Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

[marvenger]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

I don't understand why they were all just standing there. If one guy is apparently taking aim at an apache with a RPG he can obviously see and hear the chopper, it must be pretty close. So why would the rest just be casualy standing out in the open while they're trying to engage with attack helicopter. Very odd. I'm totaly against the war, but if it was an RPG I can maybe understand the individual action of the chopper, not the bravado after though DISGUSTING!

[jmaxey]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

As those in charge would say "Boys will be boys".

[LargoWinch]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

We have an affair to settle with the Islamists, and I have little sympathy for those who get in our way. That may sound like nazism, but please remember what happened in New York City on Sept 11, 2001.

Steve; I think all that Easter Chocolate in your mouth prevented your meds to reach your system.

[LargoWinch]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

As those in charge would say "Boys will be boys".

I did see no boys there, but only animals.

[flintlock]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

The "Salt Party"?

[Rajiv]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

Salt Satyagraha

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

The conflict (Vietnam) also ended the day the draft was enacted.

Not quite the same day. From Background of Selective Service, the draft was active from 1948 to 1973, with the Lottery first run in December of 1969, I still remember the nasty hangover I and my two best friends had the next day; we all got "low" (aka "bad") numbers. From A Vietnam War Timeline, the war ramped up after LBJ took office in 1963, and the U.S. left Vietnam in 1973.

[touhy]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

Sorry lads, but at 3:48 min/sec AK-47 and RPG clearly visible. AP photographers should not make a habit of hanging out with armed enemy combatants. Me thinks some of this is false outrage. The professional soldiers may appear flippant in their comments, but they are professional. War sucks, but we do it best.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

+1

(and the added characters here to allow me to post a "+1")

+ 1

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

My bad; I was showing off. I put a bunch of spaces before the "1" in my previous reply just above, so as to fool the character counter.

[metalman]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

Sorry lads, but at 3:48 min/sec AK-47 and RPG clearly visible. AP photographers should not make a habit of hanging out with armed enemy combatants. Me thinks some of this is false outrage. The professional soldiers may appear flippant in their comments, but they are professional. War sucks, but we do it best.

had the same thought.

rpg = gtfo.

[ASH]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

I did see no boys there, but only animals.

It's weird how we can watch the same video and come away with very different impressions.

It seems to me that the aircrew mistakenly identified camera equipment as weapons, and then took out the van under the assumption that (a) the initial targets were combatants, and (b) that those rendering assistance to the initial targets were connected in some way to the first group and were also combatants.

I don't think I would necessarily have concluded that the initial group was hostile, just because they were carrying 'weapons'. However, I probably would have engaged the group after seeing the guy peering out from behind the corner of the building, making the same assumption that the soldiers made -- that the fellow crouching behind the building was about to engage them with an RPG.

Firing on the van rendering assistance to the wounded doesn't seem legitimate to me. I don't know what rules of engagement were in force, but that's too close to firing upon medical personnel for my comfort.

I don't see the comparison to My Lai. The hundreds of Vietnamese civilians killed at My Lai were killed at close range. By the time you're herding people into irrigation ditches, there's not much question as to whether they are armed and attempting to shoot at you. They ain't.

However, I don't agree with the assessment that the soldiers involved are sociopaths or animals -- or at least I don't agree that the assessment they are sociopaths is significant. You have to have low empathy to kill effectively, without suffering grievous psychological harm. The distance provided by the aircraft helps. As Dave Grossman notes in his book On Killing, you need soldiers who are psychologically able to kill, but you have to make sure that the ability to kill is conditional and dependent on lawful context. Determining that the group of targets was hostile may have been a bad call, but having made that call, it's not unhealthy for the soldiers to be eager to kill the 'enemy'. I don't think the soldiers displayed more than the usual bravado. The only thing I question is the decision to engage the van.

EDIT: Okay -- I question other things like the rules of engagement that were in force, and whether the war should have been waged in the first place. I meant the only thing about the events in the video that bothers me is firing on the van.

[LargoWinch]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

Sorry lads, but at 3:48 min/sec AK-47 and RPG clearly visible. AP photographers should not make a habit of hanging out with armed enemy combatants. Me thinks some of this is false outrage. The professional soldiers may appear flippant in their comments, but they are professional. War sucks, but we do it best.

So tell me touhy, even if that were true, do you think that still justifies what you witnessed? Perhaps that makes you feel better?


Let me guess: shooting ambulances and its associated crew trying to evacuate wounded is "false outrage"?

You sir are "professional" with your posts indeed... :rolleyes: (my self-imposed iTuliping censorship is preventing me for typing any different).

[LargoWinch]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

However, I probably would have engaged the group after seeing the guy peering out from behind the corner of the building, making the same assumption that the soldiers made -- that the fellow crouching behind the building was about to engage them with an RPG.

Since when "peering out from behind the corner of the building" is justification for killing a group of human beings while joking about it?


Say, I walk around in my hometown next weekend with my wife, and I do the same. What would people think?

[touhy]

Re: Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

Largo,

Thank you for not getting personal. I respect your viewpoint. But I think you are forgetting context.

First, that was not an ambulance. It was unmarked. If I crawled out to drag a wounded squadmate to safety, I would fully expect to be shot at.

Having said that, the shooting of the van was troubling. I saw no weapons. But that darn context thing again....I am sitting at my computer, in my comfortable home, in the bosum of my secure nation...my stomach is full, my toungue is moistened, I am safe, calm, rested, and not in combat. A helicopter blade is not whirling above my head at 2000Rpm, no cyclic control rests in my hand, no other lives hang in balance of the decisons I am about to make as a probable 20-something year old young man trying to do the best job I can with incomplete information and an inability to rewatch a video clip...........

I revere them. I have watched the video, we just disagree.