Wikileaks has really misled the public
seminal.firedoglake.com
seminal.firedoglake.com
"That's the problem with the war in Iraq... It's insurgency based. They use vans to come up and pick up the bodies, but truth be told they don't care about the bodies, they come to get the weapons/rpg's.
I know it's popular to hate America and our military action on reddit, but this particular engagement is necessary. Anyone who's ever spent time on the ground in country will tell you the same. If you are going to fight an insurgency war, you have to engage these individuals. We have made it VERY well known throughout the country that they cannot even make it look like they are going for weapons. The problem with this situation is one i've seen personally on multiple occasions... The Van pulls up, takes the bodies of the men, leaves any children/women, and takes all the weapons. Then they take pictures, and blast them across the airwaves saying Americans murdered unarmed women/children.
Queue the downvotes, but i speak from experience. If you sent us over there to operate under the absolute "good guy" mantra that you all expect, we'd end up with 100x more losses than we already have... And the insurgents would know they could get away with doing virtually anything. Honestly, the only way to end this is to get the government to get us out of that country."
http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/bmooi/wikileaks_video_j...
While on one hand, it may very well be that troops are more effective (by some simple measure) when they fire first and ask questions later, on the other, if those apache gunmen were in the shoes of the marines on the ground who have to carry wounded kids out of the rubble, or worry about those same orphans throwing grenades into their humvee windows a week later, maybe they'd be as careful looking for children as they are for RPG's.
The shooting has stopped by then. There was a long pause after the shooting and before the van arrived. Their fatal "mistake" was to assume Americans wouldn't shoot at a van that picked up an injured journalist to be taken to the hospital.
> would guess that what made the van suspect was that it drove into the middle of a battle.
Just to clarify things. Americans here are the invaders that _created_ the battle (both on a micro and macro scale). The children in the van were just going to school and their father wanted to save a man's life. Shells exploding around them is just business as usual. That is their country, their backyard. They didn't want it, they didn't drive "into" it. It came _to them_ on their way to school.
Putting him out of his misery? Please...
Hacker News is becoming reddit, except reddit has a hide button.
What is clear is that the journalist and his driver were in the presence of armed Iraqis carrying AK-47s and RPGs at the wrong time and in the wrong place. It was common practice for Iraqi stringers for news agencies like Reuters to embed themselves with insurgents in the hope of being extremely close to the story and getting pictures they would not otherwise have been able to obtain, but it was a very risky thing to do. If soldiers have already seen the people around you carrying guns and RPGs, they're a whole lot more likely to misinterpret your camera lens as an RPG when it peeks around a corner.
There were also two Apaches at the scene, but it's not entirely clear which crew is making each comment on the radio and what they can see as we only have one viewport into this event, which comes from the gunner's sight of only one of the Apaches. It is entirely plausible that the other Apache crew did clearly see weapons and that, outside the field of view of the camera we're looking at, they saw the black van picking up weapons. Further, each helicopter also has a separate sight for the pilot which can be slewed on its own axis and which we cannot see.
In short, the video lacks context and it's difficult to make a conclusive judgement without that context. We are given only one limited viewport into this event and expected to pronounce judgement on four guys who at once had a much broader and more detailed view of the situation but who also, unlike us, had to process that information in real-time, not from a video which could be rewound and played back. Whatever happened here, I'm not as ready to call it murder as WikiLeaks and some of the commenters here have been.
The official military statement about the incident was as follows:
"The Apache crew fired because militants 'were endangering the stability of Iraq' and because they had positive identification that the militants 'had weapons and were using them against coalition and Iraqi security forces.'"
There aren't any coalition or Iraqi security forces in the area, and none are ever mentioned in the video. So while it's possible that an RPG was found at the scene, it's just as possible that the military was lying about both.
Your assertion that there were no Iraqi or coalition ground forces in the area is not supported by the video.
[1] http://duckbar.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/c7/c76f1e685afe...
Regardless, this discussion is now irrelevant, as it has been confirmed elsewhere that the photo I posted above was taken at this scene, presumably while Namir was peeking around the corner. That photo shows US troops no further than 200 m away, if I recall that lens's capabilities correctly.
They specifically mention a Bradley ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Bradley ) in the video.
Leaving aside your argument, don't you find the voice track coming from the gunner shocking? The man actually had glee in his voice as he was gunning down people that obviously had no possible chance to defend themselves or harm him. An AK-47 vs. an Apache helicopter is no threat.
As others have stated, at the range from the gunner's PoV, an RPG, even if he had one, cannot hit the helicopter.
The fact that there are cold-blooded killers in the cockpit of a helicopter, that take joy in killing innocent civilians should shock each and every one of us.
Aren't you sick of being an apologist for an unjustified killing in an unjustified war?
No. My argument is that we are lacking a huge amount of context by virtue of having only a single narrow view into this event, through the targeting device of only one of the crewmen in only one of the Apaches, so it's foolish to assume that the statements made over the radio are fabrications based on what we're seeing in this video alone. There are at least six separate viewpoints here; those of Bushmaster 06, Hotel 26 and each of the four crewmen in the Apaches; we only have access to a portion of one of those. Just because something mentioned over the radio is not seen in this video does not mean it did not exist. Of course, it doesn't mean it did exist either, but that should go without saying.
I am convinced, based on what I did see in this video, that some of the men were armed. But I can't say that the crew of both Apaches were entirely in the right in the way they behaved or that they were entirely in the wrong, because I don't think it's possible to make such a definitive judgement without having additional context.
Leaving aside your argument, don't you find the voice track coming from the gunner shocking? The man actually had glee in his voice as he was gunning down people that obviously had no possible chance to defend themselves or harm him. An AK-47 vs. an Apache helicopter is no threat. As others have stated, at the range from the gunner's PoV, an RPG, even if he had one, cannot hit the helicopter.
If you think that all soldiers shoot their enemies with grim remorse and regret, you're naive about the realities of war. Those pilots & gunners were convinced those guys are all insurgents (which some appear to have been) and they were pumped with adrenaline which tends to produce a slightly euphoric feeling. It has always been like this; do you really think that bomber crews and fighter-bomber pilots in World War II didn't whoop with joy when they scored a direct hit and wiped out a bunch of enemy soldiers? Of course they did. The quiet introspection comes later, when the adrenaline wears off and they're alone with their thoughts back at base.
Your comments about there being no threat to the helicopters are irrelevant, because the perceived threat was obviously to the vehicles of Bushmaster element, less than 100 m from the street corner where the action took place. The Apaches were also flying in a hostile area, where RPGs had brought down Apaches before, so that would have amped the adrenaline up even further.
The fact that there are cold-blooded killers in the cockpit of a helicopter, that take joy in killing innocent civilians should shock each and every one of us.
It's very clear from the video and the investigation that the crew did not think they were killing civilians, so that's a false premise.
Aren't you sick of being an apologist for an unjustified killing in an unjustified war?
That's hardly a fair or honest question. I have made no statements about the Iraq War as a whole and it's your assumption, based on limited evidence, that the killing was unjustified. A reasonable case can and has been made that the killing, at least of the journalists, was excusable when considering the context.
I have not come down on either side of the argument, but I have on principle sought to oppose some of the more knee-jerk reactions that have made unjustified assumptions about the event based only on this video. This is an exceptionally explosive issue so it's very important that the debate which surrounds it is conducted in a careful and logical manner without excessive emotion. Posts like yours, with emotional arguments and inflammatory language, aren't helpful.
I would be very very surprised if the device at 4:12 is an RPG. It looks and behaves like a long lens camera. At 4:15 you can see a space between the device and the body of the person. An RPG is also quite heavy and has a distinct shape and you wouldn't generally turn it around a corner.
As there also according to wikileaks were photographers on the scene. It's just far more likely that it's one of the front two guys who carries something that picks up his camera and take some pictures. If that is the case, then I would have to question the chopper crews ability to recognize weapons on the ground.
You think it looks like a camera now. Keep in mind that the helicopter was called in to look for a group of men that were firing at troops on the ground that are down the street from where the "camera" is pointing at 4:15. Again, an RPG isn't quite heavy. The standard RPG-7 weighs 15 pounds.
To me the chopper crew is just sloppy and they shouldn't be. I get why some grunt storming buildings may accidentally shoot someone holding up a broom or something. But these guys should have the discipline and training to be able to stay cool and wait things out. There's clearly not a full blown street fight going on at this location. And what happens at 5:13?
But frankly I'll always be on the side of war corespondents after reading "My war gone by, I miss it so" and seeing "War Photographer".
So, no one in Baghdad uses bodyguards? All Iraqi policemen must be at all the time in uniform, even for covert entry? I don't think an AK is any convincing ground for believing them to be insurgents. Americans aren't the only ones with rights to carry guns, specially in the most dangerous city on Earth.
At 4:12, it definitely looks like there's an RPG. Even more so at 4:19.
It's a pity you couldn't be bothered to watch thirty seconds more of the video. At 4:49, when the helicopter goes around the house, we see the full group, one second or so before the fire starts. No one is holding an RPG.
What you say that looks like one is actually a glimpse of some sort of tube. I guess construction workers must have a hard time on Baghdad, if that's grounds for use of deadly force.
The helicopter was called in by ground troops who were taking small arms fire from a small group of men in this area.
They seem very relaxed, for insurgents in the middle of a fire fight. They are walking, move in a close group, are calm and walk exposed in the middle of the street. Not exactly standard military procedure.
It's unwise to approach an active combat zone with weapons.
It's a pity you couldn't be bothered to watch thirty seconds more of the video. At 4:49, when the helicopter goes around the house, we see the full group, one second or so before the fire starts. No one is holding an RPG.
I see a crowd of people at that point. It's difficult to tell what the people in the back are doing. Presumably, there could still be someone peaking around the corner at the Humvee down the road. Further, I already saw several guns, and so did the apache crew. The decision to fire had already been made.
They seem very relaxed, for insurgents in the middle of a fire fight. They are walking, move in a close group, are calm and walk exposed in the middle of the street. Not exactly standard military procedure.
This isn't Mission Impossible. When the bullets aren't flying and there is no enemy in sight, there isn't a reason to expect people to move like there are.
However, if you made a really big mistake and went to war with a country which posed no credible threat to you (at least in hindsight when this shooting took place) I'd imagine people would err on the side of caution when shooting somebody's family and loved ones.
At least in this part of the world, what is coming across is that your army does not care much about killing people - if they are not American or Western.
And to add some rhetoric, what gives America the moral right to talk about human rights when the Iraqi death toll exceeds well over one hundred thousand? -- What happened in Tiananmen is a mere _hundredth_ of what is happening in Iraq.
Killing ten Iraqis to save an American soldier is not justifiable, any which way you look at it.
Well, the counter argument is that by this logic nobody can talk about human rights. Until very recently in human history the Europeans brutally conquered half the world and effectively turned the "savage people" that were unlucky enough to survive the raping and the pillaging into slaves. Listening to anyone who points out legitimate human rights violations is better than listening to no one who points out legitimate human rights violations. It's just more constructive this way.
Killing ten Iraqis to save an American soldier is not justifiable, any which way you look at it.
This is rhetoric, and isn't an interesting statement about what happened in this video, how it was handled by the military, or how it was marketed and leaked by wikileaks. What possible constructive purpose could this statement serve?
It wasn't just the Europeans. This is the story of conquerors.
Well, the counter argument is that by this logic nobody can talk about human rights... All I was saying was that when you don't practice what you preach, your credibility suffers.
This is rhetoric, and isn't an interesting statement about what happened in this video... Isn't this exactly what is happening on the ground, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan? Do you read any local news (easily available on the internet) from those countries?
I don't think many people understand the magnitude of suffering in those countries. Do the math, Iraq is a tenth of the size of the US. Work out the per-capita "suffering".
That's not what you said. You said Americans don't have the right to discuss human rights.
>...what gives America the moral right to talk about human rights...
Yep, but it seems at least the Europeans have evolved from that point.
How many of the Iraqi causalities were Iraqi or foreign insurgents killing Iraqi civilians?
Nobody seems to care less about those numbers. The biggest threat to an Iraqi citizens life (back then) were insurgents and criminals. That is who the gunner thought he was firing on.
"Killing ten Iraqis to save an American soldier is not justifiable, any which way you look at it."
No, but surely any solider in the world would kill 100 enemy combatants to save his friend.
This incident and this war do not make any other tragedy, such as Tiananmen, any more or less terrible.
As messed up as it may sound to you, I'd rather my friends make it home. As far as I'm concerned, the blood is on the hands of the people who started and continued the war; not the ones who have to actually fight it.
> not the ones who have to actually fight it.
The nazis probably said the same.
I think it's laughable to try to draw a comparison between soldiers messing[0] up and causing collateral damage and the Holocaust.
[0] edit: unnecessarily foul language
That's not what you said. You said...
> the blood is on the hands of the people who started and continued the war > not the ones who have to actually fight it.
I disagree with that statement. With the same argument, one can justify all war killings. Even the act of Nazis. We don't bring in Godwins law when discussing and comparing war and killings.
You can certainly make an argument that they're the same, but I think there's a pretty clear practical distinction between the two.
I don't find people do much discriminating between different groups of Nazis. The infantry perpetuated violence and death just as much as the death-camp members. After all, what do you think they did to the newly-conquered populations those polite infantrymen rounded up?
There's also a difference between the world 100 years ago and today. We live in a more civilized, more peaceful time. The violence in Iraq is some of the broadest and most destructive of our day.
The whole point of this video is about killing of innocent man, women and children by shooters who wanted to kill. Not soldiers killing soldiers. Whether they were rounded up or not, or put on a train or not shifts the focus.
The discussion is not about does this resembles the Nazis or not. It's about: are we looking for a justification for this killing by falling so low on the morality ground, that the same logic can even be used by the Nazis for justifying their killings.
Good thing that none of my friends went, your friends do not have to go either.
wow...if you delete your post, i promise i'll delete my quoting you to remove the evidence of your ignorance.
ignorance is not the same as factually incorrect. if i said to an obese woman "you are looking fat today," though correct, i would either be behaving purposely mean or ignorant to social norms.
similarly, someone telling another person [the people you love who have chosen to defend your country in war have done so needlessly] is ignorant to social norms.
since you are not american is it safe to assume you personally know zero american soldiers at war right now?
These are the people who authorized, and continue to authorize, having troops there?
Do you not hold the government ultimately culpable for this? Claiming Bill Kristol et al started the war is just asinine.
I didn't say that.
>Do you not hold the government ultimately culpable for this?
Of course the government is ultimately culpable.
> Claiming Bill Kristol et al started the war is just asinine.
Bill Kristol et al created the meme for invading Iraq.
The reason why the rest of the world refuses to accept the situation in Iraq as a liberation and in stead perceives it as a cynical battle for control over resources is that:
1) the invaders are not prepared to suffer losses on par
with their 'enemies'
2) more people have died under the 'liberators' than
would have died in many years of previous occupation
3) the situation in Iraq is still viewed through the
terms of lives lost by the invaders instead of lives
lost by those 'liberated'
4) there would not be as much or more accent on
protecting Iraqs oil resources as there has been
on saving Iraqi lives
If you liberate someone you place yourself in a position of sacrifice, you're willing to go the distance in order to protect those you liberate. A hostage rescue team goes in knowing full well they're going to try to protect the lives of the hostages at all cost. A hostage team that would go in to protect their own lives at significant extra risk to the lives of the hostages would not get much recognition, even if they would save the occasional hostage.
Because you're making a generalization and treating "America" as a single entity. It's not. It's government allows its individual citizens to pick and choose what they support.
It's very likely the "human rights" people also oppose the war in Iraq.
As far as the government goes, it then amplifies the voices of its individual citizens so that it may seem like "America" is contradicting itself, but it's not.
It's ideas you should be targeting, not the concept of "America" or "westerners."
So what you should ask is "What gives human rights activist warhawks the moral right to talk about human rights when the Iraqi death toll exceeds well over one hundred thousand?" When you find such a person, you should ask him/her.
It'll be much better if the strategy continues to play out as it has been. The country is largely stabilized. More people were murdered in Baltimore last year, than US troops were killed in Iraq. In Iraq in 2009 there were 150 total military fatalities, 149 of which were US troops. In Baltimore, there were 238 homicides. Of those military fatalities, I count 75 combat deaths.
Further, Iraq has become richer and more free. Their bonds are on par with California's. If in the end, we come in get rid of the assholes that were running the place, rebuild and modernize their infrastructure, stabilize their country, make them rich, and withdraw, the Great Satan probably won't seem too bad. If this can be done in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the people in the surrounding scum-hole countries should start to wonder if they wouldn't be better off a little more like the guy next door.
How about "Not going there in the first place" ?
That's the first part. The second part is that the Army and other forces have made it very clear that attempting to take any weapons from the battlefield counts as engagement, and they will fire at anyone attempting to do so. Apparently this was a big problem during the start of the war - if they took out insurgents, their guns would often be grabbed and ran away with, and presumably used again later. So that's a clear situation right now - attempting to remove weapons from a battlefield will get you fired upon.
It's unclear who was in the van, and if they were attempting to take weapons, though.
I can understand some fog-of-war "I thought the camera was a gun." excuses, but just because they say on the radio that they were "possibly" picking up weapon doesn't mean that they actually saw them do any such thing.
I've watched it twice and it looks to me exactly like they shot up a van that was trying to help a wounded man.
Also, if we're talking about the Conventions, were these illegal combatants? (I haven't watched the video.)
I think the key part is armed combatants in combat - you can't just open fire on any civilians who are helping an unarmed combatant after he's removed from combat. I'm not an expert though - I spent a bit of time reading on Geneva about a year ago, and just refreshed my memory today.
> Also, if we're talking about the Conventions, were these illegal combatants? (I haven't watched the video.)
There's still some limited protections granted to people fighting in "non-international conflicts" under Protocol II, a 1977 Amendment to the Geneva Convention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_II
They do have much less protections than soldiers fighting between two sovereign nations.
I personally campaigned against the US + allies invasion of Iraq. I even stood for election in Australia with that as part of my platform. I door-knocked with petitions to not invade - without much success. I also spent 9 years in the Royal Australian Air Force as an officer, and as such I have had to study the Geneva Conventions and the Laws of Armed Combat - officers need to know what is a legal order and what is not a legal order to give.
The thing is, if you are talking about combatants that aren't in uniform, the Geneva Conventions no longer apply - a uniform is the sine qua non of the treaty.
The idea is that combatants put on uniforms - yes, this makes them easier to identify, but the uniform makes it easy to discriminate combatants from non-combatants, thereby protecting non-combatants. When combatants choose to not wear a uniform, they are every bit as responsible for civilian casualties, as those that mistakenly fire upon civilians.
This engagement is a classic example - are the people in the van combatants aiding combatants? or are they good samaritan civilians aiding other innocent civilians? Or are they civilians aiding combatants, or of course, I guess it's possible that they were combatants aiding civilians. The point is that we don't know - even with hindsight we are unable to identify exactly who was who. Soldiers that think they have an RPG that might by lining them up certainly aren't going to be willing to give the people in question the benefit of the doubt. That is the fog of war.
You can complain about the US being in Iraq, but honestly, looking at the video, I don't find anything much that is shocking about the actions of the soldiers - they are perhaps a touch insouciant about the bloody mayhem that they unleash, but I suspect that a lot of that comes from the relief they are feeling at having neutralised what they perceived as a deadly threat. No, I really am not seeing a lot that was wrong in that video. What was wrong was the fact that the US was there in the first place...
As you note, the rules of the game drastically change when combatants decline to be "legal", although from what little I know the Geneva Conventions do apply, just not in a way an illegal combatant will find appealing.
They are deliberately set up to so that there are strong incentives to stay within them, to not be an illegal combatant ... e.g. as far as the Conventions are concerned (not talking about what our Uniform Code of Military Niceness (UCMJ) or your equivalent says), as I understand it they can be executed out of hand if captured on the battlefield (I assume some due process is required, but only to establish their status).
E.g. as I recall, when we captured around a dozen non-uniformed Nazi saboteurs who'd been landed by sub? in the NE of the US during WWII, they were tried on that basis and then executed.
Similarly, in the GWOT, we are not obligated to treat captured illegal combatants as POWs, and have the option to interrogate them (e.g. Gitmo), something you're not allowed to do to a POW.
That's like using a medical vehicle to transport combatants and then come back and pick up the wounded from the same vehicle.
There is no indication it was the same black vehicle at the start of the video. No one on the ground or air claimed it was. Furthermore, even if it was, no one claimed the black vehicle at the start was a target or contained suspects! The air merely stated it passed under their targetting crosshair.
The suspect as reported by the ground was ONE MAN, who had appeared in front of their Bradley.
A man covered in blood is crawling along the side of the road as you drive by. You say, "My god! This man is injured! We need to help him!" You and your friend jump out to help an injured man, not really sure what's going on, and tell your children to wait in the car. Suddenly you're dead, because a helicopter flying high overhead killed you instantly because you were moving an injured man.
That isn't a hypothetical, that's what happend. And if you ignore the chatter of a few pilots eager to score more kills, it's very clear that these people had no connection to any activity on the scene. The Van is nowhere in sight until the very end of the engagement.
What's more, it's clear the pilot is eager to kill. He reports it in the most biased of terms: mentioning they were "possibly recovering weapons" despite seeing NO such action. How do we know he knew such a thing, you might ask? Because just moments before he was literally begging them to pick up a gun so he could kill them, and in the end he got a fire order anyways because of a biased report.
The actions of the pilots in that video were reprehensible and it is unfortunate that they will most likely be shielded from prosecution. On that day they ceased to be revered servicemen for the united states and became a representation of every flaw in our military system that Americans revile. They teetered on the edge of becoming war criminals. At the very least they should be dishonorably discharged.
> Suddenly you're dead, because a helicopter flying high overhead killed you instantly because you were moving an injured man.
Im not sure if it was just your wording but it was several minutes before they fired on them.
> it's very clear that these people had no connection to any activity on the scene. The Van is nowhere in sight until the very end of the engagement.
Have you watched the full 39 minute video? I've only had time to watch it once (so am withholding my full analysis of the engagement) but the same van is visible near the start of the video. It may not have been the same van but it seems a natural and fair assumption that it might be.
Saying things like "it is clear" based on the single perspective of the Apache gunship seems a little clear cut...
(not that I disagree entirely with your point)
It didn't take “several minutes”. They hadn't even moved the injured man to the car before they were dead. And it's unlikely that they understood they were in a combat zone. Those helicopters fly high above the scene.
> Have you watched the full 39 minute video?
I've watched the full video once and then after that the shortened one.
> I've only had time to watch it once (so am withholding my full analysis of the engagement) but the same van is visible near the start of the video.
You can't tell if it's the same van on IR. They don't have a color, and I didn't see enough detail on the vehicles we swept over initially to resolve it without color information.
But even if that were the case, would it be so unusual? That wasn't a combat zone, it was an inhabited residential area. People live there.
> It may not have been the same van but it seems a natural and fair assumption that it might be.
Even if you allow for that, the people in the video never take any clear action constituting engagement. They were addressing a wounded man, and showed 0 evidence of retrieving weapons.
> Saying things like "it is clear" based on the single perspective of the Apache gunship seems a little clear cut...
I'm only speaking from the perspective of the pilot's actions. They massacred a family and innocent journalists. And I have to tell you, if they think a tulip hood on a 200mm lens looks like an RPG, then someone is in dire need of a refresher course. That shape couldn't be a more distinct signal of photographic equipment.
The entire engagement and the series of decisions that lead up to it stink.
It was one minute; were both wrong I guess.
> But even if that were the case, would it be so unusual?
According to all of the material (the video and released statements) a van was identified as ferrying combatants around. In the 39 minute video this is actually touched on and in the statements it is explained this was known by the pilots
(don't forget we have one gun cam video from one of the apaches during the latter stages of the operation - previously more action with other gunships had occurred. Without all of that material I dont think we can make a fully accurate assessment)
> Even if you allow for that, the people in the video never take any clear action constituting engagement. They were addressing a wounded man, and showed 0 evidence of retrieving weapons.
Absolutely; I'd not dispute that, and I agree. This was not what I was disagreeing with :)
Im not going to comment on the rest of what your saying because though I disagree in part it's not what I was disputing.
In the moment of the firefight it was unclear whether the van was armed or not. Was was clear to the soldiers was that the van responded very quickly to a group of wounded people who had several confirmed weapons among them. Also, as others have mentioned, the soldiers knew the insurgency has used similar tactics in the past to salvage weapons and ammo.
Or my theory: The van COULD have been driven by aliens from Orion 3. Or the van COULD have been driven by the guy from the future who wanted to stop the LHC again by fighting in Iraq. COULD be, you must admit!
I have it on good authority from people who were actually on the ground that soldiers regularly keep RPG's and AK-47's in the Humvees such that if they do kill an innocent civilian, they just place the AK-47 or RPG on or near the victim to make them look like an insurgent. I don't know if that's what happened in this particular instance, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was.
Edit: I guess I'm being down voted for hearsay? Well, I worked with a number of soldiers and have a few friends who are infantry. This does happen, whether people want to accept it or not. Again, it could be that there was someone, or multiple people, were armed in this particular instance. I don't know. I haven't, to my knowledge, met anyone that was involved in this incident to ask. I have, however, talked to a number of people that were on the ground, that did have to take the lives of other people, and did have to cover things up when they made a mistake.
I feel if this was readily admitted to yourself it would have been admitted to others too and, by now, made it to the mainstream news. Where it would have been a massive, massive story.
I also feel all we have is your word and really that's not enough for such a huge claim!
Finally statements such as whether people want to accept it or not sound a lot like "typical" internet style rhetoric used to attach credence to a story.
There's a difference in what some people are willing to say to a friend and what people are willing to say to a reporter. Honestly, it's surprising to me that more things like this incident and other like it haven't made it to the mainstream media. Ask any soldier that was on the ground (especially around 2007), and they'll tell you that, maybe, 10% of what is going on in Iraq is actually being reported. There's a bunch of stuff that goes on that you will never hear about.
From what I can tell, most people that were over there would rather leave most of it behind them. I haven't met anyone that's come back better for it, and very few of them are willing to go into any detail about the incidents unless it's with someone they're extremely comfortable with. When they do open up, it seems to come with an understanding that it won't be shared, and if it is, no names or specifics will be brought up.
Even after leaving Iraq, these guys can still face penalties if it's found that they were covering things up. I'm not sure what, if anything, they'd be charged with, but most of them are still within the Statutes of Limitations of the UCMJ for Court Marshal, and there are worse punishments beyond that that have no Statutes of Limitations.
I trust the stories that were told to me because they came from multiple people that weren't connected save for being in the military and having been stationed in Iraq at some point in time. If my word isn't enough for you (and I don't blame you if it isn't) then feel free to pass it off as another random person on the internet repeating a possible fabrication.
If this is true it is more than a step beyond what we have seen here. In the video we see a tragically mistaken engagement (which I understand) and then a terrible, idiotic, but I feel not malicious, attack on unarmed civilians. Even the restriction of information released by the army, whilst something I don't agree with, is understandable.
However; finding a mistake on the ground then covering it up by planting weapons? That's fraud and a war crime. It's morally and legally reprehensible.
This is why I feel it is probably not true (or a one off you have heard about); if it is a prevalent thing then it surely would have been reported by now (I cannot believe there is not one person in the US army that would be morally outraged by this).
If it is true; it needs to be outed, stopped and prosecuted.
Of everything posted on this subject this idea is the one that sickens me the most :(
Now, imagine these guys come back and are generally able to continue to carry on some sort of a normal life at home. There's a lot of training involved here, and part of it is that you were simply ordered to do it. The chain of command is a real force, something the average soldier respects enough to go into a situation that very well could end their life. They also fear it. It's a force that's almost worse than death. Would you want to admit mistakes, or would you feel better about simply covering them up? This hypothetical soldier is already hardened enough to take the life of another person without feeling intense amounts of guilt. What is covering up a mistake compared to that?
There's also an insane amount of camaraderie amongst soldiers. These guys are willing to go into the line of fire to get back a piece of their buddy to send back home, because no soldier gets left behind. Would you risk your hide to get back part of your friend's dead body in order to have a proper burial? I don't know if I would, but that's a fairly ubiquitous feeling amongst soldiers. These guys will fight and die for their fellow soldiers, dead or alive. If you would already put your life on the line for someone, why wouldn't you help them cover something up?
Finally, the perception of people (civilians or combatants) from the view of a soldier is horribly skewed from what it is at home. They aren't really humans when they're on the battlefield. They're targets. The guilt doesn't really hit until after these guys get home. When you're in the midst of it, you're worried about your own survival, and the survival of those you care about. They don't seem to be particularly worried about the collateral damage. If they make a few mistakes, oh well. It's better than not pulling the trigger and finding out they were actually the enemy.
I'm not saying it's okay. It's certainly deplorable behavior. I'm just saying it's understandable, from where I sit. If I were put in a similar situation, I'm not sure how I would react. No one does, but the only way to prevent is to simply not go to war.
In 2001 one policeman killed 3 unarmed guys in a gas station. Then he took the bodies to the street and put a knife near one body. He claimed that it was an assault, but later he was found guilty and sentence to prison.
Article in spanish: http://www.clarin.com/diario/2002/01/07/o-02001.htm
Google translation: http://translate.google.com.ar/translate?js=y&prev=_t...
If you were an USAA general, would you promote to commander someone who would gave permission to kill based on faint suspicions and their definition of "very quickly"? Because that doesn't sound like an official. That sounds like a God.
Imagine you're there, in the arena, adrenaline practically oozing out of your pores. You're 500 feet above the one of the most dangerous cities in the world [1], a warzone that's claimed the lives of thousands of young men, just like you, and you've just taken out the armed enemy. That was the enemy. And that guy laying there still is the enemy. And so is anyone helping him. And now a van has pulled up, unidentified. You don't know who or what is in that van and whether it is armed or not. You know the reality,the statistics, and they're not in your favor. So you do as anyone in that situation would do, with limited information and a hell of a lot of empirical data. You neutralize the threat. You destroy them and live to see another day.
[1] 2007 was the bloodiest year to date in Iraq - http://icasualties.org/
What exactly was the "threat" here? The helicopter was a mile away and in no danger of not "live to see another day" ?
(err why the downvotes? That was a straightforward question. The parent seemed to imply that the shooters were doing it in order to "live to see another day". Was anyone threatening the helicopter in any credible fashion?)
It is NOT true that 'anyone helping him' is also an enemy. That is just a recipe for war crimes.
It's really blowing my mind that there are people on this site, which is ostensibly full of informed and educated people, arguing that it's okay to kill someone just because you're not sure and they're helping someone you shot.
This is because even though nobody wants to admit it, we've gained nothing, and we will continue to do so, because this was a publicity stunt from Day One and now it's a political third rail thanks to the morons who direct what passes for a national discourse in this pathetic shadow of a democracy.
Oil contracts in us$?
What the soldiers are doing is mostly shielding their butts while they maintain their presence. They are not helping the invaded civilians if they are also killing scores of them every now and then while being unable to stop the insurgents who are doing the same thing.
Err.. no. Under Iraqi law, everyone was allowed to keep one gun at home. These guns were mostly AK-47s (because that was what was issued to the army). See http://johnrlott.tripod.com/armediraqis.html for example discussion of this.
I believe there was an attempt to change this law during 2007, but confiscation was not widely enforced and the law has since been changed back.
So the quoted comment may not have been entirely accurate with regards to Iraqis as a whole, but it was in fact accurate with regards to Iraqis carrying weapons in the street and the fact that there was no such thing as an armed Iraqi escort for journalists.
Yet still I’m glad for the leak - for the first time in months I heard more discussion and awareness that a war we’re bankrolling is still raging instead of celebrity infididelity.
(via @chrisloos)
But I agree with your main point. Context is everything, Wikileaks could have handled this better.
Military tribunals should be public record (like civilian trials) and the public that funds the military should be allowed to see what's going on over there and why certain things happened. ESPECIALLY when there were possible non-combatant casualties (I'm talking about the alleged camera men)
Clearly the names of the soldiers would have to be withheld to avoid retribution but there should be some public record when something like this happens
http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%2...
I suppose that this information wouldn't have been released, at least for a long time, without their hand being forced by wikileaks. However it is also not reasonable to expect everything to be immediately public; there is going to be a ton of sensitive information, and it's not practical to redact and release everything by default. Obviously, it's in the US interest for this kind of thing not to be front page news, but that doesn't mean that by not publicizing it there is a coverup or something illegal going on either. Everybody, including Wikileaks, has an agenda.
The site seems to be down.
"Unknown Error
Troubleshoot issues with Windows SharePoint Services. "
SharePoint? :-P
Did you see the part where the dying journalist is bleeding out on the curb and trying to crawl for cover? The helicopter gunner is saying something to the effect of "just pick up a weapon just pick up a weapon"; he's looking for an excuse to pull the trigger. Howabout the part before they shoot of the van that was trying to help people get out of the area? The gunner kept changing the subject back to whether or not he could open fire on it. Again, he wanted to kill the people inside, wanted to see a big explosion.
Yes, there are bad things that happen in war, this video is meant to illuminate the manner in which some of these bad things are happening.
Again, it isn't that people were killed, it was how they were killed and why they were killed.
Edit: this comment comes across a little more harshly than I intended. The reason isn't you; it's that I just finished watching the Wikileaks founder in an interview, and his self-righteousness in making the same point really turned me off. The guy could barely contain his glee. I think this kind of outrage is all about stroking one's own moral delicacies. Expecting anything at all about killing people to be decent is foolish.
Mainly I'm angry at him for ruining my faith in Wikileaks and turning my world into one in which now no one plays that vital role. Guess I was the naive one. I had thought they were something like the Red Cross of information. Now they seem like ideologues who want to get on TV.
One more edit: now that I think of it, I should have figured this out from the way they were hyping the video before they released it.
Ok one more: there's clearly controversy about whether the soldiers followed the rules or not. That question is serious. But I highly doubt any rules of engagement have anything to say about how much fun killing is not supposed to be. This is part of the don't-ask-don't-tell contract (the real one) that society has with the military: here are the conditions under which you can be a serial killer; we will call you a hero for it; just don't tell us about it.
How far are you willing to take this argument? Statistically speaking, it's to be expected that invading armies will rape a substantial portion of the female population. Would it therefore be "prissy" to be outraged if this happens?
>This is part of the don't-ask-don't-tell contract (the real one) that society has with the military: here are the conditions under which you can be a serial killer; we will call you a hero for it; just don't tell us about it.
I think it's still ok to be disturbed by that. It may be true that this incident is just one example of the generally terrible nature of war. But that doesn't make it any less terrible, or make people's reactions to it illegitimate.
I hope that this sort of reaction becomes more and more common, so that we eventually figure out that war is, you know, a bad thing.
That being said, it is naive to unleash violence and not expect it to spill over. So I guess in the case of war rape I would say that while it's not prissy to be outraged by it, it is to be surprised.
As a side note, I've never been comfortable with these kinds of arguments that go too far beyond the immediate context. A context grounds a problem; it gives you a real situation to refer back to and prevent going off the rails. The more purely abstract these things become, the more arbitrary they get. I don't trust disembodied reason. But that is a complete tangent; sorry!
Well, it would be incongruent to do that, yes, but I don't ask them or pay them or celebrate them.
I expect the soldiers in the video are just doing what a lot of people would do in the same situation. That might make their behavior in some sense "normal", but it doesn't make it OK, or beyond reasonable criticism.
Most of what you're saying could equally well be applied to (e.g.) criticism of suicide bombers. It may well be the case that suicide bombers are not, as a rule, unusually evil people. If you have the relevant life experiences, you might even have a sense that you'd do the same thing if you were in their position -- in the same way that it's easy for an American to feel some sympathy for the soldiers in this video. Nonetheless, the actions of suicide bombers are unambiguously wrong, and are rightly subject to criticism.
(Of course, I'm not attempting to equate the soldiers' actions with suicide bombing, it's just an analogy.)
This is an example of what I meant by going off the rails. You're extrapolating way beyond anything I said, implied, or thought. Premature generalization is the root of all... something.
In other words, I'm asking for you to be consistent in applying your principles across different situations. If you don't extrapolate, you'll never know whether or not you have double standards. And it's really easy to have double standards when considering the acts of your fellow countrymen vs. those of people who you don't like.
They are reacting as they have been trained to react; war is hell, the army build in defense mechanisms like this to ensure soldiers can fight (emotional detachment, jock attitude), they also ingrain absolute discipline to try and avoid scenario's exactly like this.
EDIT: supporting evidence - read some military training manuals. They basically detail the attitude training attempts to instill in a soldier. shrug this is common to pretty much every standing army in the history of ever :) (emotional detachment especially)
The actual story here is that the army decided to cover up this whole issue in the first place(i.e. them saying they had no idea how the kids got wounded)
The fact that a Reuters photojourno was involved only fortifies the plausibility of this theory, since wire photojournos are well-known for "embedding" with insurgents.
I'm not saying one way or the other (unlike many others). I'm proposing an alternative theory that I believe is just as likely as the "collateral murder" storyline.
I do think that there are more extenuating circumstances than some may think (it was 2007 in Baghdad - people forget how bad things were there). But claims that those people were anything other than a random group of people will require some evidence.
The chopper guys talk about 5-6 guys having AK-47s but there are only two who appear to be carrying anything at all. The rest don't have bags or anything.
this has nothing to do with hacker news, it is replying to conjecture with conjecture, even though the wikileaks story had a very relevant back story (power of the internet, freedom of press, etc) this ignores it all and just gives someones opinion on their interpretation of a highly controversial video.
There was just a front page story about the video with over 2 or 3 hundred votes. Everyone can't have their say in that story, so that we can move on?
Everyone who wants to have a say, can have a say there. Let's not fill the stream with all wikileaks. It reminds me of the ipad mania.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1223767
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171670
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1148739
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086310
And for what it's worth, the discussions on here involve many intelligent, well-informed people whose opinions are worth high value. Certainly there are technical things discussed, but I think most people here are interested in all sorts of other "hacks," including sociology hacks, a category, I would argue, to which this article relates.
and the complaining is because the flagging does not handle things, there are always going to be popular articles that will be inevitably posted that have absolutely nothing to do with hacker news.
but yeh, the crowd has spoken.
And then there is the 'invade the Hague act':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pro...
The soldiers have to be there to keep the peace, as part of their humanitarian mission towards the Iraqi people. Because the soldiers are there, they have to protect themselves against the violent insurgents among the Iraqi people, by killing anyone who presents any kind of threat. Don't you see, they had to kill the Iraqis in order to save them.
If we didn't massacre Iraqis, we wouldn't be able to safely patrol their cities, and then where would that leave the Iraqis? Completely unprotected.
At the end of the day, Iraq just had another relatively successful democratic election where there is even more accurate representation than the first one. It will likely continue to improve, with bumps as they go along, but that would have never happened had Saddam been there still. The new government will be a coalition government run by all major sects. Not one dominating and robbing everybody else.
Why Iraq? I know. Why go to Iraq and not more 'dire' situations like Rwanda, Darfur, Sierra Leone, etc.? I get it, yes those would be good too..but that doesn't take away from the fact that a few million people have some semblance of a democratic institution that works alongside their religion (despite what they had been taught for the last few decades).
I too support the escalation in Afghanistan for the same reason. When all is said and done and the Afghani people have more powerful institutions in place and it will be well worth it. Al-Qaeda will have less fertile ground to recruit from. Until then, it will be a difficult road to travel.
Like any war, there is collateral damage. I don't think the issue with this video is the fact that there is collateral damage in war. It's more the coverup.
While I tend to be pro-military, I think in a case like this, where I am SURE their post-operation analysis revealed that they messed up big time, they should have come clean. Yes, the politics might have made the war more difficult...but it would have been the right thing to do. At the very least, for the families of the reporters killed.
To say, "But they were in a war zone," is disingenuous. America made it a war zone. America came there under a false premise and won't leave.
And how can they ever leave? Iraq is above nothing less than an ocean of untapped oil at a time when the Saudi fields are declining. Iraq is an OPEC breaker. And it's that dedicated supply in a time when the world's biggest industry had the price skyrocket in a few years from $20 to around $90. America is one of the only countries that can't survive if oil hits about $120 for any extended period. This isn't about money; this is about survival.
But when you find yourself killing unarmed civilians because they have under their feet an untapped fortune, because they have under their feet what you need to keep your lifestyle, you have to stop and look at yourself in the mirror at what you've become.
Wikileaks didn't mislead us. The U.S. Government mislead us, and worse, we mislead ourselves.
What most people is complaining about is the military secrecy and handling of this business, not the "mass murder of civilians" (like some of WL editors try to make it look) but the lack of reaction and respect by the army. If they had released the same video explaining the circumstances instead of hiding the details the situation would be different now.
Short: The blame's on the high command, not on the individual soldiers.
While I think the higher ups are to be blamed for even going to war, it's the people who elected them. So I don't really know who to blame.
How on Earth can anyone feel that it's OK to take people's lives based on so little evidence? "Looks like two of the guys are carrying guns. Let's kill them all." We all know that this is the kind of thing happens in war, but that doesn't make it excusable. I can't interpret the actions of the soldiers in any other way than murder.
He got his expectations up because a) Reuters had been unsuccessfully trying to obtain this video via FOIA b) wikileaks employees had been detained by various gov'ts and c) the video had been heavily encrypted. All of these things are facts, and not a misrepresentation on the part of wikileaks.
However, these facts seemed to indicate that the gov't cared about this video not getting out quite a bit, and raised his expectations. Maybe he didn't know what a helicopter video looks like; maybe he expected it to look like Generation Kill, with dudes being like "muahahha let's kill babies and rape women!"
However, I didn't think the video would really be anything but boring. What's news is that the U.S. tried to bury this video, not that it makes for great TV.
This turned out to be false, the guy that was detained in Iceland was detained for breaking into somebody's business and there is little or no evidence it had anything to do with his relationship to wikileaks.
All that video, in its present form, with the present information available says is: investigate further.
The bombings in Moscow reminds everybody that the price of security in the future for citizens of the US will be rule under totalitarian government. For the three hundred million people in the States, I hope you've learnt your lesson.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001802-38.html seems to have it embedded and a description.
Given these GI Joe tactics the average Iraqi might as well be carrying an RPG, and might as well shoot down that Apache helicopter. 7+ years of murderous Yankee mayhem is enough already.
You shouldn't have murdered them. Killing should be the last resort, even in the heat of battle.
Now, you could argue that they could be close enough that they could reasonably fire an accurate shot with a non-lethal round, but that also puts them much, much closer to danger. At a mile away, they're comfortable enough that they (should) be able to take the time to assess the threat and figure out if lethal force is necessary. If they have to be close enough for a non-lethal round, I doubt they'd ever switch to it since at that range, you really want lethality if you're in a big target (i.e. a helicopter).
America is committing a crime every second it stays there. The word battle doesn't even make sense here.
Virtually nobody changed their mind (many simply got more strident in their position when confronted with opposing interpretations.) Many commenters overemphasized the portions of the video that agree with their existing beliefs, while downplaying or arguing portions that were not in line with those beliefs.
It makes me wonder if perhaps precision is overrated when it comes to writing. Perhaps an imprecise record of one's beliefs would be more popular, as it would allow room for this sort of selective interpretation.
LINK:This is clear considering they approached the hot zone at the beginning of the video with intel, either from ground troops, or from the another Apache, that there were armed combatants in the area.
The video indicates there was ONE combatant, and that the group of people was NOT him. @2:49: air: “we had a guy shooting, now he’s behind the building” @2:52: ground: “Uh, negative, he was uh, right in front of the Brad. Uh, ’bout there one ‘o clock. Haven’t seen anything since then”
LINK:As for the possible observation of an RPG, which some suggest could be a tripod,
The “RPG” @2:32 was clearly a telephoto lens pointed at the ground. I’ve never heard anyone claim it was a tripod, it is clearly a photo camera with a telephoto lens. I don’t see how you can refute this if you examine the frame between 2:40 and 2:41, it is CLEARLY the camera with a telephoto lens that he is holding completely in front of him pointed at the ground.
When the van comes to pickup the target, NO ONE IS ARMED. The CO should never have given them permission to engage unarmed people “for picking up the bodies”, PERIOD. According to the Huffingon Post the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session.
I don't think people do that in combat. If you're ever in combat, or in a situation with armed people who think you may want to kill them, I highly recommend that you make it very obvious you're not armed. If they look at the footage of how you died and say "Oh! If we examine the frame, it looks like he wasn't going to kill us, after all!" I guess you'll be vindicated.
I expect a well-trained pilot or soldier to be able to take a second to make sure they're firing on an actual target. If you look at the length of the damned video, you see that the helo pilots had enough time to examine the targets carefully (meaning at least a 10sec glance).
So he's in an area where combat has occurred, crouching around a corner, pointing a long tube at US troops. No press is suspected to be in the area. Other men in his group are undeniably armed with weapons. He's a threat by any reasonable standard.
Two RPGs are, in fact, found at the site by ground forces, as is an automatic rifle. There were combatants in this group.