For some poking at the Army...
 

I hadn't seen the unedited video yet (in fact, I hadn't even watched more than 5 minutes of the Wikileaks video yet), but have glimpsed at the Army's official investigation. I was positively groaning at lines such as:

"Due to the furtive nature of his movements, the cameraman gave every appearance of preparing to fire an RPG on US soldiers."

Victim-blaming, anyone?

But the funnier thing is the way all of a sudden, the "military-aged" (here we note the loaded language - this could cover anyone from ~16-50!) men seen are re-rated by the investigator as "insurgents", and then a further leap to being the same ones that were shooting at B Company that day. The investigator doesn't even make a token effort to justify all these re-ratings in his report.

Or how about "the mere fact that the two individuals carried cameras instead of weapons would not indicate that they are noncombatants..." At this rate of rationalization, even wearing all those press symbols requested won't be much of a liferaft.

I also note that no one even tries to involve the supposed Iraqi directive. Surely, that might have at least have a case towards the whole "insurgent" thing.

*I'm* starting a flamewar?

You have people in this thread advocating the execution of my countrymen as a lesson to others and i'm starting a flamewar. Yeah right. Go back and reread the first couple of pages of this thread and tell me again how i'm starting anything.

I have watched the video two times, and a third time in parts whent the debate became hotter. I only can say that even in that small, low resolution picture there was not a single second when I felt tempted to mistake the camera with an RPG or any kind of a bigger weapon case in those scenes where it was exposed to the camera. How one could assume that camera to be an RPG, escapes me, completely, i fail to identify any visual hint for that. That claim only makes me shake my head.

Skybird - have you seen ANY video of a RPG being used in urban combat in the middle east? I ask only because if you had, you would understand why the actions of the "reporter" 9peeking around a corner, long tube shape hanging low, then raised as he comes around the corner) appears as an RPG being aimed to a soldier.

Kazuaki - I have noted that the ROE was based off the Iraqi directive (Iraqi NSC) repeatedly in this thread. Still no one wants to address the fact that 3 RPG's were found at the scene after this went down....

Freiwillige - was the van marked in accordance with the rules of war? No - thus it is a legitimate target on a battlefield. Working under the assumption (as that aircrew was) that the injured man is an enemy, anyone "rescuing" him is likely a cohort / fellow "insurgent". Why show patience - when that means they can just drive away - perhaps getting into a more crowded area where innocent women and children are.... You forget - your battling an enemy that intentionally blends in with the civilian population. Also note they were in the process of driving away (the van was moving) when the rounds impacted. Not to mention the circling aircraft was moving into a portion of its arc that would make a successful attack more difficult. This is why the "hurry". How long did it take that van to drive up, load and start to roll out? That bird could not follow the van - it had a specific sector for which it was responsible - the "you got my turf?" questions you hear. If you don't get go on the engage - that van escapes.

It's also important to note - as tater did - the following:

Lets look at this in a realistic way.... just a few blocks away there is a firefight. How many innocent civilians are going to be standing in the streets when a few blocks over there are explosions going off? How many innocent civilians are going to be driving around near firefights? Civilians tend to have a healthy sense of self-preservation - stuff like that happens - they head indoors damned quick! Notice that some of the men that wandered off at the very beginning of the video as the 2 reporters walked down the road sure as heck never came back to help. Probably heard stuff and kept their heads down. Notice no women or children running out to see what was going on - because in a battle zone - if your out in it - you have a darned good reason to be - otherwise you keep your arse safe inside and hope it all passes by. With the initial group - and all those structures around - no one came out..... because civilians in a war zone DO NOT act as the men in the video did. People can call that "blaming the victim" - but I see it as evidence that they were not "victims" at all.... and also once again no one wants to talk about the LACK of info about the association of the other people killed in the video.... Couldn't be they were affiliated with anyone could it?

Except there was a guy in the group with an RPG. This is not debated.

Are you suggesting that any group that carries a camera be immune from attack?

Have a look at the map as well. He appeared to be pointing the RPG-like object at troops operating to the west of that street. I'm guessing that was the same ground unit in contact with the attack helo.

http://collateralmurder.com/en/img/p...yndin.jpg.html

From the transcript:

Roger that. Uh, we have no personnel east of our position. So, uh, you are free to engage. Over.

http://collateralmurder.com/en/transcript.html

How much time does a crew have to make a decision, and how long does it take to fire a rocket?

Having no troops in a specific direction is important so they are not down range.

This is supposed to be the picture taken when the photog shot that pic around the corner, BTW:

http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o...sc/lastpic.jpg

No idea of the veracity of the image, but it is being reported as such.

Yes.

No, not in principle. If you ever have read one of the war-related debates we had on this board where I said that the presence of unfortunate civilians should not stop you from going for your military target/firing at the identified enemies, you would have known that answer. ;)

It's just that I do not see myself able to understand the situation on that video the way it is described here. The scene reaches my quite differently, no matter subtitling or not.

----

I think nobody here will convince anyone of his own interpretation of this incident. Maybe we should agree on that the incident shown here is heavily disputed between the critics and defenders, and we leave it to that and simply move on. we could debate this for another week, but probably will not advance a single step.

That's one thing I think most everyone would be able to agree on - although I will say that someone did help me see things a bit differently.

I think the people who put the Collateral Murder video out there for the world to see rely on the shock value to get their point across, and when ya get right down to it, the war isn't a popular endeavor these days (if ever it was with anybody). It almost smacks of anti-war sentiment, or maybe that's just my whacky perspective. :)

If that IS the image, then that explains a lot. It is little surprise that the gunner wanted to engage ASAP, because if that HAD have been an RPG then that Hummer would have been history.

But yeah, I agree with Skybird in that this is something that people are going to either agree with or against this incident and the motives behind it.

As such, further arguments on the subject are pointless. :yep:

Video like this has been around since well before this incident. Anyone on the ground in Iraq would be aware of the threat of air attack, and would likely have seen guncam footage of other attacks. I'm sure reporters would have.

I don't understand how anyone would go off as a reporter without arranging it with the US military to avoid something like this unless doing so would trash their street cred to embed with people the US and Iraqi forces want to kill.

In the latter case, well, tough.

If this was a case where they had filed a "flight plan" (reporting plan?) with the military, and then were mistakenly attacked I'd be far more concerned. As it is, they didn't even paint PRESS on the roof of the truck. Seriously, who would not mark their van if that's what they were?

Why walk with men that are armed if holding arms is illegal, and you know they could get attacked from the air—particularly guys with RPGs. War correspondents get killed all the time in combat. These guys made a really dangerous choice.

Minus the 2 photographers, this would be just another gun cam movie, right? Guys armed with AKs and RPGs near a US patrol get squished from the air. The ONLY difference is 2 guys have cameras. There is not shortage of movies and pictures taken with long-lenses of US forces being attacked by small arms fire and IEDs, online, too—by the guys doing the attacking. The guys that took those images hand cameras, too.

Unbelieveable, incredible in its range of detatchment.
Its almost as though two entirely detatched creatures from two civilisations on two alterrnate realities had decided to approach a subject for discussion yet cannot work out that they are presently unable to see or comprehend the issue at all

If you watch the old William Wyler documentary "Thunderbolt", about P-47 pilots in Italy, there are two unnerving scenes. Unnerving, not because of what you see, but because of Wyler's commentary.

In the first scene you see gun-camera footage of a Jug strafing several farm houses. Each time Wyler says "Nothing in that house." "Nothing in that house." Then one explodes. "Well, what do you know?" It was entertaining the first time, but then I began to wonder exactly what was in those houses. Soldiers? Farmers? Children? And exactly what exploded. Munitions, or some farmer's propane tank?

The second scene involves another gun-camera shot. This time the pilot shoots at someone in a field. The target runs and apparently is missed. All Wyler says is "No friend of mine." I thought it was funny the first time around. Later I wondered just who that person was.

Another example is from fiction, this time the original book The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum. The main character, David Webb, is a linguist-turned-spy in Laos, becomes a guerilla fighter against the Vietnamese after a jet fighter strafes and kills his wife and children while they're playing in a river. When his boss is telling the story years later he says that Webb came to him in Saigon demanding to know whose fighter it was. The boss tells him it was Vietnamese. At this point a listener says "Let me guess - it was one of ours?" The boss answers "How the hell should I know who it was? Some passing fighter jock saw people in the river and thought it would be fun to shoot them. It's what fighter pilots do. That kind of thing doesn't get recorded. We'll never know who it was!"

Fiction, but truth. People trained to fight and kill...fight and kill. If a mistake was made it needs to be sorted out. If evil was done it needs to be answered for. The real answer needs to be discovered, but neither condemnation nor dismissal is proper without knowing the whole truth.