This was pretty much my point in the copy thread. You got to see from the soldiers point of view also. Collertal damage is a sad,but true fact of war.

From what I can see there was two guys carrying something that looked like AK47's, and they were correctly interpreted as AK47's by the US soldiers (although one of the AK47's seems longer than it should, maybe that's an RPG?). But the whole incident seems to have been sparked by them mistakenly spotting cameras as being RPGs, the decision to engage was based on the RPGs (cameras), not the AK47's.

We can criticize them for mistaking cameras for RPGs, but if we imagine for a second that they were in fact RPGs, because that's clearly what the US soldiers thought, the question is was it still wrong by them to engage the group and how they did it.

Assuming their orders were "you can engage any unauthorized groups of people carrying multiple guns as long as collateral damage is kept to a minimum" then I think it was right to engage. Their actions when the van arrives though, that's harder to judge, I'm leaning towards it being wrong to engage the van since they were only gonna pick up wounded.

I dont have a big problem with their ruff talk. It's not pleasant, and sure they lack respect for human life, but many soldiers all over the world who are in active service in conflict areas have the same attitude and talk like that. It's mostly psychology and pep talk.

First:  Those contract soldiers report their location to the military as they move about the theatre (in fact I think journalist are required to report as well when they aren't embedded - so this might be where a mistake was made), which is why early in the video they are confirming that they have no friendlies in the area and are told by the ground troops that they have nobody to the east of them (iirc it was east, might have been another direction).  Additionally those contract soldiers do not use AK47s. 

Second:  It is not entirely clear they mistook the camera specifically for a gun.  The fact that there are other guns there means we don't know if they were focusing on the camera and thinking it to be a gun or if they were looking at what others were holding.   As for why they would walk around in the open with guns?  From what I've seen they do it quite regularly, so while I can't answer why they do it, as best I know they do in fact do it.  Just the fact that it didn't seem at all odd to the military personel is enough for me to give them the benefit of the doubt on that point.

Third, the bolded part.  As I've already gone over there are plenty of justifications they could have for attacking the second time.  I agree those justifications are much more suspect than they are for the first attack but the fact is there are still justifications and they did get a second command clearance to fire.  It may seem that in hindisght it was unecessary, but that is hindsight and frankly I think it's disgusting to judge them with information we have the luxury of knowing after the fact, information about who they were, who was with them, and what they were donig etc...You know information that they simply didn't have at the time. 

For instance, we know they were helping a journalist and not a terrorist, they had no idea. We know there were children in the van, they had no idea.  Which by the way, I find your assertion that "the two children could easily be seen in the mini-van" is absolute nonsense.  You didn't see it until the video pointed it out to you, and the people who made the video only saw it because they were explicitly looking for it and because of the reports they read on the incident after the fact that told them the children were retrieved from the front seat of the van.

Fourth, the soldiers weren't at all trigger happy to kill civilians.  They were trigger happy to kill armed men who were in the area where US troops had just been fired upon.  Upstanding citizens don't wander the streets with AKs - their assumption that they were insurgents is hardly far-fetched.  All they know is that the van arrived quickly and started helping a man that was at the very least associating with armed insurgents.  This assessment had to be made in a short timespan and it had to be made correctly or the men and women relying on this individual could have died.  It may be the case that he was wrong here (on the first attack i don't think he was, but the second probably he was), but second guessing the decision with the luxury of additional information that he simply didn't have in order to demonize the man is pretty awful in its own right, particularly given that we have the luxury of additional time and additional facts with which to get it right.

You are seriously brainwashed. First, there was only 1 guy that had a gun, no else. And in a crowd full of unarmed people, they decided to just kill them all instead of that one guy.

What the US forces did was against the rules of engagement. They did not use minimal force necessary. They killed unarmed men. They killed wounded and downed men. They killed good people that tried to rescue an injured person. They did not even have the decency to take the children they've seriously wounded to the hospital, and just laughed at the kids. Fuck anyone that even remotely protects these assholes.

Everything they've done was AGAINST the rules of engagement. Why do you think the US govermenment tried to stop Wikileaks.org from releasing this video?

Fighting barbarism with barbarism.

Well they shouldnt even be in that country in the first place, a waste of time, money and lives.

you clearly have never read the ROEs.

http://cryptome.org/info/reuters-kill-2/reuters-kill-2.htm

Army report is out; they found weapons and rpgs, as you can see in the video if you really cared to watch,  the wikileaks video is lying about the kids being turned over to the iraqi hostpital. They were taken to FOB Loyalty, and were transfered the next day to the Iraqi hospital to recover.

This is why I say it's better to have an independent Military Police.  Even if all the facts out... a lot of people won't want to believe the military... because there is a conflict of interest.

I saw the video a couple days ago when it first hit the web. As bad as the way the military personnel acted and how seemingly unprofessional their conduct was, I simply can't fault them for this incident, because I've seen many similar videos on YouTube and Liveleak from roughly the same period when Baghdad was still an insurgent hot zone (prior to and during "the surge").

In some of them, the military personnel doing the surveillance had a clear indication of terrorist activity on the ground and basically had to beg their central command for permission to engage, but they were denied permission until they witnessed hostile activity, i.e. the firing of an RPG or other weapons by the insurgents.

In one infamous video (can't seem to find it but i'll try again), the insurgents move around under a tarp next to a truck which houses a mortar or rocket launcher assembly kit, and they load it off the truck and proceed to set it up all while under cover of the giant tarp, because they know our rules of engagement and they know our military cannot engage them unless they have a clear visual of weapons and intent to use them. So after they set it up, they pull the tarp away, launch the mortar or rocket, and then scatter before the gunship has a change to engage them, and can only pick off a couple of them fleeing in one of the trucks. This is just one example, but there are many others like it, and that is one of the many reasons why the army members in the video were so eager to engage.

Not making an excuse for their actions, that's just the way things are, especially in a hostile war zone like Iraq circa 2007.