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US Military kills multiple Iraqi civillians, including two journalists, wounds 2 kids
- Thread starter Broth3r
- Start date
No? Its not their fault if people get killed. It is a warzone. There was bullets fired, and sorry, but soldiers, actually NOBODY except for Magneto (hint: he isn't real), can control where a bullet goes. They go stray from time to time. If we had a fucking court martial every time someone innocent got hit by a bullet, we wouldn't have fucking soldiers left.
They were not stray. They were a group on unarmed journalists. Still, we are talking from an outside perspective, it's like criticizing a referee in a football match when we get to see like 20 replays and they have to make a split second decision on what happened.
This is a Cannon 70 200mm, the camera one of the journalists carried.
This is an RPG-7
It's not like they were under fire though, I thought they weren't aloud to open fire on anybody who is not threatening them outright without attempting to communicate first.
I don't know this applies to the military, I think it's the police only.
If I was a soldier in a warzone I would probably kill anyone who looked at me funny. I avoid this by not being a soldier in a warzone. Remember kids, dont join the army.
War crimes are constantly being committed by every side in every conflict. The solution is to stop going to war, unless you are willing to accept responsibility for those crimes.
Have a nice day.
War crimes are constantly being committed by every side in every conflict. The solution is to stop going to war, unless you are willing to accept responsibility for those crimes.
Have a nice day.
The most reasonable comment I heard about this came yesterday from a fellow grad student, who is also an officer in the armed forces. He said what happened was reprehensible, but if he was the commanding officer he would have told them to fire. Of course there was also a lot more he said about it, but that's the soundbite version. Active warzone, hindsight 20/20, and all that.
Those were not the rules of engagement that day.Fink said:
IAWTP.
Also, I thought wartime journalists travel with military groups for this specific reason; I seem to remember journalists have come under fire before because their photography equipment looks like weapons at distance?
What does interest me is that they were shooting at the injured/crawling; that I did think was banned, I thought they were supposed to go in and collect them as POWs.
EDIT: Agreed with the guy above me, too; The CO told them to fire on the basis of the intel they gave them. What else was he going to do?
If you haven't watched the video you literally have no fucking clue what you're responding to.
Even the "article" that went with it doesn't do any justice to what actually occurred. This was not even remotely close to an unprovoked random attack on civilians as broth3r makes it appear to be. I can't blame them for opening fire, if it wasn't for the commentary and the fact that I knew they were civilians beforehand I would have had the same mentality of the soldiers present.
They did not fire on the wounded guy until the van rolled in and tried to pick him up.
Even the "article" that went with it doesn't do any justice to what actually occurred. This was not even remotely close to an unprovoked random attack on civilians as broth3r makes it appear to be. I can't blame them for opening fire, if it wasn't for the commentary and the fact that I knew they were civilians beforehand I would have had the same mentality of the soldiers present.
They did not fire on the wounded guy until the van rolled in and tried to pick him up.
Baloney. We should all go to Iraq. Them we might realize that you barely have seconds before you get shot by someone suspicious or to act. The camera shown above looks like a weapon, especially since you aren't strolling along and blissfully examining it. It looks they are pointing a gun at you.
I was reading about this earlier on ATS, though I haven't set aside the time to watch the video myself yet. Now if you think about it, soldiers have been doing fucked up shit since we got over there.(not all, some people in uniform do their goddamn job, but you can't speak for all of them) With that being said, do you REALLY think that the military is going to let a video that incriminates them get to the public so easily?
I'm going to reserve my comment on the video at hand, seeing as how I haven't seen it yet, but I don't usually rush to defend the military when they're fighting a proxy war I don't agree with. That being said, it's not entirely their fault that they're in that situation.
EDIT: The article I was reading can be found here: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread558846/pg1
I'm going to reserve my comment on the video at hand, seeing as how I haven't seen it yet, but I don't usually rush to defend the military when they're fighting a proxy war I don't agree with. That being said, it's not entirely their fault that they're in that situation.
EDIT: The article I was reading can be found here: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread558846/pg1
Terrorists use women and children as human shields and deliberately build terrorist installations under schools and hospitals.
Terrorists also fight in civilian clothing and bear no flag, have no markings on their vehicles, and give no outward sign of threat until they pull out their weapons and open fire.
Terrorists want to incite responses like broth3r's blaming the US military for collateral damage terrorists try to maximize via the means mentioned above.
Now this is a terrible tragedy, but since terrorists are miserable cowards who hide under skirts and in school yards, bad things like this will invariably happen. Mourn for the families of the Reuters reporters and move on. Can you imagine what the soldiers responsible for this are thinking? I wouldn't know but it has to be a mix of absolute rage at the terrorists for their rank cowardice and wracking guilt over killing legitimately innocent people.
Terrorists also fight in civilian clothing and bear no flag, have no markings on their vehicles, and give no outward sign of threat until they pull out their weapons and open fire.
Terrorists want to incite responses like broth3r's blaming the US military for collateral damage terrorists try to maximize via the means mentioned above.
Now this is a terrible tragedy, but since terrorists are miserable cowards who hide under skirts and in school yards, bad things like this will invariably happen. Mourn for the families of the Reuters reporters and move on. Can you imagine what the soldiers responsible for this are thinking? I wouldn't know but it has to be a mix of absolute rage at the terrorists for their rank cowardice and wracking guilt over killing legitimately innocent people.
I agree with Deck Knight. When in a warzone you are forced to make split second decisions. An ugly consequence of war is that innocent people are hurt.
We must remember that terrorists are masters of disguise. They often dress like civilians and disguise weapons as normal items (although the camera did look like a gun). The situation these soldiers were put in forced them to make a rash decision; one wrong decision means you're dead. They will be exonerated if this reaches the military court.
The fact that the OP decides that they are murderers based off a video alone is disturbing. It is always best to have a thorough understanding before taking an extreme position.
These people defend our nation and you need to give them the respect they deserve.
You should now ca
We must remember that terrorists are masters of disguise. They often dress like civilians and disguise weapons as normal items (although the camera did look like a gun). The situation these soldiers were put in forced them to make a rash decision; one wrong decision means you're dead. They will be exonerated if this reaches the military court.
The fact that the OP decides that they are murderers based off a video alone is disturbing. It is always best to have a thorough understanding before taking an extreme position.
These people defend our nation and you need to give them the respect they deserve.
You should now ca
Although I agree with you completely that the soldiers are not at fault, I believe that your argument blaming the terrorists for civilian deaths is not entirely correct. After all, if you look at any war in recorded history, you will be hard pressed to find a war where the civilian casualties did not outnumber those of the soldiers. This is simply a fact of war, using terrorist and guerrilla tactics increases civilian deaths, but unless both sides went and fought it out in Antarctica, there would be civilian deaths.
OP, honestly, do you read history? Do you believe that the United States is the first country to accidentally kill civilians? As long as we aren't decimating (2.39 million deaths for math nerds) the civilian population, it's not surprising that innocents die. Sorry, the good guys don't always win and get the girl.
AMERICA STRONG
We haven't actually won a war in 60 years, but we're sure kickass at shooting reporters and children!
A few initial points:
There was absolutely no indication that the reporters had a weapon. They sat around for 15-20 minutes, never pointing the camera anywhere near the helicopter.
The party on the ground had papers and other things in their hands showing that they were definitely not insurgents.
It is clear that these guys were enjoying killing - it felt fucking surreal, almost like they forgot they were in a real war with real people and were flying around on Modern Warfare or something. I guess that's what cultural militarism does to people.
Even when they found out they shot a kid, it was like "Ah, damn, oh well". Oh well? OH WELL? You shot a child from a helicopter and your immediate moral response is "Oh well"? To normal people, this is incomprehensible. In "THE GREATEST MILITARY IN THE WORLD", it's par for the course.
Just putting this here to show why the whole "militarism/world police/pax Americana" concept is really, really evil.
We haven't actually won a war in 60 years, but we're sure kickass at shooting reporters and children!
A few initial points:
There was absolutely no indication that the reporters had a weapon. They sat around for 15-20 minutes, never pointing the camera anywhere near the helicopter.
The party on the ground had papers and other things in their hands showing that they were definitely not insurgents.
It is clear that these guys were enjoying killing - it felt fucking surreal, almost like they forgot they were in a real war with real people and were flying around on Modern Warfare or something. I guess that's what cultural militarism does to people.
Even when they found out they shot a kid, it was like "Ah, damn, oh well". Oh well? OH WELL? You shot a child from a helicopter and your immediate moral response is "Oh well"? To normal people, this is incomprehensible. In "THE GREATEST MILITARY IN THE WORLD", it's par for the course.
Just putting this here to show why the whole "militarism/world police/pax Americana" concept is really, really evil.
this wasn't a split second decision, they were watching these guys for 20 minutes do nothing but point a camera at the ground, while begging permission to shoot them. and i'm tired of the whole "shit happens in war" excuse. it pisses me off and it allows people to excuse evil because of the mere fact that one or more criminal gangs declared a given area a "war zone". Evil is evil, and pretending that real war with real people was a video game where the goal of the game is to rack up kills is...evil, and the ideology that leads people to respond to the shooting of an innocent child with "Oh well" is evil too.
Perhaps you might want to watch the video rather then blindly copy what was said by the press.
First, if you actually watch the video, you can see that there actually were weapons in the crowd.
Second, that the reporters has gone and been embedded in the insurgent group, not the most survival oriented idea in a massive military conflict, though it makes you more likely to get the story.
Third, "shit happens in war" sorry if you hate that excuse, but shit happens. Every time a person dies is a tragedy, when it happens a lot it's a statistic. Simple fact of human nature.
Fourth, you're against a standing military in general, so everything you say about military should be taken with a grain of salt.
Fifth, "Begging for permission to shoot them"...Bull Shit, "Request Permission to Engadge" is not the same as something like "Can I kill them, please."
Sixth, America hasn't had a war in 60 years, only police actions.
Seventh, How the fuck was it obvious that the people enjoyed killing? There is a line between legitimate criticism, and lunatic raving, and I'm afraid that you are far past that line.
Eighth, I'm not a neoconservative, I'm against the war in Iraq and have been since the beginning, but that doesn't mean that I believe that there is a realistic chance of a war occurring without military casualties.
Edit:
Ninth, at the end of the day, your rhetoric might be nice and happy, but you can't solve for the fact that there has been war since the beginning of recorded history, and sheer historical inertia will cause it to be a factor for years to come, even if there weren't resources to fight over. And that there aren't wars where civilians don't die, humans are fallible, so the wrong people get killed. There is nothing in this situation that hasn't happened in every war, and until war stops, won't continue happening.
P.S. Are you against video games? Just curious.
You do realize it is not uncommon for Muslim soldiers to not only hide behind children, but also to raise them to be radicals, Hitler-Youth style? It would take me a mere Google image search on "Palestine child terrorists" to provide photo evidence.
It is very easy to armchair CO these things from a distant location with a video tape (from clearly disinterested collateralmurder.com).
What were Reuters journalists doing out there without a military escort in the first place? And they had papers? Terrorists are a lot of things, but illiterate isn't necessarily one of them. How can anyone know it wasn't instructions for an attack, for example? When you're flying around in a helicopter you sure as hell can't strip-search them and confiscate their belongings.
Would this have been more or less tragic if this were an unmanned drone?
This isn't about neoconservatism or just war theory, it's about a tragic incident, one of many that have happened in every war since time immemorial, and will continue to happen as long as any one human being wants to control any other human being. It might have been averted if they had an infantry division at the ready to intercept. Any number of things could have happened to prevent this but they didn't. Given imperfect knowledge, how can you not assume that perhaps recently the soldiers had been busting up a lot of weapons caches using that exact same model of truck, a truck that also happened to do drive-bys to pick up anyone wounded in-between attack sessions?
Cultural Militarism? Even assuming we were culturally militaristic, what makes that any different than the people we are fighting who believe this is Holy War and have their own children doing the fighting? They have a demonstrable cultural militarism, we have a military that might have a few two many overstressed, triggerhappy soldiers. Maybe if our rules of engagement weren't so ridiculous, this would not have happened. I'm sure this wasn't the first incident and I'm sure it won't be the last. As far as I'm aware we're supposed to be pulling out of Iraq very shortly, and this will probably still happen then.
As far as not winning wars, ever since we dropped the bomb there hasn't been a worldwide war. Peace through strength is a legitimate defense policy. There have been proxy wars which carry their own negatives, especially for the people living in the battleground, but that is never going to change. This is the era of proxy war and counterinsurgency, and it's a world far above the one where entire continents were charred and reduced to cinders.
Everyone hates war, no one wants to see U. S. Soldiers sent to the inhospitable sandboxes of the world to die in vain. America is like a hornet's nest. Leave us alone and we'll mind ourselves. Give us a whack and you're a dead man. Sometimes all your intelligence that you've built up for decades is wrong, and if you act on it and find nothing aren't you relieved? What if there were WMDs instead of old chemical and bio weapons leftovers from the invasion of Kurdistan? We fucked it up, and now we're trying to leave the Iraqis with a system we think will serve them well, directed by their own citizenry. Whatever opposition you have to "nation-building" in principle is fine, but the Bush Administration (and apparently now Obama administration) did not think leaving an unstable vacuum in Saddam's wake was a good idea.
There are any number of ways this could have been avoided, but almost all of them are 20/20 hindsight. Going on an anti-neocon bent goes nowhere.
In contrast to Ferrouswheel, I supported the Iraq War insofar as Saddam Hussein was a world danger, was flouting sanctions, did attempt assassination of one of our presidents, was enabling terrorists, and was generally an unstable flashpoint with a history of biological warfare, now with nuclear ambitions. Wars are always unpopular after the original declaration in a democracy, and only get moreso over time. People expect if you go to war you have a responsible policy, and Bush fucked it up in many ways for a long time.
When everyone else has basically contracted their defense out to you, sometimes you have to act. If the intel was right and if Saddam had nuclear ambitions, I doubt France and Germany would be that happy sitting in missile range of an autocratic madman because we failed to act.
The beginning of the video made me feel sorry for both parties asa the guy seems to think they have an RPG-7 which is definitely a cause for alarm if you're in a coptor. Then the justifications roll in =/ Ugh.
How the hell is this related.
It's shit like this that makes people turn on you. The rest of your post is fairly accurate. However, using the adjectives "Muslim" and "Palestine" only serve to label you - and your post - as a right wing nut. They use child soldiers because they are terrible fucking human beings, not because they're followers of Islam.
I'm going to jump right in here and mostly agree with Deck Knight. These are the kind of things that happen in wartime; it's just a fact of life during. The story created by this video isn't actually what was depicted, but why it has taken us three years to know about it. It is about the death of investigative journalism and the sugar coating of war that we, the people, receive daily, a sugar coating that inevitably makes wars more popular rather than less. People naturally hate war because we can't stand to see things like this and this is what happens during war.
That it took a site like Wikileaks to expose the realities of war is unbelievable to me. And now the assault on the website for releasing the information is even more unbearable. This is a site that runs frequent donation drives (it is non-profit and relies on donations to continue its service) and is now being targetted by the Pentagon as a threat to national security for providing the public with information about how our tax dollars are being spent.
In short, forget the actions of the soldiers and whatever defense mechanism they employ to help them survive the hell that we've put them in. They are put in an impossible situation and make tragic mistakes. Remember the actions of the policy makers and media outlets and those that would keep information like this from you to drum up support for the military.
That it took a site like Wikileaks to expose the realities of war is unbelievable to me. And now the assault on the website for releasing the information is even more unbearable. This is a site that runs frequent donation drives (it is non-profit and relies on donations to continue its service) and is now being targetted by the Pentagon as a threat to national security for providing the public with information about how our tax dollars are being spent.
In short, forget the actions of the soldiers and whatever defense mechanism they employ to help them survive the hell that we've put them in. They are put in an impossible situation and make tragic mistakes. Remember the actions of the policy makers and media outlets and those that would keep information like this from you to drum up support for the military.
Much as Firestorm, I felt quite a bit of pity for the soldiers in that situation at the start, I have to admit the cameras looked like guns and that man was posted at the corner as if he was sighting something that looked like an RPG. But as soon as the gunner and crew started saying things like "good shooting" and "hit that runner" as human bodies flew everywhere I was sickened. I can't blame the americans but I can't condone them.
According to their version of Islam (which iirc, is largely the Wahhabism popularized in radical Saudi Arabian mosques), the greatest honor is to martyr oneself for Allah, even for a child. So I could clarify by saying Wahhabist, but I think people understand I'm restricting it mostly to terrorists and their enablers. Most Muslims are not terrorists, but the vast majority of terrorists subscribe to some version (whether it is believed distorted or otherwise) of Islam, and those radicals strike so much fear into their neighbors that they become enablers (From a suicide bomber perspective, a huge portion of it is Muslim-on-Muslim violence). There are exceptions like the IRA and a few isolated nutcases, but the IRA doesn't have a religiously motivated global aspect to it.