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Forums - General - Collateral Murder

Mendicate Bias on 06 April 2010
hobbit said:

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.

Thats not the army report, thats just an analysis of the video by another website.

@Sqrl

There are no justifications for the second attack. Like I said there were no weapons on the men from the mini-van who had come to help and there was nothing stopping the helicopter from following the van if they suspected they were insurgents and seeing if they went to a hospital or a insurgent hideout. All they had to do was transmit the vans location and it would have been stopped en-route by ground forces who could verify the situation far better.

Secondly these are expert soldiers behind those videos who have been trained for years on the use of the equipment and shown how to spot out the smallest details so yes I do expect them to see the children in the car window.

Also considering the number of friendly fire incidents our military has had in this war do you honestly believe they know the location and in fact even existence of every single camera crew and contract military worker in Iraq? I seriously doubt that. 



                                           

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Sqrl on 06 April 2010
shio said:
Sqrl said:

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.

 

 

1)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.

2)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.

3)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?

1) First on the score of brainwashing I have to ask, seriously?  No really...seriously? You don't agree with me so now I'm brainwashed?  Just wow.

On the substance of that brainwashing, I watched the video and saw several AK47s and at least 1 instance where someone was carrying something that either was an RPG or looked damn close to it from the images I saw.  Other sources linked in the thread are now confirming the military did find AK47s and an RPG...so I'll say right there you're already off to a bad start on this.

Next, on the issue of "a crowd full of unarmed people" you're completely off base.  What we have, as evidenced by the video along with the AAR, is a crowd of numerous armed individuals and the fact that those who are not armed are there mingling with them at all means they fall under one of two categories (1) They are not combatants and they just happen to spend their days hanging out with armed insurgents...but never actually engage in combat themselves -OR- (2) They are also insurgent combatants who are either carrying concealed weapons or are currently unarmed.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for those in the first category, and I don't have any sympathy for those in the second category.

Now as has been pointed out numerous times in this thread, there were people in this area firing on US troops just prior to this incident.  The fact that they opened fire on obviously armed individuals under that context is neither shocking or surprising in any way.  

2) To my understanding those RoE are now public thanks to this incident so how about you start by breaking those RoE open and citing the specific portions that were violated rather than making unsupported assertions.  If you're correct lets see the proof of that, that is what will convince me.  Because in my limited understanding of RoEs nothing in this video was a violation and in fact they seemed to go down the checklist of what they needed to do in order to fire. If not, lets see specifically what was violated.

As for their treatment of the kids, again we know from other sources that they were in fact taken to FoB Loyalty and were only transferred to the Iraqi hospital the next day after first treatment had been given.  But hey, no you're right, lets jump down their throats and form a conclusion based on incomplete information.

My entire point in this thread has been benefit of the doubt, benefit of the doubt, benefit of the doubt!  Lets not assume someone was guilty of doing something horribly wrong until we have at least both sides of the story and even then we should be careful to make sure we have enough information.  The fact that you crawled up their ass over treatment of the kid's medical treatment and now it looks like you may have been completely wrong is a prime example of why I was pushing for that approach...but hey, don't let me stop you.

3) Again, cite the RoE explicitly, show where it was violated.

As for a coverup? There is no indication that the military made any additional effort to prevent this from going public than they would have for any other combat video.
To Each Man, Responsibility
hobbit on 06 April 2010
NightDragon83 said:
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.

they don't need an excuse they didn't do anything wrong. The reporters and kids should have never been there, thats not the gunships fault.

http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fsites%2ffoia%2frr%2fCENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210%2fDeath%20of%20Reuters%20Journalists&FolderCTID=&View={41BA1AAF-785A-481A-A630-12470AFCD6FD}

centcom has a full report up now.

2-16 was being fired upon, basically everything in that video is a lie.



hobbit on 06 April 2010
Mendicate Bias said:
hobbit said:

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.

Thats not the army report, thats just an analysis of the video by another website.

@Sqrl

There are no justifications for the second attack. Like I said there were no weapons on the men from the mini-van who had come to help and there was nothing stopping the helicopter from following the van if they suspected they were insurgents and seeing if they went to a hospital or a insurgent hideout. All they had to do was transmit the vans location and it would have been stopped en-route by ground forces who could verify the situation far better.

Secondly these are expert soldiers behind those videos who have been trained for years on the use of the equipment and shown how to spot out the smallest details so yes I do expect them to see the children in the car window.

Also considering the number of friendly fire incidents our military has had in this war do you honestly believe they know the location and in fact even existence of every single camera crew and contract military worker in Iraq? I seriously doubt that. 

those pics are from part of the army report. you can dl the report by clicking the zipfile link at the top.



Sqrl on 06 April 2010
Mendicate Bias said:

@Sqrl

There are no justifications for the second attack. Like I said there were no weapons on the men from the mini-van who had come to help and there was nothing stopping the helicopter from following the van if they suspected they were insurgents and seeing if they went to a hospital or a insurgent hideout. All they had to do was transmit the vans location and it would have been stopped en-route by ground forces who could verify the situation far better.

Secondly these are expert soldiers behind those videos who have been trained for years on the use of the equipment and shown how to spot out the smallest details so yes I do expect them to see the children in the car window.

Also considering the number of friendly fire incidents our military has had in this war do you honestly believe they know the location and in fact even existence of every single camera crew and contract military worker in Iraq? I seriously doubt that. 

The entire point of the gunship support is to prevent ground forces from being put in extremely dangerous face to face scenarios.  Yes they could have waited but the fact is that doing so requires soldiers to put their lives in danger to confront those men.  You and I can sit here after the fact and know they didn't have hand-guns, or grenades, or a bomb, or a myriad of other conealable weapons...but they have now way of knowing that immediately on the scene.

All they know is that men were armed, they shot them, and shortly after someone comes to help them.  Whether or not firing on them is reasonable hinges on so many things.  For instance, how common is it for innocent civilians to come rushing to help insurgents that have been fired on?  Is it common for insurgents to attempt to rescue other insurgents who have been shot in order to escape?  Are the Iraqi civilians told to simply report these incidents and let the military handle it? etc...

Any one of those factors dramatically changes the dynamic of the second shooting.  So again I don't have enough information but I give them the benefit of the doubt.

If it turns out that it is common for civilians to help, and there is no mandate to not get involved, then it certainly is a lot more suspect than if civilians never help because there is a mandate to just report it and let the military handle it. 

On the children again.  You don't seem to get it.  The only reason...again the ONLY reason...once more..THE ONLY REASON that the wikileaks people could tell us the children were in the front seat is because the military reports told them the children were found there.  I've stared at the closeup in the video a dozen times and I cannot see anything that indicates children.  It's just an impossible demand you're making on them to spot that. 

If I can't do it knowing what to look for, where to look for, and with no regard to anything else on frame, then insisting that they spot it is flat out absurd.

As for locations...uhm...yes.  Those people are required to check in with command HQ and keep them aprised of their wereabouts for a myriad of reasons.  Not the least of which is so they don't get fired upon in a situation like this.  But also so that if they go missing they have a place to start looking.  I can tell you with certainty that is how it was handled the Gulf War based on people I've talked to personally, so while I can't explicitly confirm the system for Iraq, I don't see any reason that the need for keeping tabs on people would have changed.
To Each Man, Responsibility
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Kamal on 07 April 2010

It's nice to see you guys defending murderers.



"Life is but a gentle death. Fate is but a sickness that results in extinction and in the midst of all the uncertainty, lies resolve."

Sqrl on 07 April 2010
Kamal said:
It's nice to see you guys defending murderers.

It's nice to see that people are incapable of making informed rational assessments and instead rely on emotional gut reactions.

Hey everybody!  LYNCH MOB!

Boy, you're right, now I feel great about myself!  When can we hang the next innocent target of our ignorance murderer?

 

Seriously Kamal, if you had a solid substantive point to make you would have made it.  But you don't so instead you stand back and lob bombs at people you disagree with.  It's a pathetic form of debate (really it's an attack) and one that isn't tolerated on this forum.  Make a substantive post or leave the thread.  I'm happy to debate anyone who disagrees but I'm not going to stand here while someone throws bombs without actually making an argument of their own.
To Each Man, Responsibility
Kamal on 07 April 2010
Sqrl said:
Kamal said:
It's nice to see you guys defending murderers.

It's nice to see that people are incapable of making informed rational assessments and instead rely on emotional gut reactions.

Hey everybody!  LYNCH MOB!

Boy, you're right, now I feel great about myself!  When can we hang the next innocent target of our ignorance murderer?

 

Seriously Kamal, if you had a solid substantive point to make you would have made it.  But you don't so instead you stand back and lob bombs at people you disagree with.  It's a pathetic form of debate (really it's an attack) and one that isn't tolerated on this forum.  Make a substantive post or leave the thread.  I'm happy to debate anyone who disagrees but I'm not going to stand here while someone throws bombs without actually making an argument of their own.

Lol, from what I see they were enjoying murdering those people like it was a 11 kill streak in Call of Duty, and gratifying there deaths, I don't really care how the video is assessed that fact can not be taking away.



"Life is but a gentle death. Fate is but a sickness that results in extinction and in the midst of all the uncertainty, lies resolve."

Sqrl on 07 April 2010
Kamal said:
Sqrl said:

It's nice to see that people are incapable of making informed rational assessments and instead rely on emotional gut reactions.

Hey everybody!  LYNCH MOB!

Boy, you're right, now I feel great about myself!  When can we hang the next innocent target of our ignorance murderer?

 

Seriously Kamal, if you had a solid substantive point to make you would have made it.  But you don't so instead you stand back and lob bombs at people you disagree with.  It's a pathetic form of debate (really it's an attack) and one that isn't tolerated on this forum.  Make a substantive post or leave the thread.  I'm happy to debate anyone who disagrees but I'm not going to stand here while someone throws bombs without actually making an argument of their own.

Lol, from what I see they were enjoying murdering those people like it was a 11 kill streak in Call of Duty, and gratifying there deaths, I don't really care how the video is assessed that fact can not be taking away.

Ah yes, so our assessment is a fact and everyone else is just wrong or at least to be ignored?  You declare them murders, and now its a fact?  You declare they enjoyed killing people, and so they must have?

The fact is that people react to stressful situations in a lot of different ways, and short of having a psychological evulation on these men to read from neither of us is qualified to say if these people were exhibiting an innapropriate reaction to an awful situation or genuine enjoyment of killing.  One thing is for sure, it's really easy for you to sit back in your ivory tower without ever having been in a situation like this and be so sure of yourself and your conclusions despite lacking any experience to draw on.
To Each Man, Responsibility
oldschoolfool on 07 April 2010
Sqrl said:
Kamal said:
Sqrl said:

It's nice to see that people are incapable of making informed rational assessments and instead rely on emotional gut reactions.

Hey everybody!  LYNCH MOB!

Boy, you're right, now I feel great about myself!  When can we hang the next innocent target of our ignorance murderer?

 

Seriously Kamal, if you had a solid substantive point to make you would have made it.  But you don't so instead you stand back and lob bombs at people you disagree with.  It's a pathetic form of debate (really it's an attack) and one that isn't tolerated on this forum.  Make a substantive post or leave the thread.  I'm happy to debate anyone who disagrees but I'm not going to stand here while someone throws bombs without actually making an argument of their own.

Lol, from what I see they were enjoying murdering those people like it was a 11 kill streak in Call of Duty, and gratifying there deaths, I don't really care how the video is assessed that fact can not be taking away.

Ah yes, so our assessment is a fact and everyone else is just wrong or at least to be ignored?  You declare them murders, and now its a fact?  You declare they enjoyed killing people, and so they must have?

The fact is that people react to stressful situations in a lot of different ways, and short of having a psychological evulation on these men to read from neither of us is qualified to say if these people were exhibiting an innapropriate reaction to an awful situation or genuine enjoyment of killing.  One thing is for sure, it's really easy for you to sit back in your ivory tower without ever having been in a situation like this and be so sure of yourself and your conclusions despite lacking any experience to draw on.

I freind requested you Sqrl. I pretty much agree with this post. None of us have all the facts. None of us were there. It's easy to judge from a video. refer to my previous post on my thoughts,if you want to.