Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

[Mn_Mark]

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

Money is the the accepted means for apportioning scarce resources. Please research 'cheap peak oil' and it's financial implications for all of us. Our leaders (USA & UK) deem it appropriate to have spent trillions (and uncounted lives, on both sides) over many decades in an attempt to control the oil resources of the Middle East. The political efforts in addition to the trillions are immense (e.g. the support of the house of Saud). I am quite happy to expand further if you wish?

I see. Because war costs money, therefore it involves finance, therefore it is appropriate to talk about supposed atrocities committed by American troops. Funny I don't recall any progressives posting stuff about Islamic atrocities on here.

So your reasoning is that anything that remotely involves money is justified as a topic. Sounds like Pelosi's rationalization that the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence authorizes progressives to gut the Constitution on the grounds that anything that can remotely be said to possibly, someday, somehow, affect "life" or "the pursuit of happiness" therefore justifies huge new government intrusions into our lives.

Give me a break.

[renewable]

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

I see. Because war costs money, therefore it involves finance, therefore it is appropriate to talk about supposed atrocities committed by American troops. Funny I don't recall any progressives posting stuff about Islamic atrocities on here.

So your reasoning is that anything that remotely involves money is justified as a topic. Sounds like Pelosi's rationalization that the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence authorizes progressives to gut the Constitution on the grounds that anything that can remotely be said to possibly, someday, somehow, affect "life" or "the pursuit of happiness" therefore justifies huge new government intrusions into our lives.

Give me a break.

No; your question was "First, how is this even remotely a financial topic"

I have answered that. If you have new, different, point; please describe it more precisely?

[Starving Steve]

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

its a tough choice between soldier and debt slave.

how about neither and go Timothy Leary style 'Turn on, tune in, drop out'

Leary explained in his 1983 autobiography Flashbacks: “Turn on’ meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. ‘Tune in’ meant interact harmoniously with the world around you – externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. ‘Drop Out’ meant self-reliance, a discovery of one’s singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean ‘Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.”

If the people choose to go the route of Timothy O'Leary and do mushrooms/drugs/alcohol/pot/LSD/etc, then we would either end-up with Islamo-fascism (because of our tolerance), or we would end-up with gangland-fascism (again because of our inane tolerance), or we would end-up with starvation because of nothing being produced and exported, or all of the above, together, as a terminal-illness.

Liberalism is fine in theory. But what about the sick realities of the world around us now? What about the religious gangsters running Iran now? What about fundamentalist religion trying to turn the world back 1000 years or more? This appeasement type of liberalism is where Britain is way off-base.

I am just not interested in how Britain or the BBC or UC Berkeley might feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel about the use of military force to draw the line against Islamo-fascism. :rolleyes:

[renewable]

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

What about the religious gangsters running Iran now?

Steve, I think you need to look at the historical context. It was the British (with the help of the then ascendant USA) who deposed Iran's first democratic government in 1951 in a bid to control their oil. It was named Operation Ajax. 50 years later, we are still doing pretty much the same thing today.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

[Mn_Mark]

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

No; your question was "First, how is this even remotely a financial topic"

I have answered that. If you have new, different, point; please describe it more precisely?

My aren't we feeling pedantic today.

[renewable]

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

My aren't we feeling pedantic today.

This is a text based discussion forum. It is difficult to discuss anything other than the actual text you typed.

Did you mean something else, or do you now wish to discuss a different point to the one you made? My apologies, but I am not psychic.

[Mn_Mark]

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

Steve, I think you need to look at the historical context. It was the British (with the help of the then ascendant USA) who deposed Iran's first democratic government in 1951 in a bid to control their oil. It was named Operation Ajax. 50 years later, we are still doing pretty much the same thing today.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Yes, Steve, you need to study the historical context so that you will understand that because the West was concerned that its supply of the most critical natural resource not be cut off, and because it intervened in another's country's politics to keep a hostile group from gaining control of that resource and potentially using it as leverage against us, we have no right to complain about what Islamic fundamentalists might do now.

You can keep the proper perspective in mind more easily if you remember a few basic things: the West is no better than anyplace else; Americans, and especially American soldiers, are usually bloodthirsty jingoists who care only about money and empire and not about other people; and "unfettered capitalism" is the main cause of problems in the world.

So next time you feel angry about some atrocity committed by muslim terrorists, just remember the historical context and you'll see how we really had it coming.

[strittmatter]

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

I've run across this video a few times in the past.

jtabeb;156178The last one is an Apache attacking Iraqi soldiers on a Soviet made BMP as it is being refueled from a flatbed truck. Watch it, and then read my comments below.
and that is the same auto-assumption that my conditioned mind always saw/made.

Here's what hit me like a ton of shell casings:

The last video is actually Iraqi farmers around their tractor harvesting crops in the middle of a farmers field. (See the smoke stack of the tractor and the plowed rows of the farmers field)

Would you have been able to tell that the first time through the video if you hadn't been told in advance.

(Neither could I the first time I watched this).

Now you know a little about what war is like.

Now I see it. No doubt about the direction/orientation of the tractor, plow, and plowed ground. WTF - first reaction.

Then I go back and recognize ASH's commentary/perspective:

Originally Posted by ASH
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.

Okay so now I'm more in more need than ever as to the whole story here.
Are they engaging real farmers or combatant decoys?
What DID they know or not know?
Is the person that comes skippily over to the tractor a young guy?
Has the tractor driver stopped in mid-stream and does he dismount as a result of an order from the skippy combatant?
After the first kill, the other guy looks to be hurridly trying to uncover/un-sack something. What? Did the engagers have knowledge of what? Is what relevant here?

War is hell - understood. But if it is indeed another "oops" snaffu, (with respect to human error as always a possible ingredient) what does it say about that suppose'd highly advanced/superior - surgically capable - technolgical ability?

Very fkn frustrating.

[Mn_Mark]

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

This is a text based discussion forum. It is difficult to discuss anything other than the actual text you typed.

Did you mean something else, or do you now wish to discuss a different point to the one you made? My apologies, but I am not psychic.

Yes, how could you be expected to interpret the sentence "First, how is this even remotely a financial topic?" as anything other than a straightforward request for someone to conjecture about possible remote connections between a supposed war atrocity and a discussion of financial matters?

I will try to be much more literal in the future so that people with your interpretive difficulties won't be thrown off by subtleties like rhetorical questions.

(Oh, and just so you know: I'm being sarcastic now - I thought I'd mention it so you can tell in this "text-based medium".)

[renewable]

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

Yes, Steve, you need to study the historical context so that you will understand that because the West was concerned that its supply of the most critical natural resource not be cut off, and because it intervened in another's country's politics to keep a hostile group from gaining control of that resource and potentially using it as leverage against us, we have no right to complain about what Islamic fundamentalists might do now.

You can keep the proper perspective in mind more easily if you remember a few basic things: the West is no better than anyplace else; Americans, and especially American soldiers, are usually bloodthirsty jingoists who care only about money and empire and not about other people; and "unfettered capitalism" is the main cause of problems in the world.

So next time you feel angry about some atrocity committed by muslim terrorists, just remember the historical context and you'll see how we really had it coming.

As fine a straw man as I have ever seen, but a bizarre one coming from someone who, on the previous page of this thread, intimated that the control of oil is perhaps not even 'remotely' a financial consideration.

On this page, it is now 'the most critical natural resource' that we should be able to take from another country just because we really, really, want it. Bizarre.

[Mn_Mark]

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

As fine a straw man as I have ever seen, but a bizarre one coming from someone who, on the previous page of this thread, intimated that the control of oil is perhaps not even 'remotely' a financial consideration.

On this page, it is now 'the most critical natural resource' that we should be able to take from another country just because we really, really, want it. Bizarre.

Yes, a discussion of oil would be relevant. But I'm sorry, a posting about a video supposedly showing a war atrocity is not germane to a discussion of oil. Your post said nothing about oil and said nothing finance-related at all.

You did not write "I see there is a video showing a purported atrocity committed by U.S. troops. I wonder if this will drive the oil price up and if we should consider the investing implications of that?"

Instead you wrote: "Footage of July 2007 attack made public as Pentagon identifies website as threat to national security" and posted text from an article that talks entirely about whistleblowing and army coverups. The focus of the information you provided was not financial in nature at all. It was standard progressive anti-American-miltiary "gotcha" journalism.

Just be honest: you got excited because you found an article that seems to support your belief that American troops are heavy-handed brutes and the Pentagon is covering up all the rotten things our soldiers are doing, and you posted it here because you wanted to spread the word.

And when I called you on the irrelevance of it, THEN you tried to play pendatic word games and tie it somehow to the general topic of oil.

[Mn_Mark]

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

Okay so now I'm more in more need than ever as to the whole story here.
Are they engaging real farmers or combatant decoys?
What DID they know or not know?
Is the person that comes skippily over to the tractor a young guy?
Has the tractor driver stopped in mid-stream and does he dismount as a result of an order from the skippy combatant?
After the first kill, the other guy looks to be hurridly trying to uncover/un-sack something. What? Did the engagers have knowledge of what? Is what relevant here?

War is hell - understood. But if it is indeed another "oops" snaffu, (with respect to human error as always a possible ingredient) what does it say about that suppose'd highly advanced/superior - surgically capable - technolgical ability?

Very fkn frustrating.

These cases of mistaken identity where innocent Iraqis are killed are first of all the responsibility of the insurgents who do not wear uniforms or otherwise distinguish themselves from civilians. They hide among civilians and purposefully try to get civilians killed by accident so that they can make us look bad. They know there is a signficant left-wing portion of the American population that will seize on any accidental killings that occur in order to paint the U.S. military in the worst possible light.

So I keep that in mind when I see these kinds of things.

If you start with the presumption that our soldiers are cold-blooded "red-neck hillbilly" killers sent out by unfettered capitalistic Pentagon ghouls with oil dripping from their fangs whose mission is to subvert democracy in the third world and who are indifferent to human life, then you can easily believe that these incidents are malicious.

I start with the presumption that our soldiers are professionals with a sense of honor who most emphatically do not want to kill innocent civilians and go to great lengths to avoid doing so.

But we are fighting an enemy that has no moral limits. They recognize no limits to what can be done. Civilian deaths are entirely acceptable to them, and in fact serve their purpose. They know that if they can get enough civilians killed, we'll leave.

That's not to say there isn't going to be the occasional My Lai. I don't know if that's avoidable in warfare. The only way to be sure it doesn't happen is to refuse to fight wars. And we don't have the luxury of doing that, because there's no other "USA" out there that will fight our battles for us like we fight for the rest of the free world, who then have the luxury of sitting back and demonizing us for doing it.

[renewable]

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

Yes, a discussion of oil would be relevant. But I'm sorry, a posting about a video supposedly showing a war atrocity is not germane to a discussion of oil. Your post said nothing about oil and said nothing finance-related at all.

You did not write "I see there is a video showing a purported atrocity committed by U.S. troops. I wonder if this will drive the oil price up and if we should consider the investing implications of that?"

Instead you wrote: "Footage of July 2007 attack made public as Pentagon identifies website as threat to national security" and posted text from an article that talks entirely about whistleblowing and army coverups. The focus of the information you provided was not financial in nature at all. It was standard progressive anti-American-miltiary "gotcha" journalism.

Just be honest: you got excited because you found an article that seems to support your belief that American troops are heavy-handed brutes and the Pentagon is covering up all the rotten things our soldiers are doing, and you posted it here because you wanted to spread the word.

And when I called you on the irrelevance of it, THEN you tried to play pendatic word games and tie it somehow to the general topic of oil.

That's much more coherent, although you're still plucking random straw man arguments out of the air. The name of this forum is 'news'. This was 'news'.

I didn't 'write' anything, but merely quoted the article that I thought was news. From the number of posts on this thread, it probably was news.

I have already explained how the control of oil, and the politics around it, is news - and relates to financial news, and you agree that control of 'the most critical natural resource' is important. Why else have our governments been ******* up the Middle East for more than half a century?

Look, my government (UK) and your government is putting kids (remember Paul Hardcastle's 19?) in the firing line for oil. Teenagers are killing, and being killed for (what I would describe as) the petrodollar. The fight for control of this all important resource is something we should all be aware of, and should not be afraid of discussing. Let's please leave the nationalism out of it. It's all very fucked up, and has been for a long time. It's about money = scarce resources. This video is a good example of the sharp end of monetary policy, as enacted by our leaders in our name.

[aaron]

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

Time to bring back the draft, with no exemptions. And to promote the officer corp only after much psychological testing to eliminate those who delight in cruelty. All volunteer police and armed forces are an open invitation for the psychopaths and sociopaths to join.

Why couldn't it have been some people who just saw what went down and try to save the guy? People stop and help others who are in car accidents sometimes, could've been the same thing here.


That is the point. If you don't know you're not supposed to shoot.

These guys thought they saw something, shrugged, and shot the hell out of a bunch of innocent people. Then when the gov. found out what went down they tried to suppress knowledge of it.

There are no shades of gray here, its an open and shut case.


There was no fire fight. The 'copter was not being shot at, and those people weren't even brandishing their "weapons" (they had none, just cameras and associated gear), no one was in danger.

It doesn't matter that war is stressful or that the job is hard, if you screw up like that then the hammer is coming down on you, just that simple. If you can't cut the mustard of being a soldier then you don't be a soldier or you be a conscientious objector or whatever they call it. You don't just go around machine gunning people on a WAG.


They randomly shot a bunch of people who they thought they had weapons, that isn't fishy at all to you? Even in a war zone you're not supposed to do that shit, especially when you know non-combatants are in the area.


Imagine if some cop saw you driving down the road and saw you with a "suspicious object" and decided to shoot you dead rather than confirm what was going on. Would you still say "shit happens"? How about if your family was in the car and they got shot by accident? Are you still gonna say "shit happens" then?


There was no shooting going on...this was not a combat situation. They followed and observed the people for 40 min. while nothing happened.

It was straight up murder, and when figured out what they did the gov. ran a cover up so they could win some more "hearts and minds". Bunch of goddamn idiots. All they're doing is making more terrorists by doing shit like this, it'll never end if we just keep randomly shooting people based on guess work alone.

War is war. Innocents will die. Mistake != murder. "Murder" implies an intent to kill innocent people. I do not see that in this video.

[FRED]

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

Not about economics and finance. Moved to Rant and Rave.