrimination he could, and the investigation by the Pentagon agreed. The fact that we, here on Slashdot, don't, doesn't mean a hill of beans.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
From watching the video I really got the impression that they were using the footage as a fundraising campaign. I was not impressed either.
I agree completely.
However, there was a group with rifles. And it appeared an RPG was pointed at the gunship. Even then, they waited, and asked for permission to engage.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Right, but not prosecuting a criminal because it might leak national security information has hardly ever been the prerogative of this government. The military could have had a closed court martial, tried the individuals for breaking engagement rules, and lying to cover up the information, all without exposing any national security.
The government instead decided to push facts into the media that do not conform to the video presented, and now we know what they did.
If a government does not want to compromise their national security on video tapes or documents, then they should not commit crimes or fraud based on those same.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
The same reason they aren't leaking that you went to work today and performed your duties legally and ethically. It shouldn't be newsworthy when someone does their job correctly.
You appear to think a combat unit should be a group of hard drinking, hard raping Vikings that are let off the leash, pointed at a spot and told to kill. That is a kick in the face to the professional military.
You are soiling the graves of our dead soldiers with your armchair marine bullshit and are a disgrace to the nation.
The reporters were embedded with the 'other-sides fighters'. The other side were fired on the reported lost their lives. BUT the main question why was the van fired on? The helicopter crew got an OK over the radio for both engagements, who gave that OK?
Fish rot from the head down. A government goes to war over nonexistent WMD's and gets away with it, soldiers lie about weapons to get permission to kill a group of people and then those who tries to help the wounded.
Yeah...get back to me when you manage to bruteforce a 128-bit AES key on your GPU farm. Only then can you claim that "Encryption is far behind the current power of hardware these days."
They kind of said the same thing about DES encryption, until the EFF made a custom built hardware decryptor.
As always, it's a bit of a balancing game... we continue to measure effectiveness of an algorithm against general purpose machines, rather than special purpose.
I'm not saying he is right, or that you're right (but more likely you) but rather the picture is a bit more fuzzy... in fact, if it weren't fuzzy, then the encryption technology would be so well understood that there would be better attacks upon it.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Okay, you've convinced me enough that I feel I should offer a retraction and apology: I'm sorry I assumed you were a bigot.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Hey, it's the original rick roll. Everyone's gotta pop their cherry sometime.
Awesome, a political piece on /. and I thought this would be about _how_ the video was decrypted.
/. from the rest of the new aggregate sites is becoming less clear and I'm finding /. less relevant.
The line dividing
I think he means in depth knowledge of what constitutes reason for allowing firing on the insurgents vs withholding fire.
For example the insurgents can tell if they walk with children or women, in a smaller group and can conceal the RPG and extra rounds in a vehicle or cart (rather than swinging them around) then they likely won't be fired on before they attack the ground patrols.
You mean the guy turning around at 3:45 doesn't have an RPG? Look at http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/201889.php
Now, some that guy is now behind that wall where the camera operator is crouching taking a picture of an allied APC http://www.scribd.com/doc/29487634/Centcom-FOIA?page=41 (possible it seems for bragging rights later based on that photogs other shots). If I were wanting to blow that up I'd crouch by the wall for cover to observe then move and fire - the pilots appear to believe the armed men are going to fire imminently and clearly become urgent to remove the threat. The taking of photos is the precursor to the RPG being used.
You're writing on an internet discussion forum you twat. What do you think we do here? And nothing I wrote was whine. I gave my reasons. It's not like I wrote "They suq" or anything. I mean, what do you expect to be seen in the "discussion"?
Wikileaks shouldn't be interpreting their links. That goes against their own mission statement. They've politicized their leaks and that's not right nor just. It's a piece of agenda. That's my opinion and if you don't like it feel free to discuss it or not. But all you've done is show me that there's ignorant people out there that like to stifle dissent. How ironic given the topic.
Very interesting point of view. It really gives me a better idea of what went on. Thanks for taking the time to post.
I'm glad you have that figured out. But, I must point out that few civilians understand the moral decisions that a soldier must make. Nothing immoral happened in that video, if that is what you are referring to. The gunship was called in by a ground unit (Hotel 26) which had taken fire from that area. When the gunship arrived, they found armed men in the area from which the ground unit had been fired on. In fact, the reporters were embedded in an enemy unit. That enemy unit was destroyed. Not much of a moral dilemma here.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
We need Wikileaks and others like them to tell the truth to the American people. What good is a democracy if the voters are kept ignorant of the government’s actions?
The government routinely lies to us. How many times have there been news reports about attacking insurgents only to later find out that it was a wedding that was bombed? The government never acknowledges the truth until it is widely reported. Do you remember the story of Pat Tillman?
The vast majority of information that is classified is classified to keep the Americans from finding out about it, not because it would strengthen our enemies.
They government tries to create the impression that we are the good guys; that we only attack terrorists; that our attacks are “surgical” and that killings of innocents are rare. The reality is quite different. How do you minimize “collateral damage” when dropping a 2000 lb. bomb?
I’m not blaming the soldiers here. I’m blaming the government that lied us into war.
Pure horse shit.
Did you listen to the radio chatter? Did you read the captions supplied?
Once again, for the obtuse who refuse to look, listen, and think:
That gunship was called in by a ground unit, Hotel 26, which was under fire. Bullets were being fired at a US ground unit from this location. The gunship came in, and cleared away armed personnel. In fact, that reporter was embedded with an enemy unit, just like reporters have been embedded with US forces. The only mistake made in the entire video was the identification of a camera as an RPG.
Personally, if it were my call, I probably wouldn't have fired on the van. I say, "probably". I might have, had I actually been there. But, the van had no internationally recognized markings on it - no Red Cross, no Red Crescent. I saw people in a van aiding and abetting a member of an armed group that had fired upon our side on the ground.
Unless and until you understand that Hotel 26 had taken fire from this area, and almost certainly THESE ARMED PEOPLE, then you have zero understanding of what you saw on the video.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Nonsense. On my first casual watch-through, I heard them claim 5-6 guys with AKs. My jaw dropped, then I assumed that was chatter from a different site. There was ONE man in the PLENTIFUL video beforehand who had anything long enough to be a rifle, and it was the wrong shape.
It soon became evident that the claim was not chatter from a different site.
I only watched as far as the first salvo - the crime had been committed at that point. I didn't watch the rest of the egregious violations, and I didn't watch it in slo-mo, so my criticisms above aren't about 'heat of battle'. I'm also not a trained killing professional. There was no battle before the US started it. This isn't about 'absolute precision'. This isn't even supposed to be a war at this point, but an occupation.
This is one of the weakest positive identifications in existance, outside of total, utter fabrication.
All these stories about wikileaks every day. Wikileaks announces it has secret video. Wikileaks being investigated. Wikileaks releases video, Wikileaks claims to have decrypted video. Why can't we have more fluff pieces designed to hawk wares? I want my iPad articles!
You were not there
you do not know where those weapons came from, but you already ACCEPT IT as being truth, compare to what you saw and heard with your own eyes.
A person without a weapon is a person without a weapon. You do not MURDER UNARMED PEOPLE just because there IS an ARMED person with them.
Your logic is so flawed, by its own fallacy, as soon as we invaded Iraq, there is no difference between "bad people" all are bad, even if they dont have weapons - thus, there are no civilians.
FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!
The way I see it, the problem is not that the military fucked up. Of course that is going to happen, it is a sad reality. The problem is that instead of owning up to their fuckup, they tried to bury it and make it go away. Except for that whole part where they shot up the kids and refused them military medical services, that's just fucked up all the way around.
Who the fuck are you talking to? I learned long ago not to use unrelated actions as an excuse for another. The US military should not have tried to cover this up. I'm not cool that they did. But that is not related to Wikileaks misrepresenting the "facts" as I see them. Not do I think they should even represent the facts.
I'm concerned enough to know I want an impartial site for leaks. Not just wants they want to leak because it meats an agenda. And the was they released this they clearly have an agenda more then just "knowledge".
I never voted for a Bush in my life, but it's also interesting that after the fact we know that Iraq didn't have WMD like they claimed. But that we believed they did because they wanted us to believe they did because it was a show of power, mostly for Iran.
Look here now, you jumped into a direct personal attack, the troll linked to a website that is known for that kind of Super Hawk trash. I have NEVER claimed to be on par with a front line soldier, it would be demeaning to the soldier. But since you want to go, the video is grainy because of the encryption, it's crystal f'ing clear on the gunners screen. I have been IN an Apache alright so I know a little something about it. You seem to be operating under the assumption that I am anti-military, actually I am a firm supporter of having a standing army. Quite a few of my friends are soldiers, marines, and sailors. The ONLY reason I'm not serving is due to a knee injury that they will not let pass from a car accident. I just happen to also believe that, as a country, we decided that the MOST important thing was the rule of law and that applies to our military. They lied about coming under RPG fire to obtain permission to fire on a group of possible insurgents. That is the whole POINT! Seriously though when you are BEGGING a guy to go for a weapon so you can fire again, you are looking at a cowboy gunner. I support the military, I support the rule of law, but I do NOT support a cowboy letting loose on a bunch of civilians. And the kids, come on now! "Their fault for bringing them to a battle" They were trying to help a wounded man! Mis-interpretation is a bitch, but when you fail, innocent people DIE in the real world. You do not have the luxury of making mistakes.
The pilot and gunner did not know this. Under the Rules of Engagement, when some of a group is armed, they are all combatants
In other words, if the chain of command mistakenly believes you've got a rocket launcher, the ROE permit an indiscriminate and unprovoked attack.
Thus the text provided by Wikileaks is accurate.
You see it as a byline on a newspaper but those stories are just something to yawn at these days.
I don't think that word means what you think it does.
>The cameraman was even found lying on top of an RPG round.
Right, and they found a hijacker's passport in the rubble at Ground Zero too.
>The pictures recovered from their cameras show that they were sitting one block from a group of vehicles that were under small arms fire. The perfect place from which to launch an RPG attack
So, they had pictures of a Humvee, they had RPGs, and they had the perfect place from which to attack. Why then did they never attack? The most logical explanation is that they weren't terrorists after all.
Another possibility is that Reuters cameramen have joined the Iraq insurgency. That one seems a little less likely.
I have to deal with news stations, and yes all of them, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, etc etc that slant news to their demographic. let me view the **** video unedited and let me make up my own freaking mind about the events. The way they did this is so beyond wrong and whether or not you agree with them, more people should be giving them a proverbial *** whooping for telling people what they should think about the video before they even watch. The worse part is the whole thing is posioned now and now that they have shown a massive bias. I personally will never be able to take wikileaks seriously again. How do I know now all those documents they release now aren't edited towards some political agenda?
>They had weapons -- including an RPG.
Nope.
>Even Wikileaks admits that.
Nope!
>A US unit was engaged a block away.
Er...nope. Not even close!
Flamebait is the wrong mod. You're a troll because you got all your facts wrong.
Interesting thing to note is that even the ground troops through the camera guy had an RPG on him.
The armed guards had weapons, that much was clear. They asked for a go according to the rules of engagement and likely because this civilian reporter was stupid enough to not inform the military of his movements caused his untimely death.
It's a common coping strategy to deal with extreme situations. Something one learns in the first year of psychology.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
But who were these gunships defending from these "insurgents"?
OK let's assume they had weapons. Don't you have to get near American troops before you're considered a threat?
The thing you don't see is who was around that corner that the "RPG" was aiming at. After watching the video 4-5 times, I'm inclined to conclude that around the corner was...not us.
Did you watch how long it took for "us" to get there? That was the most boring part of the video. It took forever!
Ah, Wikileaks was never like that. Look up interviews with one of the top guys at wikileaks. It was created to combat corrupt governments and such. But I do get your desire for a completely neutral robot-like place to put leaks.
Either way any of the language that Wikileaks used (aside from the title) would be acceptable in a court of law from the judge. So it isn't like Fox/MSNBC news bad at aleast. TBH I am happy to have cited facts at all. Breath of fresh air compared to news media which cites nothing (and is often taken from blogs and other shit sources).
>When the RPG is first visible, it appears to be pointed at the gunship.
No, it's really not. I know the video is unclear, but this part isn't. At no time does this group of men acknowledge the presence of the helicopters. Pretty much everyone agrees on this. If they were targeting something, it wasn't up in the air.
President, in his mind "God", Barak Hussain Obama has retained the God Given Right of Murder, for what ever reason his troubled mind can invent in his perception of "Commandar and Chief". Perhaps is Ass was itching a "certain" way or his Pinus was "quivering" in a "certain" way. Make no mistake, we have a Mad Man and Chief Executive.
I have not doubt that President Barak Hussain Obama order the Murder.
Reuters much consider, now, that the US considers them a Terrrorists Organization whose members, in total, must at all cost be Murdered on order of the President of the United States of America.
Welcome to Barak Hussain Obama's beautiful America (I hope you are the "correct" race).
Indeed! Wikileaks should not tell me what to think! I'm a grown up, I can make up my own mind tyvm!
If we apply the logic that "war is hell" that so many people are claiming here, it doesn't matter that you get additonal data from the video that leads to the killing of US soldiers. Soldiers die. War is hell, right.
Yes, I know it's only valid when the hell happens to the enemy or colored people. When war happens to you, it's a tragedy. I just wish these people weren't such hypocrites about it.
indiscriminate - not marked by careful distinction : deficient in discrimination and discernment
The US army killed everyone in the group since 1 may have had a gun and 1 may have had an RPG. That may be called prudent even. But it certainly was indiscriminate.
They discriminated between the armed group and the rest of the city. It's not the granularity you wanted but that's a matter of opinion.
unprovoked - occurring without motivation or provocation
The men on the ground didn't shoot. They weren't close enough to swear at or give the finger. Hell there was no indication that they were aware of the helicopter.
Well, carrying an RPG in a war zone is provocative. You really can't argue against that can you?
It is if you're really, really lucky.
In other words, if the chain of command mistakenly believes you've got a rocket launcher, the ROE permit an indiscriminate and unprovoked attack.
Mistakenly? I'm pretty sure he said they found not one, but TWO RPG launchers and warheads.
The wikileaks video is heavily biased. As others have said, they should have just released the unedited video and let people decide for themselves.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
Why was this modded troll?
I completely agree with your disappointment in the "spin-full" way Wikileaks presented this. For example, take the screen in the short video that says:
The treating soldier eventually decides to evacuate the children to the medical center at the nearby U.S. base of Rustamiyah. However, higher command orders that the children are instead to be handed to Iraqi Police and be taken to an Iraqi hospital.
This could mean poorer standards of medical treatment and additional delay.
I completely disagree with that statement. This should be handled by the Iraqi police. The last thing the U.S. needs there is another sexual scandal involving a little girl (or a rumor of one started to riot people up and increase violence).
Wikileaks should have just posted the video and left the judgment and interpretations to someone else. Or if Julian Assange felt so strongly about it, he should have started his collateraldamage.com campaign under his own name and left Wikileaks out of it.
Not only is his presentation sensationalist and questionable, he's taking Wikileaks integrity and neutrality down with him.
If you can't mod them join them.
The pilot indeed says on the radio that they have come to pick up the bodies (before they have even stopped!) and then "probably" to pick up the bodies and the weapons, after which they get permission to fire. They could clearly see before they opened fire, however, that the men picked up only the wounded man, and didn't touch any of the weapons. The ground forces who authorized the attack were not informed about that, and I wonder if they would still have done so if they were. If you read the declassified report clearing the pilots, it is not clear that any investigating or questioning of the Apache crews' version of events went on at all. The ground forces report is much more complete, but its objective is only to establish whether the military should pay compensation to the children or their families, not to judge the pilots.
Its comment on the van is: "...it is obvious from the radio transmissions on the gun camera tapes that the Apache pilots thought the van was to be used as a means of escape for the wounded insurgents...it is unknown what, if any, connection the van had to the insurgent activity." The report writer merely states that the pilots couldn't have known that there were children in the van, and that the crews likely thought the van was part of the same group (and from the video, I agree), not that they were actually correct to fire on it.
Regardless of whether the RoE was ever violated, the initial order to fire was given based not on the knowledge that the "insurgents" had an RPG, but on the basis that they were nonchalantly strolling around the corner of a building at the other end of the block from the convoy, and some of them appeared to have AK-47s. The action of the photographer, leaning around the building to take a photo, was certainly provocative, but when he took it the order to fire had already been given. And certainly the later incident which is partially included on the same video (the hellfire strike) implies that being armed and on the streets in the general vicinity of a patrol which hears small arms fire is always a death sentence. While this policy is no doubt effective from a force protection standpoint, it seems rather inevitable that it will engender massive resentment in the populace against both coalition forces, and even the current Iraqi government (which was jointly patrolling in the area). In other words, it is hard to believe that it will ever make the country "stable" enough for us to declare "victory."
Even if we declare victory anyway in Iraq, we have the same policies in Afghanistan, except with the added bonus of regular bombings with massive collateral damage. Karzai thinks that expressing anti-U.S. sentiment is a popular position. It is hard to believe that, whatever our objective, going on patrols to provoke insurgent activity and then blowing away everyone who looks threatening is going to bring us any closer to achieving it (unless our objective is indeed to occupy Iraq and/or Afghanistan indefinitely).
You are still assuming the Army, at some level, did something wrong, probably as a result of the bias added to the video. Everything else I've read comes to the conclusion that it was justified. This was not a gathering for tea and cake, they were armed insurgents who were about to attack a convoy. Wikileaks set this up so one sided that this one crucial fact gets lost.
I may sound like a dick for saying it, but it's the truth: the journalists are to blame for their own deaths. It was a risk they willingly took, embeding with active insurgents, apparently without telling the appropriate people where they were and without their Blue "PRESS" body-armor on to ID them. Even if they had their vests on, the insurgents were still threatening a convoy, and thus a valid target. The known presence of a journalist does not convey immunity to a group of active combatants.
The Army's response might as well be "lol, ur guys wuz with the enemy. That's where we shoot, so don't do it. Srsly, Kthnx"
I have a ton of sympathy for the children, but the blame for that lies squarely on the person who put them in a van and drove them into a combat area. They were barely even visible with the zoomed-in enhanced video, and even then I'm not sure I would have said "children" if the video didn't label them for me. It is completely unreasonably to expect the soldiers to have known they were present.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
I wish I could type harder to get this to show up in HUGE FREAKING LETTERS, since some troll-mod put you up +insightful.
They did have weapons, which were positively identified before the helicopter fired. The only ambiguity was that they did not identify the cameras as such. The journalists were NOT wearing identification vests. It was not a group of unarmed civilians. IT WAS NOT A GROUP OF UNARMED CIVILIANS!!!1!!eleventyone THEY WERE ABOUT TO ATTACK A CONVOY.
Read the report before you keep repeating this uninformed drek
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29468022/6-2nd-Brigade-Combat-Team-15-6-Investigation
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
War means it's okay that innocents die.
Except, of course, when it's the other side that killed them.
We are all God's parents.
I think that your defense of the pilots' actions is fairly reasonable from a military perspective. And indeed, firing on that group of men also seems reasonable, from a military perspective, given that the Bradley patrol was a block away and ostensibly threatened.
But don't you think that you jumped to the defense "it's a war, in a war zone," a bit quickly? The "war" ended a long time ago, and now we are conducting an occupation. Only, we are not quite even conducting an occupation. We are theoretically assisting the Iraqi security forces, apparently in the application of martial law--a very harsh martial law, in which (Coalition) force protection is given paramount priority. Is effectively turning Bagdhad into a warzone for an indeterminate period really going to bring us "victory", or indeed accomplish anything but keep the fires of resentment and resistance aflame for as long as occupation continues? The "problem" could be that the military units are continually put into a position where they must make hard choices like this to ensure their own safety.
For another example of this, consider General McChrystal's remarks (originally reported in part by the NYT) about how basically everyone shot at checkpoints in Afghanistan turns out to be a civilian. It is all done in the name of force protection, but do you think that is going to make the Afghan civilian population any less resentful? Do you think that they will just understand that the soldiers had to kill their family members because they couldn't be sure they weren't suicide bombers? The irrationality and excitability of the American public on the subject of terrorism is axiomatic; in Afghanistan much of the public doesn't even have the benefit of a high school education.
After two presidents and a number of changes in policy, we still haven't found the magic formula that will make the natives welcome our "peacekeeping efforts," so there is ample reason to be cynical about the future efficacy of our occupations. A "surge" in Afghanistan will inevitably result in even more civilian casualties, whatever its effect on the forces of the "Taliban," so I think I can be justified in wondering if our continuing Iraq/Afghanistan policy is based on nothing more than a massive Concorde fallacy.
It's yet to be established that any of those killed were armed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
I'm looking at that exact second and don't see anything that looks anything like a weapon. 4 people, which one is brandishing the grenade launcher?
You steal classified material, you should be penalized as the criminal you are. Execute them for treason. I'm a freelance photographer and know a few lightstalkers who have spent time overseas. The two photogs killed were with insurgents. They are wearing indig clothing and not identifying themselves in any way. There are several individuals carrying weapons at least 2 AK's and an RPG that can be clearly seen. Regardless, if you are with the bad guys and are carryinga long glassed camera it looks a great deal like a LAW. I've had my 600mm on my camera and had the cops called on me when taking photos of aircraft. This is war and I'm sorry, but innocents are going to get killed. If you are going to hang out with bad guys, you'd better remember that bullets and bombs don't discriminate.
It's fucking hilarious that these same idiots claiming that the possible presence of a rifle justified the massacre will also jump up and down in the US demanding the right to carry guns openly at schools, churches, bars, and airplanes.
They just used the ChuckNorris backdoor.
No moral dilemma? They shot at a minivan with kids in it. Awesome.
Bullshit. Total bullshit. The US doesn't have the right to get all scared and start lashing out at people it perceives as threats (without any evidence). AK-47s are perfectly legal for anyone to have in Iraq. The RPG the gunner claimed to have seen didn't exist. I'd like to see the source for your "embedded with enemy troops" claim. No markings on the minivan? That's what it'd take someone to not fire on a family picking up a wounded man crawling down the street? You sick fuck. I hope you never get invaded and have to put up with that shit - you'd hit the roof.
Yeah, you missed the 40-minute uncut version of the footage, it seems.
If you mean that it's not reasonable to assume that an embedded journalist has the same ideals as the actual soldiers in the unit, I agree; and in that sense, maybe I theoretically disagree with what the blogger had to say.
But the bottom line is, that's a distinction without a difference. You can't single out one guy amidst a group of enemy combattants and say "well, he's not such a bad fellow, let's not harm him". If journalists want reasonable safety, they should not embed themselves in combat units, end of story.
Except DES has a keyspace size of 2^56 (~7x10^16 keys), whereas AES (128) has a keyspace size of 2^128 (~3x10^38). That's a factor of 10^22 times more difficult: AES isn't just a little harder than DES, it's absolutely out of reach for current (or even custom) hardware systems.
Heck, even 2^80 is considered infeasible for present hardware, and that's "only" 16 million times harder than DES (i.e. an organization would need millions of dedicated DES crackers, at a cost of trillions of dollars, to be able to break a theoretical 80-bit version of DES, or find collisions in a perfect 160-bit hash function).
DES was weakened by the NSA specifically because they thought 56-bits would be bruteforceable (the EFF built their machine partly to demonstrate that the NSA wouldn't be the only ones able to do so).
AES was not subjected to such an artificial weakening procedure. Unless it has a heretofore undiscovered weakness that permits a break in substantially less than 2^128 operations, AES is secure against current hardware.
Besides, the totally paranoid people are probably using AES-256, anyway; to brute-force AES 256 would require about 10^77 operations, or about 19 billion AES operations per second, *per atom of matter in the Earth* (estimated at 10^49), for 19 billion years.
this is 100% correct, not more, not less
Higuita
You've been in combat, I take it. You've been shot at. You speak from experience. You've also seen combat from a gunship.
I'm pretty sure that you've never seen combat, and you have little idea what you're talking about. You've swallowed the propaganda handed out along with the video, hook, line, and sinker.
Evidence? American troops were fired on, and the response was swift and deadly. That is as it should be. It's possible and quite likely that those people in the video actually are the ones who shot at Hotel 26.
Try reading this interview/discussion. Reuters admits that the reporter was embedded with an enemy unit. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2010/04/06/DI2010040600750.html The clueless, like yourself, don't even know that much.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Tell me, at exactly what point in that video can you identify children as children? Until the US soldier (presumably a medic, but not necessarily so) carried the child away from the van, I saw no image that might have been identified as a child.
It was pretty clear that the adults were attempting to aid and abet an enemy though.
What is it that you think happens in war zones again? Do I need to explain it? They shot at us, we shot at them, someone attempted to take control of the situation in the combat zone, and we stopped them. Maybe they shouldn't have brought their little girls to a gunfight. I certainly wouldn't bring MY children to a gunfight!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
In reality, the person leaking the video will likely be found guilty of treason and shot.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Screw you for trying to protect trailer park trash like this which shouldn't even be allowed access to weapons of any kind, never mind heavily armed assault choppers.
Your average soldier has never been a genius, going back through milennia of military history. Soldiers have been killing innocents, through malice, fear, or accident, in every war since the dawn of time. Did you expect it to be different this time around?
My point is that while this was a case of poor soldiering of the highest order, the only useful place to lay blame is at YOUR feet. You, me, and every American citizen who allowed our military to enter Iraq.
Militaries are like tigers. No matter how finely you train them, if you let them out of their cage, the consequences are your responsibility.
The way I see it, the problem is not that the military fucked up. Of course that is going to happen, it is a sad reality. The problem is that instead of owning up to their fuckup, they tried to bury it and make it go away.
Militaries kill innocents: it's a fact of life. Bureaucracies cover up embarassments: that too is a fact of life.
I say, the problem is that we as a nation made a conscious choice to engage our military bureaucracy in this war, with full knowledge of how militaries and bureaucracies operate.
I feel that we as a nation are using this fiasco to shift blame onto the soldiers rather than facing it ourselves: it's a case of the tradesman blaming his tools.
I don't know about Iraqi insurgents, but I have heard of islamic terrorists hiding behind women and children before in battle. And it's not a state secret that shooting innocent human shields is something one should avoid.
Concealing an RPG is something they'd also probably have a keen awareness of even without this confirmation. It has to be taken for granted that even the dumbest insurgent knows "If I can see the helicopter, the helicopter can see me."
Yup - you're right. I expected links at wikileaks without going on to their "special project" site.
> I saw people in a van aiding and abetting a member of an armed group
So helping someone that is injured and dying is "aiding and abetting" an armed group.
You are one sick person....among many similar Americans.
That's right, why can't we trust an organization that polices itself?
Remember Pat Tillman? Or the admission just a couple of days ago that "oh yeah, we did kill those pregnant women in Afghanistan after all".
Trust these guys? Why?
My favourite ROT26 implementation is called "cat".
So, they had pictures of a Humvee, they had RPGs, and they had the perfect place from which to attack. Why then did they never attack?
Because they had .30 caliber holes in their bodies?
The jawawhatever blog linked earlier posts the investigation reports that claim to have found RPG rounds (and there are pictures of the AK47s and RPG as well).
You can't kill a journalist (on purpose mind you, but he can be killed if he's mingling with terrorists and gets in the way of a few rounds), even if he does share the same ideology as the terrorists. Sharing an ideology and acting upon said ideology are two different things.
Anything related to a tactical operation could and probably would be classified SECRET just on principle. Getting it unclassified would be the problem. It should be automatic and the classification just expire after some time period. But in practice the Army would never take that last step to let it go open unless they had a good reason.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
I'm not arguing that you're probably right. But the same things were being said when the EFF built their machine, and when DES was originally formulated.
My point wasn't that you're wrong, it was that you're likely right... but don't let the simplified version of your argument blind you to the fact that it is a complicated argument, that can and will change, and could potentially change "over night".
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
When non-combatants are killed, it is because of a lack of discrimination between combatants and non-combatants. This is "indiscriminate." When a person is killed who posed no threat to the people doing the killing, it is "unprovoked." These are both statements of FACT, which can easily be confirmed by viewing the video. The wording is a summary, not an opinion.
100% Grade A Homogenized Wrong. All of the evaluations you have just summarized can be one of two things: an armchair opinion, or a professional opinion. In either case, the distinction between opinion and observation occurs because you did not phrase the descriptions in terms of the observable quantities of the video: the objects, settings, speech, and events.
Those 'indiscriminately' does not imply a failure of discrimination to sufficiently divide. It requires that discrimination was not implied. Lack of provocation requires a context-appropriate standard of provocation and response.
To state some observable facts: The voices on the video identified the people, identified their characteristics, and engage in a dialogue with their superiors to determine the nature of the situation and their response. That is OBSERVABLE discrimination.
Collateral Murder is loaded a phrase that I will not even try to find appropriate hyperbole.
This is a travesty!
The chances are they could have seen the helicopter but were not aware of its presence a couple of km away and so didn't know to look. They do, as you rightly say, know to attempt to conceal the weapon - indeed it's mere presence is not enough to warrant the helo to fire. It is only when the men with the RPG and rounds and AK's take cover (relative to the convoy) and start peaking around the wall at the APCs that they (helicopters) are released to fire.
If they don't wish to be targets, they should be wearing a designated fluorescent press vest, specifically issued to journalists in Iraq to prevent exactly what happened here.
Obvious question - if wearing a fluorescent vest tells soldiers not to shoot at you, as a reasonably intelligent person, which is more likely?
1. The insurgents and civilians are too stupid or lazy to get their hands on these vests (or reasonably convincing copies) to protect themselves.
2. The vests don't work as advertised.
If you're a United States citizen, you paid for that gunship. You paid for that scenario. Don't get me wrong, you also paid for the scenario when real insurgents trying to kill innocent people were stopped.
This is one of the best opinions I've read all day.
I'm Canadian, and I'm glad our troops are getting out of these warzones. Why? Because no-one actually wants to win these wars. You want to conquer a country? Then frakkin' do it. But shooting the place up and then hanging around for years after wondering why they're shooting back instead of baking you cookies? It's stupid, and it shows a lack of disrespect for our soldiers by throwing their lives away on a war that we don't even want to win.
No it's not. If we'd actually, you know, declare war on a country that would be a different story. This was a UN police action that spiraled horribly out of control & has frankly, gone on way longer than it should have.
I don't think the UN has an active police mission in iraq. It never approved of the use of force in the first place.
Please type harder. That doesn't change the fact that they blew up a bunch of civilians who were not up to anything malicious.
Assuming they were armed, and going to attack a convoy, why was it that NOT ONE OF THEM got a shot off at the chopper? COMMON FUCKING SENSE would seem to dictate that they would probably SHOOT BACK.
People like you are such morons that even when the truth is on fucking film, right in front of you, you'll try to find ways to not believe it.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Hooray for EFF fanboys (fan girls?) with little math background! Idiot.
Hatin' on products I don't like and getting modded up talking about tech I totally don't understand like it was 2005!
Please type harder. That doesn't change the fact that they blew up a bunch of civilians who were not up to anything malicious.
Once again, they were not civilians. Weapons were seen ON THE VIDEO, and the ground forces that came up later found several weapons, including AKs and RPGs within reach of pretty much all the bodies. This is all in the report that you don't want to read.
Assuming they were armed, and going to attack a convoy, why was it that NOT ONE OF THEM got a shot off at the chopper? COMMON FUCKING SENSE would seem to dictate that they would probably SHOOT BACK.
First, except for the cameramen, they were armed. Secondly, they were about to attack an approaching convoy on the ground, and that is where they were focusing. Third, the helicopter was engaging from a long, long way off. You can tell this by the long delay from the time you hear gunfire to the impact of the helicopter's fire. The helicopter was hundreds of meters away, circling the area. If they noticed it at all, they could not have known that the helicopter was targeting them. Had they seen it and wanted to shoot at it, they would have realized it was out of range for their weapons.
People like you are such morons that even when the truth is on fucking film, right in front of you, you'll try to find ways to not believe it.
People like you are quick to believe a biased and sensationalist presentation of the video, while refusing to do any investigation into the facts. Way to not read the report I linked. Since you haven't bothered to look at the facts even when I laid them out, I'm not sure why I even bother.
It was a tragedy that the journalists died, but the US soldiers were not blame. The journalists were embedded, without any identification and without telling their news-bosses, in an insurgent group about to attack. They put themselves in harms way, and harm found them.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender