Collateral Murder (merged)

[CaptainHaplo]

Nikimcbee - thanks for the kind words - and congrats on 8k+!

As for the situation - Sadr city is a suberb of Baghdad. At various times the Al-Mahdi militia (answering to Muqtada al-Sadr) has dominated the area. At the time of the fighting - and this is WHY there was no wrongdoing by the US forces - the Iraqi National Security Council (an arm of the duly elected government) had called for the disbanding of all militia forces. The Al-Mahdi militia refused. Thus they were in violation of Iraqi law - and a joint Iraqi and US operation was conducted.

The time frame in question was during this operation - and thus ANY militia forces were valid targets - at the request of the Iraqi government. So yes, there as significant combat operations going on in the area. The actions by the crew in the video were legal and sanctioned by official request for US assistance by the Iraqi government.

The reality is that any armed group of non US or Iraqi military personnel were violating the Iraqi NSC directive - making themselves targets. So this idea of "well we don't know what there intent was" is irrelevant.

As for taking out the van - you have someone that is rendering aid to a combatant - while we cannot know if their motivation was simply seeing an injured person and trying to help - or not - the reality is they were in a known conflict area - and shooting was going on. Helping a wounded militia member - is giving aid to those who were in violation of legal instructions - and thus made themselves targets as well.

Do any of us like that fact? No. I am sure that we all would have liked for them to just drive away and not die. But every action has a repercussion - and their act - whether driven by kindness or the intent to help a fellow militia member - caused them to be targetted as well.

I have to say what I did earlier - the friend of my enemy is my enemy.