Collateral Murder (merged)

[Foxtrot]

Since nobody is going to post it. Hence, I decided to take the lead



America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. Bringing freedom and peace through superior firepower.

Go back to sleep. Everything is fine.

The issue isn't that it happened, its that they lied about it and then went to great lengths to hide the truth after their initial lies were exposed.

[Foxtrot]

The comments from pilot, gunner and the soldier who drove over a dead body were quite disgusting. It looks like there are quite many Xbox kids in US army. Well, it is inevitable if they decease the criteria of recruitment

I remember Cheney around 2006 saying something like "Given what we know today we wouldn't go to Iraq". Now if ol' Dr Doom of the Bush administration says something like that then how can anyone else say that this war is nothing but a cluster ******* of epic proportions pretty much from start to beginning. And all these incidents, lots and lots still uncovered, are part of the package.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Foxtrot

It looks like there are quite many Xbox kids in US army.

Hehe, just watched a program about the FCS (Future Combat System) the US army is finishing and what'da ya know, all the robots and stuff were controlled by Xbox controller. No I'm not kidding.

EDIT: Right, seen it now. Don't know what to say...

[CCIP]

Oh wow. I am just seriously disturbed at how much they wanted to basically just kill, for no good reason.

Disgusting and an an absolute disgrace to the military

However you can't say much good for the military's ROE in this case either. Fairly evident that systemically, the ROE is still way too kill-oriented.

[HunterICX]

The Pilot&Gunner just makes me sick...

HunterICX

[Jimbuna]

I'm in no way defending the above but I should imagine every country has a number of individuals within their armed forces of a similar disposition.

All in all though....pretty sad.

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

I'm in no way defending the above but I should imagine every country has a number of individuals within their armed forces of a similar disposition.

Well, I think we shouldn't forget that however you slice it - the problem is that the military's job is to kill people. That always has been and always will be their job, and by all means they have to be trained to do so quickly and effectively.

This doesn't mean that responsibility doesn't need to be exercised and enforced though. One of the problems here is that there is an illusion that with all this technology, everyone has total and accurate information - pilots, ground controllers, troops etc. With that assumption, the ROE totally works - except it doesn't, because the assumption is false. The pilots have already made up their mind about what they're seeing before the first shot is fired, and continue to convince themselves that what they're seeing matches their own imaginary story about what's going on down there as they shoot. And they're going to keep seeing that, because what they came here for is not to make peace and spread positive ideology, but to kill Iraqis.

In short, this is what happens when you put together people trained to kill and an illusion that the technology will help control their killing. There's nothing, in theory, wrong with an army that kills people - that's what it's for. A military that doesn't have killing people as its first objective isn't a real military, and noone needs a wussified military like that. It's that total-information illusion that needs to be tackled and worked with, hopefully with some openness and via the democratic process that its ultimate leaders are elected by. It's getting more ludicrous as to the length the military is willing to go into denial about this in order to do what it wants, not what it should. But I fear it's only getting worse.

[Fader_Berg]

The slaughter of the unarmed men trying to rescue the injured journalist made me feel sick. Anyone with some respect for human value, would try to help that man. And the US army just wipes them out with eager. What for? "saving insurgents and picking up weapons...", yeah right. Not by a damn sight.

And the comments they give... Unbelivable...

[Freiwillige]

I agree

I can see the accident happening from the beginning but what happened after the initial burst was just horrific. I mean they broke up the perceived threat, Why keep killing???!!! And then to randomly fire into a van stopping to help!

They weren't grabbing bodies or Guns they were helping the one guy still moving.

The words of the pilots showed the disregard for human life...How would they feel if it was their family's down there and it was an Iraqi helicopter slaughtering their children and brothers? I think givin the evidance those guys should be ejected from the military at the very least! Bad judgments like that feed hatred of us.

Now I am far from a tree hugging hippy but our Country is getting further and further off track.

Ron Paul 2012!

[Skybird]

"Krieg vertiert." (Egon Bahr)

WikiLeaks, who published that video after Reuters was driven away by the Pentagon when they demanded release of the material on basis of the freedom of information act ( http://www.collateralmurder.com/ ), said that they prepare another video anytime soon, showing the intentional killing of civilians by soldiers.

I repeat this, since I mentioned the same incident in the other thread about WikiLeaks.

Originally Posted by WikiLeak

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.

After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement".

Consequently, WikiLeaks has released the classified Rules of Engagement for 2006, 2007 and 2008, revealing these rules before, during, and after the killings.

WikiLeaks has released both the original 38 minutes video and a shorter version with an initial analysis. Subtitles have been added to both versions from the radio transmissions.

WikiLeaks obtained this video as well as supporting documents from a number of military whistleblowers. WikiLeaks goes to great lengths to verify the authenticity of the information it receives. We have analyzed the information about this incident from a variety of source material. We have spoken to witnesses and journalists directly involved in the incident.
WikiLeaks wants to ensure that all the leaked information it receives gets the attention it deserves. In this particular case, some of the people killed were journalists that were simply doing their jobs: putting their lives at risk in order to report on war. Iraq is a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139 journalists were killed while doing their work.

It is not only an issue of how war cripples the psyche of those participating in it. It also is about lowered standards for recruitment in order to copensate the fallen interest for joining the armed forces since the Iraq wear began. This fallen interest is both a conseqeunce of fallen wages (especially the air force suffers a shortage in qualified pilots who preferred to join civilian compnaies fpor getting better payment), and the ongoing war and the risk to be sent to Iraq. The fallen levels of character fitness and general social competence and education has been pointed out by US journalists repeatedly in the past 5 years.

The coverup by the pentagon is unexcusable, because this was no mistake being made, but an intentional act of murder.

The crews must face court martial for committing war crimes. I personally would line them up on the wall - last but not least as an examplary call to maintain discipline.

[Dowly]

Wow... if you watch the full video, you can hear towards the end where there's another engagement, the gunner is constantly (ok ok, twice) asking how to find some setting or why something's flashing in the HUD. Umm... training anyone?

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

The issue isn't that it happened, its that they lied about it and then went to great lengths to hide the truth after their initial lies were exposed.

true.

"Its their fault for bringing children to a battle."

Also true.

Originally Posted by Dowly

Wow... if you watch the full video, you can hear towards the end where there's another engagement, the gunner is constantly (ok ok, twice) asking how to find some setting or why something's flashing in the HUD. Umm... training anyone?

He was giting an azimuth limit warning during a time when the HUD indicated that his gun had not reached full azimuth and therefore should not be getting an azimuth limit warning.

thats why he says "Im getting an azimuth limit for some reason"

working in the field of aviation i have learned that sometimes you get warnings and cautions when you shouldnt be getting them... this is called a malfunction. it is more a testament to the high quality of his training that he recognized the caution as being in error, rather than not assessing his situation and accepting a false error message

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

He was giting an azimuth limit warning during a time when the HUD indicated that his gun had not reached full azimuth and therefore should not be getting an azimuth limit warning.

thats why he says "Im getting an azimuth limit for some reason"

working in the field of aviation i have learned that sometimes you get warnings and cautions when you shouldnt be getting them... this is called a malfunction. it is more a testament to the high quality of his training that he recognized the caution as being in error, rather than not assessing his situation and accepting a false error message

No, I think it was after that. He was looking for the Man(ual) Advancement button, the pilot said "It's by your left door in a clutch", then he asks the gunner "Got it?" and the gunner replies "No."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but something like manual advancement would be pretty important and much used feature for the gunner.

The other time is when he asks "Why the AP is flashing?".

So, no he didn't know much about what was happening in those two occasions.

You can check them yourself, after 20 mins or so in the vid.