Warning: This could be disturbing.

Has anyone seen this yet? I did a search & didn't see it posted yet.

/lawnchair

Who killed the other 137 journalists?

Not that it was deserved or okay, but mistakes happen, especially when you're hanging out in a warzone with a bunch of armed combatants. It sucks, but I don't see a lot of fault here, just an unfortunate situation. Maybe there's something I missed.

I watched it yesterday when it came out. I'd thought I was pretty much completely jaded and desensitized by internet shock videos. Turns out I was wrong, because I found this to be pretty f***ing sickening.

The bigger issue than the content of the video is what the government tried to do to cover it up.

Good reddit post about how to consider the content: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/bmu2d/saw_the_video_wikileaks_posted_heres_a_measured/

I don't see what the problem is. If they didn't want to get killed they probably should have been white, or not carrying guns in a warzone. Good riddance I say.

Very good article, this is exactly what I was thinking.

I wonder if the people who are actually defending the helicopter crew watched the same video that I did.

Group of people standing there non-threateningly = probably not a threat (maybe this was an honest mistake; I can see how the cameras might have looked like RPGs)

Wounded guy trying to crawl to safety = probably doesn't need to have more bullets put into him

Some innocent bystander trying to help the wounded = DON'T SHRED HIS VAN WITH YOUR 30mm GATLING YOU SUBHUMAN SADISTIC PILE OF ****

Random building that may or may not have had hostiles in it, with unarmed civilians in close proximity = yeah you know what, launch a missile at it, why not. Collateral damage, whatever. Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, etc. Christ this makes me angry.

Also that reddit write-up is wrong on almost all counts; he claims he's not trying to justify the killings after spending several paragraphs doing just that?

He's trying to explain things from a soldier's perspective.

What does that have to do with anything?

Justifying the act is not exactly the same as justifying the result. What exactly is non-threatening about a group of armed people meeting in close proximity to your troops in a warzone during a particularly active period? If you watched the video, you know that they assumed (in hindsight, incorrectly) that the van was picking up wounded insurgents and gathering weapons. This makes sense in the context. Also, they didn't shoot the wounded guy crawling to safety. They shot the guy running...which, again, in hindsight an innocent trying to escape, but in the context: an insurgent trying to escape to fight another day.

I'm curious.

**** happens. Perhaps the journalists were innocent and perhaps the vehicle had nothing to do with the insurgents but, hell, even American journalists "embed" with insurgents. Wouldn't feel too particularly bad if they met a similar fate.

Without reading the 15-6 investigation there really isn't much to go on, at least in the shorter video, but even I feel a tinge of emotion when I see gun camera footage of insurgents literally blasted apart by far superior weaponry, though.

As bad as you feel for the families of the innocents killed, you have to feel bad for the gunner, too. Even through the distance and fuzz of a camera, he still knows that he killed innocents and wounded (killed?) children. Nightmares, anyone?

Parts of what happened in that video might be understandable. Firing on the van was entirely inappropriate.

It's a ****ing war, justified or not. What did you expect? Sunshine, puppies, and rainbows?

Firing on the van was justified in that they were rescuing the terrorists the gunner just shot. If he hadn't killed the occupants of the van they would have collected all the guns and RPGs as well as the surviving terrorists and patched them up to kill more Americans another day.

They should know by now that's what they get for ****ing with the USA. We won't stand for their **** and give it back to them tenfold. I hope he gets more of them next time.

I found a few things interesting about the video.

• There didn't appear to be any shots fired when the soldier claimed that there was. Maybe my ears are failing me, maybe the liberal conspiracists edited out the sound or maybe the soldier lied but I sure as hell didn't hear anything.
• The camera wouldn't look anything like a gun to anyone that has ever seen a photo of a gun & a camera bag. I don't know what type of equipment these guys were viewing the scene w/ but YouTube technology is obviously superior to U.S. military technology because I could tell that it was probably a camera case or some type of carrying bag right away. You would think that these people would be trained to verify such things especially in an area w/ an abundance of journalists & especially when no one appears to be in any immediate danger.
• I've seen guys hanging out in front of my local gas station that look far more suspicious than any of these guys & I rarely ever see the police bothering them. I recognize the fact that this is a "war zone" but surely walking doesn't constitute fire & brimstone in any country.
• I also find it disturbing how these U.S. soldiers discuss lives being lost. I recognize the fact that people in many fields, including the health industry, make light of situations by joking as a psychological trick of sorts but I don't personally think that I could ever say those types of things about people that I'm murdering & especially not about children, regardless of how tan or Muslim they are. Then again, maybe that's why I'm sitting in front of my desk & not off killing tan people from around the world.

I think that Kyle90 summed up just about everything else that I was thinking.

You're comparing sitting at your computer watching videos, with knowledge of what exactly you're looking for, to making split second decisions while viewing live feed from a helicopter?

I don't know what type of equipment that they were using to view the scene but YouTube technology is apparently vastly superior. If I could've had access to a remote weapon system & live YouTube streaming of the scene, I couldn't saved a lot of lives that day & I have no military training whatsoever. I'm also guessing that you possess these skills as well because you're still a cop & have managed not to open fire on people carrying cameras. I'm all for giving people the benefit of the doubt but the lies about shots being fired sort of makes me think that they can't be trusted (this individual or individuals). I suppose that I'm going on the assumption that this soldier was watching the same thing as me & I'm thinking that I could do a better job. It also wasn't a split-second decision in this case & didn't even appear to be.

Point






Your head

Oh hai thar, IMO the gunner was a bit too gun-hoe asking for engagement orders by 'observing' RPGs and AK47s. It's good that the ROE have been changed since this incident, that helicopter was not remotely in any kind of danger from some guys hanging out in the street. I doubt that these guys will have much remorse, combat pilots are somewhat saved from war trama, in that they don't have to see disentgrated corpses up close.

Mentat, you're exactly right, the reason you don't think you could ever say those types of things about people you're killing is because you're not killing them. If it was your job to kill them, you'd probably say those things. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to do your job. What makes you think it's because they're tan or muslim? Do you think every solider in history has only killed tan or muslim people?

You also don't live in an area where people commonly carry around rifles and shoot at your friends. You also knew before you watched the video and WHILE you were watching the video thanks to the labels, who they were and that they had cameras. Are you so sure that you would have come to the same conclusion if you had not been told they were cameras beforehand? What about the other people that were right next to them who actually WERE carrying weapons? And what do you think "suspicious" groups look like? Do you think everyone hunches over and wrings their hands when they're scheming?
Also, the gunner didn't say that there were shots fired. He said they had a guy shooting, as in, in the act of shooting, as in, he was peeking around a corner with (what they thought was) an RPG, aiming it down the street. Edit: And I believe they mention later that the street he was aiming the "RPG" down was a street that had US troops on it on foot and in Bradleys. Which makes sense, it was probably what he was taking a picture of. Do you see how this situation is only apparent in hindsight, while at the time it would be an imminent threat to soldiers' lives?

Edit: Also, I'll bet you COULD have saved a lot of lives that day. THAT day. What about the day when they really did have RPGs? What about the day they were planting an IED? What about the day after they day you saw armed individuals gathered in the street: the day they were in a building, firing on US troops? Would you have saved any lives that day? Nope. You'd have done nothing...because you are not a soldier, and you can't make those decisions like they have to.

lol @ armchair moralists getting outraged over things they have no understanding of

Chances are that the soldier's video feed had a far higher resolution than that of that crappy YouTube video. However, that's just a guess & I'll leave that up to the experts to decide.

lol @ armchair loyalists not getting outraged over things they have no understanding of

My point is that you know what exactly you're looking for and you have the benefit of hindsight (and captions). If we dropped you in a war zone and made you make split second decisions based on a live (and obviously non-captioned and unedited) video feed, I don't think you would be so confident.

That's just my opinion.

But this wasn't a split second decision, was it?

Also, what did the guy hear when he said 'shots were fired'? I appreciate the fact US soldiers are immensely over-stressed, but this particular sequence were all REALLY bad calls, weren't they?

I agree w/ you. Hindsight does indeed give you a tremendous advantage. However, so does a high resolution video feed. I never claimed that I could make split-second decisions better than this soldier. However, I'm fairly confident that I could've made a not so quick decision, as should've been the case in this situation, better than this guy. I certainly wouldn't have opened fire on a van full of people dressed as civilians for what appeared to be rescue attempt. You're right that no one really knows what would happen until they're in that situation but I find it difficult to believe that we'd all make the same mistake.

The issue here isn't over whether the soldiers' mistake was understandable given the circumstances, or not.
The question is, when a soldier makes a mistake - and innocents die as a result of that - what happens then? Of course the military would prefer to handle everything internally, and expecting absolute transparency is unrealistic - but what appears to be an absolute cover-up of criminal negligence will inevitably inspire fear and moral disgust in all reasonable people.

I didn't watch the video. I got bored with their captions taking forever.

Nowhere am I saying people made the right decision here - my point is that it's completely unfair to think that someone in an risk-free environment watching this video and knowing exactly what to look for is the same as being in a combat zone.

It's easy to armchair quarterback.



Then join the military and go save the world. What does a terrorist vehicle look like, and what do combatants look like? I've never been in the military, but I can tell you that things in my line of work are not always and easy, clear and simple as people may think. I imagine they're faced with similar situations (albeit quite different, what with a war going on).

Mort-Hog, are you implying that the cover-up was criminal negligence or that the shooting was criminal negligence?

Surely the shooting. I can't think of a situation where a cover-up would be described as negligent.

My favorite part is when the one guys says "God damnit Kyle..." then Kyle says "All right, hahaha, I hit 'em..."

what makes me think here that the US military are trying to hide something is the fact that they refused to give access to the video footage to Reuters. In other cases they have freely given access but in this instance they haven't.

That for me says they know their pilots screwed up.

Watching the video and knowing beforehand that the people they shoot are unarmed civilians (which a lot of you are forgetting, they never found any weapons in the area, there is no question here, these were civilians) biases any opinion gained from the video, that aside there are various points during it that I sat back and with amazement at what was being said over the radio and how the pilots seemed very eager to shoot first and ask the questions later.

Also...why shoot in the first place? ever heard of falling back or not shooting in a heavily populated civilian area? I know they are there to enforce the peace and try to disarm the miliants yadda yadda yadda, but for **** sake have some common sense before you pull the trigger.

I can't say I know how terrorists/miliants would walk around, nor do I know the range of the guns the apache's fired with, but what I do know is that if I was one and I could hear attack helicopters in the distance I wouldn't just stroll down the street like these guys are. My guess is they heard the helicopters, they knew they weren't carrying anything and so had no reason to fear...but hey, camera cases from a distance can be deadly right?

BobTheMasher;

Does it irritate you when you basically tear apart someone's argument *cough* Mentat *cough* and rather than them responding to it, they ignore you post completely? That's why I don't get involved in these sorts of threads.

I always respond to BobTheMasher's posts as I'm sure he'd tell you from other debates. You either haven't bothered to notice or you're just being a dick. I responded to shorter posts because they were quick & to the point & so were my answers. My response to BobTheMasher's post is saved to a Pages document until I have time to finish it which is even less now that my wife is home (she gets pissed when I'm on here when she's home) & I feel the need to respond to your idiotic statement first. I also didn't respond to half of the posts in the iPad debate either but I guess that's because I was "destroyed" & not simply because I don't have the time.

Or it says they know that this war is already very unpopular and that they know what kind of reaction people are going to have after seeing it, and they're trying to minimize the damage. Doesn't necessarily mean the military believes the soldiers were wrong.

if they fell back every time insurgents used civilians for cover, we'd never kill any of them. That's why this war is so frustrating. The guys we're fighting have no regard for human life, whether soldier or civilian.

Ever heard of covert ops? It could have been just as likely that they weren't runniing *because* they were up to no good and didn't want to draw attention to themselves. (I know it's a done deal that they were civilians, I'm just saying that the fact they didn't try to run or take cover should not have proven anything to anyone.)

*shrug* fair enough. (To be honest, I don't read most of the threads on Massassi. I didn't know there was an iPad debate, for example.) I've just gotten annoyed in the past (not necessarily from you) when people take a well-written post that seems to make good points against their position, and either ignore it completely, or pick it apart and respond to little bits of it out of context to make the original poster look retarded. Jon`C's a master at this, which is part of the reason I dislike him so much.