It appears that you do believe the USA military's PR, because you think that the killing of an innocent man and his would-be rescuers are a rare occurrence.
I watched the video and came to my own conclusions before reading any articles. Oh, and please please show me where I called Iraqi civilian deaths "rare", "unique", or in any way not equal to somewhere between 3/4 and 1+ million. My judgement regarding this particular video of this particular event has nothing to do with justifying, explaining, or minimizing the overall numbers involved.
Fundamentally, the question that needs to be answered is whether or not our military is a benevolent force in Iraq.
Despite the good things that are accomplished by our military, I don't think anyone is going to be applying the "benevolent" tag anytime soon. The picture is simply too complex - good and bad - for that. I think the real question is "Given the present situation, what is the best thing for the American military to do?"
A) Go home right now? B) Stay there for now, but do less and less, and then go home? C) Stay there, keep the status quo? D) Stay there, surge the troops?
Right now, we're doing B, much to the chagrin of those who voted or campaigned on the promise of A. Personally, I think that's the right thing to do. No doubt about it, I think it will result in some innocent lives lost. But I also think that will result in fewer innocent lives lost than A, and if bloodshed is certain either way, I'd err on the side of caution - even though it means that our lives and treasure are being spent as well.
Heh! What a laughable claim that only the American press is biased. Look everywhere, and you'll find it.
As for bias in the American press, if you look closely, you'll see it cuts both ways.
As far as WMD, perhaps if Saddam wasn't afraid that his life depended on perpetuating the perception that he might have WMD, the claims might not have been believable.
This is salient. Extraordinarily so....
If the fire was taken from a different group then it is likewise possible that the people were armed to protect themselves from that group. This would be legal under Iraqi law...
I am certain there are a plethora of honorable military activities that a patriotic person can support.
I'm pretty sure you and I have lots to agree on up to this point.
Unfortunately the events in the video are not among them.
And here's where I differ. I believe, based on the video, the audio, and what I know about Apache crews and the ROE, that the crew did their best to defend their fellow soldiers. Given the circumstances, the most plausible explanation was that the the killing of civilians was unintentional, and happened despite the best efforts of the crews in the air and on the ground to properly identify and neutralize the right target.
I see, so you're going to purport that I'm inventing the racism angle, because I'm a troll. If it helps you sleep better, go nuts, but even the most casual google searching will show that this concept did NOT originate with me.
You're playing the race card without a specific legitimate reason to do so, based on the video.
Of course you didn't invent racism, and you're not the first to accuse our armed forces of racism. But even if we were to believe the (fictitious, in my mind) premise that this war was started for racist purposes, there is no, ZIP, ZERO indication that the crew on the gunship fired a single shot because of the color of anyone's skin. Instead, you're presenting a false choice between "A)... careless and wanton... destruction" (your words), and B) - racism.
And that's where I really get pissed off. Don't get me wrong; I love talking with people who have different opinions and perspectives (it doesn't always come across that way because I can be aggressive in conversation, sorry, my bad), but I hate race baiters. Racism is bad enough in it's real manifestations. Creating imagined racism out of thin air is wrong. Using it as a rhetorical tactic is wrong as well.
For months the US military falsely insisted that they had absolutely nothing to do with the journalist's death.
I hadn't heard about it until after the video came out.
The military spokespeople are hired liars whose job it is to portray our military efforts as benevolent.
And most of the press presume their job is to smear others and advance their own agenda in much the same way.
The truth can be found in the video and audio. The Apache is responding to ground troops who say they are taking fire, apparently from this group, and are directed to the location the fire is believed to be coming from. There are reports from the ground of weapons in their hands. Video in the cockpit seems to back this up. Everything else follows from that.
To play devil's advocate, maybe he just knew he couldn't get away with it in that case.
Well, if the American military is as brutal, repressive, and vicious as they are made out to be, who says he couldn't get away with it whenever he wanted?
He's saying that armchair quarterbacks like you can't tell the difference between a tripod and an RPG even with the luxury of pausing, rewinding, and replaying the fuzzy gray low-rez images that the pilot and gunner have mere seconds to respond to in real time.
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.
The looting was a problem in the beginning of the war, when Rumsfeld thought he could remove the power and authority of the country without any problems. Wrong.
By the time this footage was filmed though, looting really wasn't much of a problem. Plus, if they were worried about looting, wouldn't they be better off staying home to defend their homes, versus approaching an American patrol?
Take a look between 2:04 and 2:24 in that video. Sure looks like a loaded RPG in the hands of the guy by the pole. Looks like the guy next to him has an AK.
If that were the whole story, these guys might have never been killed. But the helo crew was responding to ground reports that indicated these guys were firing on them.
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
Although I disagree with some of what you say, I agree with other parts, and I respect you for being sincere, respectful, and thoughtful. Thanks for that.
I apologize if some of this is out of order. Also, I didn't respond to everything you wrote. I wish I had more time to delve into these things.
To be a morally acceptable act, the invading military must justify its violent invasion, otherwise it is aggression. And unjustified aggression is universally immoral and commonly illegal. Once unjustified aggression has begun, horror follows, and all of the immoral acts that follow, by all individuals, are the responsibility of the original initiators.
I consider the justification for the invasion of Iraq a separate topic from the question of whether the gunship crew acted correctly given the circumstances they were in and the information at their disposal.
Discussion of the war, its causes, it casualties, and the lies that are intertwined into it could go on - and likely will - practically forever. But what this particular topic rests on are the actions of the gunship crew, those on the ground, and those who brought this film to light.
So several apparently empty-handed locals are walking toward an "imminent firefight" against US tanks and rockets and machine guns, with a noisy attack helicopter overhead circling their position and obviously radioing the target of their approach? The least likely scenario is the "imminent firefight."
I disagree. From the gunship's point of view, you see some armed individuals, others who are carrying items which are hard to distinguish (turns out later to be camera w/telephoto lens), and some who may be unarmed, or possibly concealing arms (a suicide belt, for example). Given that Palestinians are known to attack fully armed Israeli troops with nothing more than rocks they can throw, the idea of unarmed or lightly armed fighters approaching US troops with hostile intent is not out of the question.
During war civilians are killed... If you condone this war then you condone the killing of those civilians
It bears mentioning that the number of civilian casualties depends on at least three primary causes in this war. 1) The accuracy with which a target can be discerned, classified, and hit. 2) The degree to which the insurgents have camouflaged and shielded themselves among civilians. 3) The frequency and lethality of insurgent strikes against civilians.
The US has spent billions upon billions of dollars developing weapons systems that are ultra-precise and reliable. This is primarily done to increase the potency of America's fighting forces, but is also specifically intended to lower civilian casualties.
The insurgents have made it a habit to hide among civilians as civilians. Culpability for resulting civilian casualties must also rest on them as well.
The US does not, as a matter of policy, deliberately attack civilians. The insurgents do.
Surely we agree that the number of Iraqis killed by provocateurs is miniscule, though no less dreadful, compared to the number of people killed by US bombs and guns.
I don't agree that the number of Iraqi civilians killed by insurgents or other non-US/coalition forces is "miniscule", either in actual number, or as a percentage compared to the civilians killed by the US.
Either way, we need to look at the numbers of deaths claimed, which is an exercise in sifting through inaccurate, incomplete, and often deliberately misleading information. Official government counts by the US and Iraq put the total number of civilian deaths at 100-130k. These numbers are solid in that they count documented, reported deaths. From this, we can assume that these represent a minimum to start from. Due to local burial customs, fear of the authorities, lack of communications, etc, it is commonly held that these numbers represent a significant
This tragedy needs to have consequences, not just for the personnel immediately involved but for the whole Iraq occupation.
You seem to have the same point of view as many people here - you attack this tragedy not simply on its own merits, but as part of your rage against a war you feel is unjust.
The reason I mentioned the Red Crescent wasn't that I expect the civilians to paint their vans that way; I'm saying that the conduct of the gunner would have been different if an ambulance pulled up to assist the wounded. If an otherwise unidentified van enters a live fire area and assists people you believe to be your enemy, what are you going to think?
If there had been a red crescent on the van, I'd bet that the gun crew would have left it alone.
You do lay blame "up and down the chain of command", but you also can't possibly expect military/human intelligence to avoid all possible errors. AFAIK, checking up the chain of command generally verifies whether any known friendlies are operating in the target area. Central command has no way of knowing that some innocent guy just pulled his young family into a live fire area.
I am sure that there have been times that, for one reason or another, an Al Qaeda in Iraq bomber has watched a U.S. patrol pass without bombing it. Does that make the actual bombing of patrols okay?
Interesting. I have a hard time picturing it, but let's accept that they did. I don't see the comparison as appropriate.
Is it okay for A.Q. to bomb US troops? Obviously, as an American, I'm not okay with US casualties, but in war, that's what we can expect the insurgents to do; target American troops. If the context of the violence is combatant-on-combatant, it is generally acceptable under the rules of warfare.
How about this: If an Al Qaeda bomber deliberately avoided blowing up an IED near a school or a mosque or near civilians, but planned his attack to minimize civilian casualties, waited for what he thought was an American patrol to drive by, detonated it, and only realized afterward that he had killed civilian journalists and wounded young children, I'd give him the same latitude I'm willing to give the American gunship crew here.
Actually, I would be truly impressed if insurgents refused to target civilians. With all the vitriol against America here, it would be nice to hear a word of condemnation for the insurgent attacks against civilians. Or insurgents hiding among civilians, using them as human shields, or disguising themselves as civilians, especially since the casualty numbers indicate that the number of civilian deaths that can be directly attributed to the insurgents is significantly larger than the number which can be directly attributed to the US.
Your rape comparison is way off. We can categorically state that it is never acceptable to rape, even in the context of war. Not so with killing. As stated above, that depends on the context. In civilian life, we have exceptions to laws against killing if we can prove self-defense. Also in civilian life, we have distinctions between degrees of unlawful killing, such as manslaughter, vehicular homicide, murder in its various degrees, etc., which revolve around context and intent. In war, killing is largely the whole point. The questions are who and how.
The questions raised by the video are how much the gunship crew knew about the "who" they were firing on, to what degree they attempted to verify that their target was in fact a valid target, and whether they were predisposed to firing on civilians or making poor targeting decisions. The additional video goes directly to that last question, and indicates that malice and indifference were not factors in their conduct.
I have no doubt that many here denying the significance of the additional film would be singing a different tune if the rest of the video showed them indiscriminately shooting up civilians.
The difference is intent. If many of the people here are to believed, the gunner was happily shooting anything that moved. Obviously that was not the case.
If I walk by you on the street on Monday and don't kill you, that's normal. Same thing happens Tuesday. That's normal. If on Wednesday, I see you walking down the street in a group of people, some of whom are armed with AK-47s, and you are heading towards friends of mine whom I believe that you are going to kill, and then I kill you, that's also normal. Well, at least it is in a war zone.
The kids aren't visible in the film until after the van was shot up. Don't pretend that the gunner was a bloodthirsty baby killer.
Are you such a person who would just drive past wounded and bleeding people laying on the street instead of helping them?
If I was by myself? I would have stopped and helped. If I had my kids with me, and saw fresh bleeding bodies? I'd get my kids the hell out of there, on the assumption that more bullets are probably on the way. Maybe I'd go back after, but no way I'd expose my kids to more danger than they were already in.
The fact they haven't killed one bunch of civilians doesn't justify them killing another bunch of civilians.
Clearly, it demonstrates that they a) identify their targets to the best of their ability, and b) don't fire if they believe that it will result in civilian deaths. Of course, that doesn't really fit with your world view. I suppose you'd rather grind your axe and indulge in ad hominem attacks and insults than actually consider things from more than one point of view.
I think the only way we could possibly have done things worse is by abruptly leaving after finding Saddam. I'd be willing to bet that it would be an even worse cesspool of violence and anarchy, and what little hope they may now have for the future would be gone.
What I find ironic is that most people here and there all want the same thing. We all want the Americans out of there. The question is how and when. The ongoing violence only makes withdrawal more difficult and more distant.
Nice find. I like the question at the end of the article:
It also deepens the mystery of Wikileak's military source: Who is so disgruntled as to not only leak the video, but also edit out the slightest bit of redeeming footage?
TFA in Wired seems to provide an answer:
From the chat logs provided by Lamo, and examined by Wired.com, it appears Manning sensed a kindred spirit in the ex-hacker. He discussed personal issues that got him into trouble with his superiors and left him socially isolated, and said he had been demoted and was headed for an early discharge from the Army.
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)
... you pay your phone company to get your data to the central office, and then you pay a different company to get that data to the internet. The last mile fee structure would be based purely on the technology - so DSL would be flat rate, cable might be use-based, etc. The last mile provider would be prohibited from offering ISP service.
It sounds like you want to take the existing internet business market, fracture it, keep the resulting pieces in separate silos, and award a monopoly on land lines to the telco industry (what about cable?). I don't like that idea, but hey, that's what opinions are all about. However, what you've just said flies in the face of what the original article is asking for - one bill to pay, one throat to choke, one entity to deal with. Simplicity.
Plus, merging land and mobile data provisioning is what the author is looking for, meaning that the last mile in many cases is the airwaves. 3/4G networks, microwave last-mile for rural ISPs, etc. As a matter of fact, I'd say that the future of last-mile internet connectivity is going to be mostly wireless, much like the present day state of the art in telephony.
Now, I'm completely fine with market internet rates, if the last mile rates are regulated... Competition doesn't really work well for the last mile, which is why we have the mess we currently have.
Well, it isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than the US had under AT&T's regulated telephone monopoly. History shows that regulation means that the provider has no incentive to improve service or run more efficiently. The telco infrastructure of the US stayed in the stone ages for a long time because of that. Competition brought about big, fantastic changes and lower costs for consumers.
Competition is tough to foster in a wired last-mile scenario, but easier to get going in a wireless environment. Hence part of the reason I think the question of last-mile wires will be mostly moot in about 10 years.
The key is to regulate so that telecoms end up charging reasonable usage rates. Maybe force them to charge the same rates for corporate and home users - no way they'll try to charge fortune 500 companies crazy rates...
Maybe pricing has changed since I last checked, but no way do I want to pay business T1 or T3 rates for my home internet connection. I simply don't need the SLA that businesses need and pay for.
I don't get it... you just got done stating that metered use would be self-regulating, and then you go on to state that external government regulation is the only way to solve unlimited usage. Why not allow the market to set the metered and unlimited rates, and allow people to choose which is right for them?
I disagree If someone is willing to pay for it, a capitalist society will deliver it. Service providers would be willing to offer contracts similar to this. Look no further than the bundling plans that cable and telco providers have been shilling over the last several years. Including an unlimited mobile data plan in there would not be a problem for a company like Verizon. The question is, is the price they would ask for truly unlimited service on a truly limited network is what Woods would be willing to pay?
I'd like to see the energy crisis solved this way. I shouldn't have to pay separately for gas for my car, heating oil for my house, and electricity as well! The fact that I've already paid for energy once should be enough. Corporations are so damn unreasonable these days.
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It appears that you do believe the USA military's PR, because you think that the killing of an innocent man and his would-be rescuers are a rare occurrence.
I watched the video and came to my own conclusions before reading any articles. Oh, and please please show me where I called Iraqi civilian deaths "rare", "unique", or in any way not equal to somewhere between 3/4 and 1+ million. My judgement regarding this particular video of this particular event has nothing to do with justifying, explaining, or minimizing the overall numbers involved.
Fundamentally, the question that needs to be answered is whether or not our military is a benevolent force in Iraq.
Despite the good things that are accomplished by our military, I don't think anyone is going to be applying the "benevolent" tag anytime soon. The picture is simply too complex - good and bad - for that. I think the real question is "Given the present situation, what is the best thing for the American military to do?"
A) Go home right now? B) Stay there for now, but do less and less, and then go home? C) Stay there, keep the status quo? D) Stay there, surge the troops?
Right now, we're doing B, much to the chagrin of those who voted or campaigned on the promise of A. Personally, I think that's the right thing to do. No doubt about it, I think it will result in some innocent lives lost. But I also think that will result in fewer innocent lives lost than A, and if bloodshed is certain either way, I'd err on the side of caution - even though it means that our lives and treasure are being spent as well.
Heh! What a laughable claim that only the American press is biased. Look everywhere, and you'll find it.
As for bias in the American press, if you look closely, you'll see it cuts both ways.
As far as WMD, perhaps if Saddam wasn't afraid that his life depended on perpetuating the perception that he might have WMD, the claims might not have been believable.
This is salient. Extraordinarily so. ...
If the fire was taken from a different group then it is likewise possible that the people were armed to protect themselves from that group. This would be legal under Iraqi law ...
I am certain there are a plethora of honorable military activities that a patriotic person can support.
I'm pretty sure you and I have lots to agree on up to this point.
Unfortunately the events in the video are not among them.
And here's where I differ. I believe, based on the video, the audio, and what I know about Apache crews and the ROE, that the crew did their best to defend their fellow soldiers. Given the circumstances, the most plausible explanation was that the the killing of civilians was unintentional, and happened despite the best efforts of the crews in the air and on the ground to properly identify and neutralize the right target.
I see, so you're going to purport that I'm inventing the racism angle, because I'm a troll. If it helps you sleep better, go nuts, but even the most casual google searching will show that this concept did NOT originate with me.
You're playing the race card without a specific legitimate reason to do so, based on the video. Of course you didn't invent racism, and you're not the first to accuse our armed forces of racism. But even if we were to believe the (fictitious, in my mind) premise that this war was started for racist purposes, there is no, ZIP, ZERO indication that the crew on the gunship fired a single shot because of the color of anyone's skin. Instead, you're presenting a false choice between "A) ... careless and wanton ... destruction" (your words), and B) - racism.
And that's where I really get pissed off. Don't get me wrong; I love talking with people who have different opinions and perspectives (it doesn't always come across that way because I can be aggressive in conversation, sorry, my bad), but I hate race baiters. Racism is bad enough in it's real manifestations. Creating imagined racism out of thin air is wrong. Using it as a rhetorical tactic is wrong as well.
For months the US military falsely insisted that they had absolutely nothing to do with the journalist's death.
I hadn't heard about it until after the video came out.
The military spokespeople are hired liars whose job it is to portray our military efforts as benevolent.
And most of the press presume their job is to smear others and advance their own agenda in much the same way.
The truth can be found in the video and audio. The Apache is responding to ground troops who say they are taking fire, apparently from this group, and are directed to the location the fire is believed to be coming from. There are reports from the ground of weapons in their hands. Video in the cockpit seems to back this up. Everything else follows from that.
I wish you had posted under a name instead of AC. This is the most insightful/informative comment I've read in the whole thread so far.
To play devil's advocate, maybe he just knew he couldn't get away with it in that case.
Well, if the American military is as brutal, repressive, and vicious as they are made out to be, who says he couldn't get away with it whenever he wanted?
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.
The looting was a problem in the beginning of the war, when Rumsfeld thought he could remove the power and authority of the country without any problems. Wrong.
By the time this footage was filmed though, looting really wasn't much of a problem. Plus, if they were worried about looting, wouldn't they be better off staying home to defend their homes, versus approaching an American patrol?
http://gawker.com/5513068/the-full-version-of-the-wikileaks-video-is-missing-30-minutes-of-footage
Take a look between 2:04 and 2:24 in that video. Sure looks like a loaded RPG in the hands of the guy by the pole. Looks like the guy next to him has an AK.
If that were the whole story, these guys might have never been killed. But the helo crew was responding to ground reports that indicated these guys were firing on them.
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
Although I disagree with some of what you say, I agree with other parts, and I respect you for being sincere, respectful, and thoughtful. Thanks for that.
I apologize if some of this is out of order. Also, I didn't respond to everything you wrote. I wish I had more time to delve into these things.
To be a morally acceptable act, the invading military must justify its violent invasion, otherwise it is aggression. And unjustified aggression is universally immoral and commonly illegal. Once unjustified aggression has begun, horror follows, and all of the immoral acts that follow, by all individuals, are the responsibility of the original initiators.
I consider the justification for the invasion of Iraq a separate topic from the question of whether the gunship crew acted correctly given the circumstances they were in and the information at their disposal.
Discussion of the war, its causes, it casualties, and the lies that are intertwined into it could go on - and likely will - practically forever. But what this particular topic rests on are the actions of the gunship crew, those on the ground, and those who brought this film to light.
So several apparently empty-handed locals are walking toward an "imminent firefight" against US tanks and rockets and machine guns, with a noisy attack helicopter overhead circling their position and obviously radioing the target of their approach? The least likely scenario is the "imminent firefight."
I disagree. From the gunship's point of view, you see some armed individuals, others who are carrying items which are hard to distinguish (turns out later to be camera w/telephoto lens), and some who may be unarmed, or possibly concealing arms (a suicide belt, for example). Given that Palestinians are known to attack fully armed Israeli troops with nothing more than rocks they can throw, the idea of unarmed or lightly armed fighters approaching US troops with hostile intent is not out of the question.
During war civilians are killed ... If you condone this war then you condone the killing of those civilians
It bears mentioning that the number of civilian casualties depends on at least three primary causes in this war. 1) The accuracy with which a target can be discerned, classified, and hit. 2) The degree to which the insurgents have camouflaged and shielded themselves among civilians. 3) The frequency and lethality of insurgent strikes against civilians.
The US has spent billions upon billions of dollars developing weapons systems that are ultra-precise and reliable. This is primarily done to increase the potency of America's fighting forces, but is also specifically intended to lower civilian casualties.
The insurgents have made it a habit to hide among civilians as civilians. Culpability for resulting civilian casualties must also rest on them as well.
The US does not, as a matter of policy, deliberately attack civilians. The insurgents do.
Surely we agree that the number of Iraqis killed by provocateurs is miniscule, though no less dreadful, compared to the number of people killed by US bombs and guns.
I don't agree that the number of Iraqi civilians killed by insurgents or other non-US/coalition forces is "miniscule", either in actual number, or as a percentage compared to the civilians killed by the US.
Either way, we need to look at the numbers of deaths claimed, which is an exercise in sifting through inaccurate, incomplete, and often deliberately misleading information. Official government counts by the US and Iraq put the total number of civilian deaths at 100-130k. These numbers are solid in that they count documented, reported deaths. From this, we can assume that these represent a minimum to start from. Due to local burial customs, fear of the authorities, lack of communications, etc, it is commonly held that these numbers represent a significant
This tragedy needs to have consequences, not just for the personnel immediately involved but for the whole Iraq occupation.
You seem to have the same point of view as many people here - you attack this tragedy not simply on its own merits, but as part of your rage against a war you feel is unjust.
The reason I mentioned the Red Crescent wasn't that I expect the civilians to paint their vans that way; I'm saying that the conduct of the gunner would have been different if an ambulance pulled up to assist the wounded. If an otherwise unidentified van enters a live fire area and assists people you believe to be your enemy, what are you going to think?
If there had been a red crescent on the van, I'd bet that the gun crew would have left it alone.
You do lay blame "up and down the chain of command", but you also can't possibly expect military/human intelligence to avoid all possible errors. AFAIK, checking up the chain of command generally verifies whether any known friendlies are operating in the target area. Central command has no way of knowing that some innocent guy just pulled his young family into a live fire area.
I am sure that there have been times that, for one reason or another, an Al Qaeda in Iraq bomber has watched a U.S. patrol pass without bombing it. Does that make the actual bombing of patrols okay?
Interesting. I have a hard time picturing it, but let's accept that they did. I don't see the comparison as appropriate.
Is it okay for A.Q. to bomb US troops? Obviously, as an American, I'm not okay with US casualties, but in war, that's what we can expect the insurgents to do; target American troops. If the context of the violence is combatant-on-combatant, it is generally acceptable under the rules of warfare.
How about this: If an Al Qaeda bomber deliberately avoided blowing up an IED near a school or a mosque or near civilians, but planned his attack to minimize civilian casualties, waited for what he thought was an American patrol to drive by, detonated it, and only realized afterward that he had killed civilian journalists and wounded young children, I'd give him the same latitude I'm willing to give the American gunship crew here.
Actually, I would be truly impressed if insurgents refused to target civilians. With all the vitriol against America here, it would be nice to hear a word of condemnation for the insurgent attacks against civilians. Or insurgents hiding among civilians, using them as human shields, or disguising themselves as civilians, especially since the casualty numbers indicate that the number of civilian deaths that can be directly attributed to the insurgents is significantly larger than the number which can be directly attributed to the US.
Your rape comparison is way off. We can categorically state that it is never acceptable to rape, even in the context of war. Not so with killing. As stated above, that depends on the context. In civilian life, we have exceptions to laws against killing if we can prove self-defense. Also in civilian life, we have distinctions between degrees of unlawful killing, such as manslaughter, vehicular homicide, murder in its various degrees, etc., which revolve around context and intent. In war, killing is largely the whole point. The questions are who and how.
The questions raised by the video are how much the gunship crew knew about the "who" they were firing on, to what degree they attempted to verify that their target was in fact a valid target, and whether they were predisposed to firing on civilians or making poor targeting decisions. The additional video goes directly to that last question, and indicates that malice and indifference were not factors in their conduct.
I have no doubt that many here denying the significance of the additional film would be singing a different tune if the rest of the video showed them indiscriminately shooting up civilians.
The difference is intent. If many of the people here are to believed, the gunner was happily shooting anything that moved. Obviously that was not the case.
If I walk by you on the street on Monday and don't kill you, that's normal. Same thing happens Tuesday. That's normal. If on Wednesday, I see you walking down the street in a group of people, some of whom are armed with AK-47s, and you are heading towards friends of mine whom I believe that you are going to kill, and then I kill you, that's also normal. Well, at least it is in a war zone.
Are you such a person who would just drive past wounded and bleeding people laying on the street instead of helping them?
If I was by myself? I would have stopped and helped. If I had my kids with me, and saw fresh bleeding bodies? I'd get my kids the hell out of there, on the assumption that more bullets are probably on the way. Maybe I'd go back after, but no way I'd expose my kids to more danger than they were already in.
The fact they haven't killed one bunch of civilians doesn't justify them killing another bunch of civilians.
Clearly, it demonstrates that they a) identify their targets to the best of their ability, and b) don't fire if they believe that it will result in civilian deaths. Of course, that doesn't really fit with your world view. I suppose you'd rather grind your axe and indulge in ad hominem attacks and insults than actually consider things from more than one point of view.
You're deliberately misunderstanding the "accident" part. The gunner didn't know he was firing on civilians. He thought he was firing on insurgents.
I think the only way we could possibly have done things worse is by abruptly leaving after finding Saddam. I'd be willing to bet that it would be an even worse cesspool of violence and anarchy, and what little hope they may now have for the future would be gone.
What I find ironic is that most people here and there all want the same thing. We all want the Americans out of there. The question is how and when. The ongoing violence only makes withdrawal more difficult and more distant.
It also deepens the mystery of Wikileak's military source: Who is so disgruntled as to not only leak the video, but also edit out the slightest bit of redeeming footage?
TFA in Wired seems to provide an answer:
From the chat logs provided by Lamo, and examined by Wired.com, it appears Manning sensed a kindred spirit in the ex-hacker. He discussed personal issues that got him into trouble with his superiors and left him socially isolated, and said he had been demoted and was headed for an early discharge from the Army.
Hardly an unbiased source.
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)
It sounds like you want to take the existing internet business market, fracture it, keep the resulting pieces in separate silos, and award a monopoly on land lines to the telco industry (what about cable?). I don't like that idea, but hey, that's what opinions are all about. However, what you've just said flies in the face of what the original article is asking for - one bill to pay, one throat to choke, one entity to deal with. Simplicity.
Plus, merging land and mobile data provisioning is what the author is looking for, meaning that the last mile in many cases is the airwaves. 3/4G networks, microwave last-mile for rural ISPs, etc. As a matter of fact, I'd say that the future of last-mile internet connectivity is going to be mostly wireless, much like the present day state of the art in telephony.
Now, I'm completely fine with market internet rates, if the last mile rates are regulated ... Competition doesn't really work well for the last mile, which is why we have the mess we currently have.
Well, it isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than the US had under AT&T's regulated telephone monopoly. History shows that regulation means that the provider has no incentive to improve service or run more efficiently. The telco infrastructure of the US stayed in the stone ages for a long time because of that. Competition brought about big, fantastic changes and lower costs for consumers.
Competition is tough to foster in a wired last-mile scenario, but easier to get going in a wireless environment. Hence part of the reason I think the question of last-mile wires will be mostly moot in about 10 years.
The key is to regulate so that telecoms end up charging reasonable usage rates. Maybe force them to charge the same rates for corporate and home users - no way they'll try to charge fortune 500 companies crazy rates...
Maybe pricing has changed since I last checked, but no way do I want to pay business T1 or T3 rates for my home internet connection. I simply don't need the SLA that businesses need and pay for.
... you just got done stating that metered use would be self-regulating, and then you go on to state that external government regulation is the only way to solve unlimited usage. Why not allow the market to set the metered and unlimited rates, and allow people to choose which is right for them?
I don't get it
I disagree If someone is willing to pay for it, a capitalist society will deliver it. Service providers would be willing to offer contracts similar to this. Look no further than the bundling plans that cable and telco providers have been shilling over the last several years. Including an unlimited mobile data plan in there would not be a problem for a company like Verizon. The question is, is the price they would ask for truly unlimited service on a truly limited network is what Woods would be willing to pay?
I'd like to see the energy crisis solved this way. I shouldn't have to pay separately for gas for my car, heating oil for my house, and electricity as well! The fact that I've already paid for energy once should be enough. Corporations are so damn unreasonable these days.