Slashdot Mirror
Claimed US Military Wikileaks Source Arrested
svelemor writes "A 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst was ratted out by a fellow hacker, accused of providing the Collateral Murder video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to Wikileaks. He is currently imprisoned in Kuwait."
I can understand this dude getting in trouble for leaking information and such, but kudos to him for getting the collateral murder video out there in the wild.
Living With a Nerd
He is a hero. Mobilize the power of the international working class -- defeat U.S. imperialism!
UNITE with the Campaign for a Free Internet because today, our future begins with tomorrow!
Honestly. For standing up for what is right instead of doing what he's told. If there isn't a medal for that, there fucking should be.
I know I would choose to keep quiet, but I'm a coward (even if not anonymous).
It must have taken a lot of courage to leak all that info.
Kudos for him, I wish I had that kind of self sacrificing will.
This lad deserves a medal just for outting the Collateral Murder video alone. Let alone all the other "hundreds of thousands" of classified records (which im very skeptical of. I fail to see how one man can just handover this much info on his own)
See, I disagree, if he was a civilian and somehow got ahold of those videos then he could do what ever he wanted with them, and it would be fine by me, but he was part of the militay, and when you join you take a oath to protect the people of the US, and that includes the others serveing with you. This stuff is confidential for a reason, good or bad it need to stay that way for a while, this is no diffrent that getting the plans to say build weapons and post them on the internet. Yes I know that some one could take those plans and make the wepons and hurt our guys out there, but what do you think our enemies think when they see videos like this. It defenitly isn't feer, it anger and thyat will make them more hostile to our guys out in the field. I'm not one for censorship of free speech but this is in NO way free speech. I think this guy should spend YEARS in jail, and no I don't think that is too harsh. In 10 years when this stuff would be declassified and if it went public then, that would have been fine, because everything would have died down, and hopefully we wouldn't still be at war, but not when our guys are still out there every day, risking their lives.
A lot of the material he leaked was Top Secret. To be classified as Top Secret, the release of that information must cause imminent, serious harm to the United States and/or its allies and assets. Would he have the stones to take personal responsibility when the insurgents find US and Iraqi Government collaborators through that data and start murdering them and their families?
Of course not. Guys like this virtually never want to be judged by the entire scope of the consequences of their actions. He'll feel smug that he exposed data like that helicopter footage, but when some collaborator's children are raped and murdered because of him, he'll deny that he's culpable for that.
If you're going to do something illegal that you don't want anyone to know you did, perhaps you shouldn't tell people about it on the internet. Whether it was the morally right thing to do or not, leaking it anonymously then bragging you were the source makes no sense and is stupid.
War-crimes are okay if you commit them for your country. Or if an old, fat man with lots of shiny things tells you it's okay. I'm reminded of a psychological experiment involving shocking test-takers.
The military all too often makes things secret not because it is sensitive, but because it would generate bad PR. This is not how a democratic government is supposed to function. If you don't like living in a country with a transparent government, you can always move to places like North Korea.
If this person was the only person who helped people murdered make their last testament, then is he not a hero?
Did he not rise to a greater challenge, to truth and integrity?
I say. if he can be imprisoned, so can we.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Lamo says he felt he had no choice but to turn in Manning, but that he's now concerned about the soldier's status and well-being.
Sure, Manning broke some security regulations. Naughty, but there are extenuating circumstances such as exposing a cover up of war crimes and multiple counts of second degree murder and multiple counts of attempted murder. Lamo admits he is cooperating with a conspiracy to commit murder and is apparently a supporter of war crime activities. But Lamo is worried about Manning's situation? I wonder about Lamo's judgment. Supporting murder and war crimes is perfectly OK if you're at a high level in the US Govt, in fact "we" expect that kind of behavior from our leaders, but Lamo is not at such a level, he's just a punk whom got busted. I'd think Lamo's in a much more precarious legal situation than Manning is in... One thing to violate some paper handling regulations, another to be a quisling.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Bullshit.
First, there was a story on /. not long ago how *everything* is confidential now - and it's a major problem. Secondly, there are no "safety reasons" why this should be confidential - at most, it was to protect them from their own incompetence.
Exactly - the people of the US, not only the military. In this case, the people of the US have the right to be protected from their own army (yes, I know they weren't shooting US civilians, but to me an innocent's life is worth the same, no matter when they're from).
Dilbert RSS feed
No, you take an oath to defend the Constitution. *BIG* difference.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
He is lucky it made it in the news, because he would be MIA pretty quick for leaking that much information. Treason is nothing to mess with! not saying the info shouldent have gotten out, but I cant imagine all of it needed to be leaked and probably contained information on missions that could have jeopardized people ACTUALLY in the field. The video was pretty powerful though, and I can imagine it represents almost any military footage you would find by any country throughout the world. Sadly.
Im ok..
If you demand perfection from troops, as in they never make a mistake, never harm an innocent, never cause collateral damage, well you are an idiot.
If you demand perfection from engineers you're an idiot too, but when one makes a mistake that kills somebody, he *still* goes to jail.
I'll let you deduce the reasons why for yourself.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
the upside is that a healthy ego can help you navigate the missteps, crises and setbacks we experience in life
the downside is that an overly healthy ego can help create those same missteps, crises and setbacks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you think there has ever been a war where civilians didn't get killed, you are kidding only yourself. So if you say that no civilian deaths are every ok at all, then that is to say that no war is ever ok at all, including a war of defense. If you are ever ok with a war, well then civilian deaths WILL be a part of it. The military can and should (and does) work to minimize it but mistakes happen, collateral damage happens.
This is clearly true, but in the terms of the 'collateral murder' video, it is totally off-topic. Nothing in that video is collateral, it is direct and intentional. To stay on topic you'd need to say...
If you think there has ever been a war where civilians didn't get murdered, you are kidding only yourself.
If you were confused as to what all the controversy was up until now, that ought to clear it up.
Also remember the issue of the war being just and the actions of soldiers are separate matters. If you feel this unjust and the costs are not worth it, your beef is with the civilian government. They set the mission for the military, the military just carries it out.
This is almost completely true. However, citizen soldiers are expected to retain a shred of humanity at all times. Others in the past have claimed that they were 'just following orders' and it didn't work out so well for them either. And I'm not just talking about the obvious, but also the rape camps in Bosnia, Japanese internment, torture, abductions, and dozens of other examples of shameful behavior and even atrocities committed by sanctioned military personnel. The point here isn't that all soldiers are monsters. Clearly this is not the case. The point is that when monsters are discovered amongst the ranks they need to be removed before (more) senseless violence occurs. The men in the 'collateral murder' video are (or were) an example of this. They lost their ability to evaluate targets and gave in to the urge to get a higher score than the other helicopters in the unit.
This is never acceptable.
Now, you are correct in that it is and will always be a failure of command. And as members of a democracy, this discourse actually is a function of the civilian government. We're congregating and discussing our political views.
If you feel this unjust and the costs are not worth it, your beef is with the civilian government.
One final point, there is only ONE government, and it is entirely civilian. The military is not some sort of aristocracy that is immune to the will of the people. It answers to the executive branch, which answers to us. So telling civilians that they aren't in a position of authority to deal with issues like this is a symptom of the problem, rather than any actual fact.
There's the difference between civilians being killed when the enemy tanks near their house draw fire, and civilians being killed because a helicopter gunner is woefully under-trained. Can't you tell the difference?
I assume you will be happy to provide your tax ${CURRENCY} to help those who "get the hell out" (or "refugees" as they are commonly known) to get the hell out of there and claim benefits (a they don't speak English they won't be able to work) in your country if you are part of the coalition that invaded their territory, then?
You talk about transparency and democracy, but you blithely dismiss the fact that the asshole who "declassified" this data violated the laws and policies established by his own democratically elected government and the bureaucracy that the same democratically elected government put in place to prosecute this war. Furthermore, when he thought he found criminal conduct, he had an alphabet soup of agencies that could independently investigate and prosecute the people he turned in. The FBI, Army CID and DoD Inspector General, to name a few.
Did he contact agents from any of them? No. Did he even contact a member of Congress to try to hold an official investigation? No.
He decided that he and he alone was the authority to make that call.
I would sooner believe that every member of Congress memorized Obamacare from top to bottom than believe that a typical 22 year old enlistee would read 250,000 documents before pulling a stunt like this...
It's a lot easier to be an armchair general from the comfort of your home or work desk. It's quite another to be prone with your face ground into the dirt and bullets wizzing over your head. Mistakes happen and people die and the means is not always just or well thought out. I really think it's telling of U.S. society in that we are so eager to condemn based on evidence taken out of context. I think if there's any judging to do, it should be done by war vets, or their peers. People who have been through the experience of legalized murder; people who have been in conflict and forced to kill on command rather than value or principle.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
That was when we were still respecting the Nuremberg trials. These days we're scared shitless and are willing to overlook the obvious war crimes because all of a sudden it's convenient to do so. Never mind that the people giving the criminal orders have never been tried.
How did this get an "insightful" mod? The hele-gunner was not "woefully under-trained" - simply "under trained." Proper training would have upped the body count to 90% kill rate.
1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
Then don't sell it as a clean war. The whole "smart weapons make a war clean" drivel is bullshit. That's the beef I have with this whole crappot that's cooking down in the middle east now. We get told that our boys are there to make the place safer, we go there to protect and bring them peace and justice, we don't shoot civilians and we only defend ourselves when those bad, bad terr'ists want to keep us from bringing those poor people freedom and democracy.
Right? Ain't that what we're being told time and again? And that these people are so incredibly happy that we're there, that we kicked that madman Saddam out and that we're now protecting them from becoming the next terrorist slaves?
Take a moment to ponder this: You're living in a country with a loonie as the dictator. He's far from a benevolent dictator and you're kinda suffering from his quirks and whims, but you adjust to it, somehow. Then suddenly people come from some sort of promised land, where everything is wonderful. You don't know really a lot about this country, but everyone who talks about it (hushed, of course, since, well, they once were your buddies back when you had that war with your neighbor, but since they became some sort of enemy for your dictator... but most people still consider them pretty cool guys and they know that they're insanely strong and well armed) knows that these people know what they do. They have gone to other places too and usually it went well for them. And somehow also for the places they went to, so they gotta be really cool. Somehow. Ok, they invaded your country, but, be honest, the people from the promised land just kicked the loonie from his seat, what side would you root for.
But somehow these guys ain't what you expected. You know, you kinda expected them to come, put a cool government like their own in charge and go again. Just like they did before. But they don't go. And you're far from having that sort of 'free' government they enjoy. Instead, their awsome firepower circles above you and drives through your streets, they stop you for no appearant reason and search you, treat you like some sort of criminal. Ok, there are some people who still fight them, so it's kinda understandable... but you never did anything against them! Hey, you really liked the idea that they come and kick out that dictator. But now, everything took a turn for the worse. Instead of knowing that you can't do or say this or that, you could now suddenly get shot! Suddenly one of their awsome firepower machines opens fire at you and you're dead. It happened to your uncle Franky. Your cousin Bill is missing now, they said those guys took him 'cause he happened to hang with the wrong people. He was just there to smoke some pot, but they didn't believe him.
How long 'til you stop thinking these people are really cool?
How long 'til you start fighting them?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
FFS This isn't "Informative" it's being a "Troll."
This perp is in the military- there is absolutely no need for the "2006 military commission act." He VOLUNTARILY put himself under the UCMJ.
If you think there has ever been a war where civilians didn't get murdered, you are kidding only yourself.
As an aside, I believe that the above is also literally true, unfortunately. One of the reasons that war should be avoided unless absolutely required is that murder, rape, and other terrible crimes will almost certainly occur on both sides, no matter how much you hope they wouldn't.
C//
Now while you can argue that this (and many other good reasons) means we should stop waging a war in Iraq, you should not vilify soldiers who make mistakes. Demanding perfect from them is no more realistic than demanding perfection anywhere else. You are not perfect, I am not perfect, they are not perfect.
You could argue this, but it would be off-topic. The video doesn't depict accidental 'collateral damage'. It demonstrates a will to fire on those people and a number of falsehoods being relayed to command to get clearance. They wanted to kill those people, more than they wanted to do the right thing, and the video depicts the result.
The topic can't be used to hang every soldier everywhere, as you're suggesting it might. But this was clearly an example of what not to do. Apologizing for it by cloaking it in a fog of war is basically requesting that it happen in the future.
Well the combatants in Iraq don't obey those rules. In fact they go out of their way to try and blend in as civilians, they do things like use ambulances for strikes.
All of this makes the job harder, but it doesn't make the excuses flow more easily. Not in a civilized society.
We're supposed to be over there making their lives better, remember? How can we do that if we make a game out of killing them?
While I like the idea on a visceral level, the "only veterans can judge" thing could never work in practice. There would be far too much room for abuse and collusion, just like the "blue line of silence" shown by police officials towards internal corruption. This is the real world, and not Starship Troopers. A jury of randomly selected ordinary citizens is shown the evidence, and determine if a supposed crime was an accident, negligence, or willful action. That's the system, and it needs to be applied here.
That's really the problem. See, a lot of people in the USA were against going to war in Iraq. Not only is it NOT a defensive war (something I would be okay with in any circumstance except where my own govt. was as psychotic as North Korea, say) but it was sold on a total lie (WMDs). Well, when that didn't pan out, the justification for the war morphed into, "well, he was a really bad guy. Plus we'll be welcomed as liberators!" And when that didn't pan out, because surprisingly enough not everyone welcomes having their country decimated and thrown into near civil war, it morphed again into "We'll only kill the bad guys, so it's fine."
Everyone who was against the war anyway still knew this was false, but it's enough to shift the tone of the national debate. If you've got a military leader on one side of the table saying, "we have high technology, and will only kill bad guys," it's hard to say you think they should stop anyway. Either you're questioning the effectiveness of the military, which will automatically bias some people against you, or you're saying they shouldn't even kill bad guys, which will bias even more.
This kind of documentation is vital simply to remind each and every person in the country that, as you said, there is never a war where civilians don't get killed. Not just because we forget, but because our leaders were, for a while, actively trying to convince us otherwise.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
That could probably be construed as putting the lives of many soldiers in danger.
So since you're so concerned about the lives of American soldiers you must absolutely HATE George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Chenney and Colin Powell for putting so many American soldiers in danger, right?
Just as a matter of interest, could you point me to where you've ranted and raved against them for putting so many American soldiers in danger during the illegal and unnecessary invasion and occupation of Iraq?
Unless you can point me to that, I'm afraid I'm going to be skeptical about your purported concern. If you think it's ok for GW Bush and Co to put the lives of American soldiers in danger for no readily apparent reason, but not ok for some random guy who is trying to expose wrong-doing and hold the government to account, then you really don't care about the lives of American soldiers: you're just a shill for the organs of the state.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Please cite your own relative level of training and experience, and how you would have done a better job than the gunner in discerning the difference between civilians and insurgents dressed as civilians. Bear in mind that a) some members of the group were visibly armed with small arms, and b) they were approaching a US position on the ground.
For extra credit, discuss the gunner's proven unwillingness to fire on targets which he could positively discern were civilians. (credit for finding this goes to kidgenius)
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
He couldn't even tell the difference between a tripod and an AK-47. He didn't even know that Iraqi citizens were allowed to have AK-47s (without being shot at). You can hear the difference between what they can see on the camera, and what they report. One AK-47 instantly becomes 6, and an indistinguishable shape becomes an RPG. So yeah, he was woefully under-trained. None of those folks should have been killed. They weren't firing on anyone, and didn't appear to have anything illegal on them. The call for clearance came before any RPG was ever seen (if there was one), so basically your lovely "hele-gunner" wanted to attack people who were doing nothing illegal. I somehow doubt you'd be fine if a local policeman shot one of your loved ones in the face for doing nothing. Double standards, much?
It may not be enough to end wars unfortunately, but it's going to change the way the military does business.
It already has. Now the military routinely classifies things that would reduce the public's desire to go to war, such as the bodies of dead soldiers returning from Iraq. It also ensures that embedded reporters report only the stories they want (anything else would endanger operational security).
See, the lesson that a lot of military guys learned from Vietnam wasn't "Never get involved in a land war in Asia.", but instead learned "Never let the public know what's actually involved in fighting a war."
I am officially gone from
It doesn't even help a bit if the human firing it is the same scared shitless guy who sees in every tube of more than two feet length an RPG. He only hits the guy carrying home his new toilet pipes far more exactly.
Besides, there are no "intended targets" in an asymmetric war. There are no fixed installations, no enemy factories, no enemy gas refineries, not even fixed enemy SAM sites in a war where your enemy is fighting with low tech equipment and has no identifyable "own" infrastructure. What do you want to precision bomb? The home of your terrorist? Let's assume for a brief moment that you can even find out where a terrorist lives. What now? Bomb the house he's in? You'd maybe hit him (provided he's home), plus everyone else living there. And probably a few people around that place too. Which will serve nothing but to piss off everyone who liked those people and instead of one terrorist (which you may or may not have hit in the first place) you have probably created a dozen more that had friends who died pointlessly in your attack and now want revenge.
Your weapons can be as smart as they can be, unless they can distinguish between terrorists and "normal" people (and if they can, they're heaps smarter than the soldiers and the politicians that stuffed them into the crap in the first place together) all their smartness is pointless. You are not fighting an enemy that you can precision bomb.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's easy to tell the difference between a tripod and an assault rifle from your desk when you can freeze the image and look at it closely.
Now do that in a moving helicopter when you are dealing with a dozen other things, lights flashing around you, noises, the ever present danger of being shot out of the sky.
"The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently—like the effect of a fog or moonshine—gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance."
Have you read what treasonous is? Manning's work is NOT treason. The activities shown by that video is treason. Government for the people by the people, and protecting against enemies foreign and domestic are REQUIREMENTS of someone signing up to military or government life. therefore releasing it is the PATRIOTIC thing to do.
"he continued on, planning to give an outsider unfettered access to potentially sensitive information "
given the amount of information that is set to Top Secret (ACTA negotiations, WMD documents, et al) that should never had been, the TS designation is bullshit. That something released is "potentially sensitive" shows that even you think it's BS. If it's Top Secret, there should be NO "potentially" about it.
I wish that I could Mod you more than +5.
how about (+10 the goddamn truth)?
"Also remember the issue of the war being just and the actions of soldiers are separate matters. If you feel this unjust and the costs are not worth it, your beef is with the civilian government. They set the mission for the military, the military just carries it out."
Part of "setting the mission" is being a party to and bound by the terms of the geneva (and others) convention.
If the boy's in the helicopter or the brass higher up can show me an order from the civilian government that states "kill everyone, let god sort them out" I would be happy to see the creator set to prison TOO. It does not forgive their actions. Not even a little.
-- Sig under construction...
The men in the 'collateral murder' video are (or were) an example of this. They lost their ability to evaluate targets and gave in to the urge to get a higher score than the other helicopters in the unit.
First of all, the use of the word, "murder". here seems to make the users sound very unintelligent. Given the use of the word, EVERY deployed military personal who has pulled a trigger is a murdered. That's bullshit as its use has very specific connotations. Thusly, users as such scream to the world they are unable to properly filter facts or employ logic. In other words, idiots.
As for their "loss of ability to evaluate targets", that too sounds extremely unintelligent. The reality is, you've lost the ability (assuming you ever had the ability - which is extremely unlikely given the surrounding remarks) to make judgment calls about military targets. Likely because you're parroting ignorance rather than attempt to make use of things known as facts.
The reality is:
o Most enemy targets (almost all) do not wear uniforms - this means the G.V. doesn't actually protect them. In fact, it condemns them.
o Most enemy targets in theater, immediately attempt to insert/remove targets and/or weaponry from an engagement before they can be captured so they can they claim massive civilian causalities.
o The original "targets" acted EXACTLY like local insurgents - which are not provided protection by the G.V..
o Contrary to the massive amounts of misinformation put forward put massive level of ignorance, they did appear to be a legitimate threat. At best, they were blending in with those were absolutely did satisfy the requirements for legitimate targets. And as such, are legitimate collator targets.
o Contrary to the ignorance spewed forth, you may take military targets from the scene for medical assistance - assuming you are properly marked. These people were not and in fact matched the M.O. of other illegal insurgents. So we have an established pattern set forth by seemingly legitimate targets.
o The various doctrines and conventions allow for the death of these people. They are actually allowed to be summarily executed on the spot. Meaning, we have legitimate targets being targeted and people coming to the rescue of legitimate targets who follow stardard operating procedures of those who have established M.O.s of other legitimate targets - none of whom are protected by the G.C..
In short, the uproar is by a large group of ignorant people who don't know their asshole from their elbow. Does that make what happened any better? NO! Does that suddenly make the cries for the heads of people doing their legal job legitimate?! No, absolutely not! It only means those crying for heads are all the more ignorant and disassociated from not only reality in general, but from the reality of modern war in general. Thusly validating they are fools at best.
At worst, this the the tragedy of war. At best, it soldiers doing their job who absolutely understand the realities of the world their country is demanding they operate. To condemn them is to condemn war and especially the piece of shits they fight. Nothing more, nothing less. And anyone who says otherwise, is an ignorant fool - unless they have proof the soldiers knowing were not engaging legitimate targets; aka willing committing murder.
Most enemy targets (almost all) do not wear uniforms - this means the G.V. doesn't actually protect them. In fact, it condemns them.
True, but this does not in any way affect the protections that civilians enjoy. If you capture an insurgent who's dressed in civilian clothes, you can put him against the nearest wall right there and then. But until you capture him, or otherwise clearly identify him as an insurgent, you have to assume that he is a civilian, with everything that entails.
Most enemy targets in theater, immediately attempt to insert/remove targets and/or weaponry from an engagement before they can be captured so they can they claim massive civilian causalities.
True, but see above. What it boils down to is that Geneva Convention are still binding on you even if the other side does not adhere to them. You can engage in reprisals (which are "permitted violations"), but they have to be targeted against those violating the Convention in the first place. You can't just grab a random civilian in the area from the street and shoot him to "show them".
The original "targets" acted EXACTLY like local insurgents
Riding in the car on the streets of their own city, with children inside, is "acting EXACTLY like local insurgents"?
Well, if it's true - which I doubt - then you clearly cannot use this as a way to identify insurgents, as the false positive rate is insane.
Contrary to the massive amounts of misinformation put forward put massive level of ignorance, they did appear to be a legitimate threat. At best, they were blending in with those were absolutely did satisfy the requirements for legitimate targets. And as such, are legitimate collator targets.
A person incapacitated by fighting to the point where they are unable to either fight back or retreat is not a legitimate target under the Geneva convention. So, by the time the civilian van arrived to the scene, there were no legitimate targets. In particular, the wounded man that they were trying to help was not a legitimate target.
I didn't see any "blending in" (what does this even mean?) in the video. I've seen attempts to render first aid to the wounded.
Contrary to the ignorance spewed forth, you may take military targets from the scene for medical assistance - assuming you are properly marked. These people were not and in fact matched the M.O. of other illegal insurgents. So we have an established pattern set forth by seemingly legitimate targets.
Geneva Convention gives special protection to marked medical transports and such, but this doesn't mean that everyone else is fair game. In particular, civilians never are, unless 1) they stop being civilians by engaging in hostile acts (which rendering aid to wounded is not), or 2) their deaths are inevitable during an attack on a legitimate military target - e.g. bombings, shellings etc - but where any such casualties are minimized to any extent possible. Note that #2 still does not allow you to directly and intentionally target a civilian even if he is near a legitimate target.
The various doctrines and conventions allow for the death of these people. They are actually allowed to be summarily executed on the spot.
Most certainly not. You can only execute someone you've captured to begin with, and you can only do that if a person really is engaging in hostilities without identification etc, i.e. an illegal combatant. But people in the video weren't illegal combatants - they were a neutral party that got (arguably, reasonably) confused for such because of carrying arms etc. If captured, you still have to do an investigation, and only if that determines that captive is an illegal combatant, he is outside of the protection of the Convention. As those guys weren't combatants at all, but civilians, they would be protected as such.
I use murder to describe an illegal and/or immoral killing, period.
Then you fail to understand the situation. What they did was unfortunate but legit.
Again you are among the many hoping to extend the cloak of non-responsibility to any service person under deployment, anywhere. In your world the 9/11 killers are innocents, too, because they were fighting a war.
No. This simply proves your bias and/or ignorance. He was very specific about the circumstances in which killing is acceptable, especially regarding the Geneva Convention. You are going way overboard in your attack on him, putting words in his mouth that he clearly did not intend. Intentionally targeting civilians (9/11) is far different from accidentally targeting them (helo crew).
If you work for an entity, you cannot illegally kill, yes?
No. See above.
So without any convention protecting them, they're fair game? Because we didn't sign an agreement with terrorists to behave morally and ethically, we no longer have to? How far does this extend?
As the enemy, the Geneva Convention does not protect insurgents from helicopter attack. It means that by masquerading as civilians, the insurgents are in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Since the GC seems important to indignant, righteous folks such as yourself, you might want to spread the blame where it belongs, ie, on the insurgents.
The video at hand displays zero exigent threat to anyone ...
Listen to the audio, or at least read the captions. The helo was responding to units on the ground taking small arms fire from the direction of this group. In the video, some of the group are armed, one with what appears to be an AK-47, at least one other with an RPG. Note that the man with the RPG is clearly seen early in the film, and is different than the cameraman crouching in the alley. According to the audio, ground teams found a body with a live RPG round under it. These guys were not boy scouts on a hike.
Even if you surmised all the total destructive power of the weapons that were 'vaporized' in the attack, I'm still not detecting any WMD's.
What? Are you incoherently suggesting they were attacked because they were carrying WMD's? Or were you creating a pretext to inject the term "WMD's"? If you are implying that no weapons were found, see above re: weapons found. Also, see the GP's point about insurgents removing weapons from the battlefield to create the appearance of "civilian" casualties, specifically for propaganda that people like you eat up like it's gospel. No wonder an unmarked van was targeted.
I'm not even convinced there was ever any threat here to American personnel, or anyone except those killed.
Ground troops reported taking fire from that direction. It is possible that the fire they took was from a different group. There is no doubt in my mind, after viewing the film repeatedly, that at least one of the group had an RPG. It is apparent that he was spotted by the helo crew, and it seems that when the cameraman lined up a shot, the helo crew thought that it was the guy with the RPG lining up a shot of a very different kind. On that basis they requested permission to fire, and on that basis it was granted.
Did you see the range readouts on the weapon's camera? The people
(I assume you mean the people in the van)
taking fire weren't even aware they were in jeopardy. The bodies would have been spraying blood before the sound arrived. For Christ's sake, do a tiny bit of research before you use justifications like 'properly marked'.
Your hyperbole doesn't help your cause. It merely indicates that you are not thinking clearly. If you are in a van in a war zone, and you roll up near some wounded bodies, be aware t
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
He's useless. As I said, the guy is woefully under-trained. You seem to agree with me. You are saying the very conditions he's expected to operate in are enough to throw him off track. That's about as pure a definition of "woefully under-trained" as you can hope for.
No. That is information overload. There is actually a specific military term for it in combat aviation, but for the life of me I can't recall what it is. I think it is "Task Saturation". Training can only do so much to mitigate it.
No amount of training can up the resolution on that film, and you know fuck-all about what it takes to operate a gunship.
Unless, of course, you'd like to demonstrate your credentials for all of us here on slashdot.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
You seem to be suffering from the same logic errors that allowed the pilot to justify the shooting in the first place.
As with most of everything, it's not a one sided issue where you can ascertain after the fact, the motivations or realities of the situation. From the pilot's point of view, which is supported by the audio on the tape, he didn't think the civilians were civilians at all.
So saying that there was a lack of effort to minimize civilian casualties really doesn't come close to the reality of the situation. The problem is that the civilians involved in the incident were incorrectly identified as hostile insurgents and insurgents attempting to aid their fallen comrades. That was the entire belief structure of the helicopter crew at the time the trigger was pulled so every effort to minimize innocent civilian casualties could have been in place and this could have still happened because they were not thought of as civilians at the time the events took place.
Now what you are doing here is attempting to conflate this into an impossible position with no answers resembling reality. Of course that is wrong, the answers are there and both the innocent civilians and the gun crew involved share the responsibility of what happened. The gun crew because they made the mistake and misidentified the civilians, the items they were carrying that looked like weapons, and the weapons they actually had. The civilians are just as at fault because they essentially ignored common sense, warnings, and essentially walked up to a guy pumping gasoline and then lit up a smoke. It wouldn't have been much the fault of the guy pumping gas now would it.
You had civilians that went into a war zone still engaged in combat without letting anyone know they were there. They didn't wear any sort of markings stating they were the press or neutral or not involved in the conflict while being armed (yes, the reporters escort was armed with assault riffles). They didn't let the army know they were going to be there nor did they have any communications device to alert forces of their position. They took equipment that from long distances away, could be mistaken for military weapons, especially when they attempted to conceal their positions when lining up to take a picture of the helicopters which also gave the appearance of them aiming or attempting to aim it at them and those looking at it from a distance stand a very real chance of dieing if it was a RPG. So there is the first mistake, both parties made them, the gun crew asked on the radio if anyone had units or people in the area so notifying the military before going in or periodically stating your position could have very well stopped it here.
Now the second problem, additional civilians- probably the ride the reporter took to get to the area, rushed in to help them. The gun crew rightly assumed they were rendering aid to the wrongly labeled insurgents who BTW, dress up in civilian cloths and drive civilian vehicles. Again, there was no communications, no markers indicating they were neutral or not a threat, no nothing to distinguish them from what they were incorrectly identified as. There was no red cross/crescent or other internationally recognized symbol of aid that is known to all military's around the world in which they do not shoot at. And with weapons believed to still be at the scene, this also posed a threat to the gun crew.
So you see, this isn't about civilians as much as it is about recognizing civilians. Had the gun crew knew the RPG was a camera with a long lens, had the gun crew known the press was in the area, has the gun crew seen markings indecating they were journalists of legitimate aid workers, had the gun crew not been engaged in combat operations, and all this still happened, I would be standing right beside you. But given everything that we know, this is a tragic- I repeat, tragic misunderstanding that costs the lives of civilians in a dangerous place. But all the blame cannot be placed on the gun crew for this. It was a joint fuck up, unfortunately, only one party survived to talk about it.