From WikiLeaks, Collateral Murder

[bigross86]

He wasn't hanging out with armed insurgents. He was two blocks away when the shooting happened.

Wrong. Both reporters are clearly seen talking with the people in the group with the RPG and the rifle. He wouldn't have been shot if he was 2 blocks away

Did you read the article? It's a major metropolitan area! There is no doubt a drug dealer or 3 on my block. My stopping to help a wounded one who I don't know is a drug dealer, just a wounded person on the side of the road does not make me an active participant in a gang war and it doesn't make that guy an insurgent.

But there's the difference. These men were brandishing weapons in the open and the reporters chose to stay with them anyway.

Are you saying it's no big deal? Not a situation to be corrected? Dead children and reporters and not a single shot fired by them or anyone but US troops and you saying:

"That's how we roll. I don't see anything that needs to be corrected here. Should have known better than to try and save a dying reporter".

Is that your take?

Apparently according to the ROE a shot doesn't need to be fired. The presence of weapons is enough. Besides, what about the RPG? Same question I asked before, do you honestly think they wouldn't have shot the RPG at the Apache, given even the slightest chance?

Forgive me, clearly I can expect you and all soldiers to live up to the lowest forms of accountability.

I would appreciate it if you would refrain from ad hominem attacks on myself and on my honor. You are not my friend. You do not know me. The fact that I have been debating with you for the past god knows how long gives you absolutely no right to pass any sort of judgment upon myself and then insert it into the public forum as part of your argument. If you have opinions about me, keep them to yourself. I'm not interested in what you think of me.

I don't know if you've read the WAB Survival Guide, but I'd suggest you go read it, or read it again if necessary. I've read and responded to every single post you've made so far and kept it civil. I'd suggest you do the same. That is how a proper debate is run

[bigross86]

Not a single soldier in this thread has proposed that it would be better if they had seen there were cameras and kids and not killed reporters and kids. Not one. Obviously innocent people, obviously dead. Not one soldier said...

Read the first post I made on the first page of this thread. I believe it's the fourth post of the thread. Tell you what, lemme just quote it for you:

I don't think it's completely fair for us to second guess what the soldiers are doing in the field. To a certain extent it needs oversight, and mistakes do happen, but there will always be civilian casualties in any armed conflict.

As for the children, I did not notice them in the van until the video pointed it out at about minute 16. I did not notice them at all when the van showed up at minute 9. And I've got a felling that if I was sitting in the comfort of my room watching the video on a widescreen computer and didn't see them, it's a lot harder for the soldiers sitting in the Apache to have noticed them.

By the same token, a camera with a strap can look a lot like a gun with a strap. I can't count how many times I've seen soldiers in uniforms on the buses here with a strap over their shoulder. I look to see what kind of gun they have and it turns out to be a bag.

[zraver]

Can you please show me how you came to that conclusion. I showed you that in the same treaty you quoted, there clearly is a requirement for a specific insignia in order to qualify for protection as a medic. How do you resolve that?

We are using two different treaties, get glasses, yours in 49, mine is 50 so is the article to be enforced.

[Roycerson]

2 posts up. The VAN was two blocks away. The one with the kids in it.

do you honestly think they wouldn't have shot the RPG at the Apache,

I honestly don't know that wasn't a camera and not an RPG and suspect if it were this video never would have been covered up because there would be evidence to show it was defensive force. I've seen no RPG. Did the soldiers on the ground recover it? I've seen no evidence of that whatsoever.

pparently according to the ROE a shot doesn't need to be fired

Is that a yes?

[bigross86]

We are using two different treaties, get glasses, yours in 49, mine is 50 so is the article to be enforced.

Zraver, we are dealing with the same treaty, as I showed you from the website before: UN Convention on the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces (I)

UN Convention (I)
for the Amelioration
of the Condition of
the Wounded and Sick
in Armed Forces in the Field


Signed at Geneva, 12 August 1949.

ENTRY INTO FORCE: 21 October 1950.

Hence my confusion, I identified it as one of the Geneva Conventions. The matter still holds that the articles I quoted from Chapter 7 clearly state the need for insignia to warrant protection

[zraver]

Not a single soldier in this thread has proposed that it would be better if they had seen there were cameras and kids and not killed reporters and kids. Not one. Obviously innocent people, obviously dead. Not one soldier said...

STFU, those reporters were war corespondents, they knew the risk and chose to hang out with an armed group engaged in combat with Americans. A group that had an RPG which is a shoot on sight offense.

That first attack was legit by every rule in the book. The only problem is the firing on the van.

[bigross86]

I honestly don't know that wasn't a camera and not an RPG and suspect if it were this video never would have been covered up because there would be evidence to show it was defensive force.

Now we're doing the conspiracy theory thing?

I've seen no RPG.

Have you ever seen an RPG? Have you ever seen an RPG being aimed at you? Look at 4:10 in the video, you can see what is clearly an RPG being held and aimed at the Apache.

An RPG-7 is 95cm in length, 4 cm in diameter. Very hard to confuse an RPG with a video camera. Confusing an AK-47 with the stock folded and a video camera can be understood, but not an RPG.

Did the soldiers on the ground recover it? I've seen no evidence of that whatsoever.

You may not realize this, not much is left after an AH-64 decides to shower you with gifts

Is that a yes?

Most emphatically, NO.

Edit: I don't know what your question "Is that a yes" is in reference to, since it's a fragment, not connected to any other facet of your quote, but the answer is most probably still no.

[bigross86]

Zraver, I don't mean to seem pushy, but it's getting quite late (early) and I would like to know if you have a response to what I said about them both being the same treaty. I don't want to pound "I'm right, you're wrong", I'm, honestly interested in hearing your response.

[Roycerson]

The got tiny scraps of body parts from the twin towers. Are you telling me that after that they won't be able to find an unexploded warhead?

If it's an emphatic no than what can be improved? Maybe he could have reported exactly what he saw and not what he expected to see? Maybe if he did that he would have seen 2 children and not 2 terrorists?

[Parihaka]

An RPG was recovered from the scene

Pentagon officials on Tuesday confirmed the authenticity of the video, and said that it did not contradict the finding of an official inquiry that the helicopter pilots acted within their rules of engagement. A rocket-propelled grenade launcher was found at the scene of the attack, officials noted.

[Parihaka]

Whoa...wait a second here.

You said we have soldiers on the streets in America.

You said you are afraid of American soldiers, because they would shoot you if you render aid to someone bleeding to death.

You said our soldiers forced people into Superdome.

You said our soldiers stopped Walmart trucks full of water.

I merely ask for proof of these allegations.

Or do you admit that you're just making up stuff to justify your fear of American soldiers in a combat zone?

I too want evidence of this

[Shek]

Date of incident - July 2007.

This is right in the middle of the surge, right on the heels of the highest causalties in the entire war, right in the middle of the the epicenter of the violence in Iraq at the time. As Big Ross has pointed out, context matters, because it is how we are hardwired to process information. If you notice in the video, the helicopter pilots clearly saw hostile intent (it is probably a telephoto lens at 4:10 in the video since the shape doesn't fit that of the front of a loaded RPG, but the crouching and peering around the corner arouses suspicion and clouds over the shape discrepancy), which makes it both within the ROE and laws of land warfare. They clearly see the wounded person as hors de combat, as they do not fire upon him. They clearly see a continuation of the action when the unmarked van shows up (yes, there are ambulances with proper markings in Iraq - which was true even back in 2003/4), which is why they ask for clearance to engage.

Do mistakes happen in combat? Absolutely. However, the law of land warfare is not about the ex post facto result, but rather, depends heavily on the ex ante decision and context leading to that decision. Several folks on here are ignoring the ex ante stuff and simply viewing with hindsight bias.

Also, what we don't get from the video is the full context. What's happened in that AO before? Why is the Bradley unit in the AO? What time of day is it, and how does that fit into the pattern analysis? I could continue on, but this is only one angle to the entire incident.

[Parihaka]

I haven't made judgement of the rest of the claims made here as I can't watch the video until I'm home, but the notion that the van was shot at 2 blocks from the original strike seems nonsensical given the van passengers were apparently offering aid to the wounded?

[TopHatter]

Not a single soldier in this thread has proposed that it would be better if they had seen there were cameras and kids and not killed reporters and kids. Not one. Obviously innocent people, obviously dead. Not one soldier said...

"man.... you gots to be careful where you point your gun in a working city, clean targets clean background people. gee I wish my fellow soldiers were more diligent about that. I like to think we have a higher level of professionalism than to go shooting kids while no other bullets are flying anywhere"

not one

I mess up in my job every day. I never do anything perfect. And I'm good. Are all you guys so much better that you can't see room for improvement? If you're not unhappy with good enough you will never be excellent and dead kids and reporters are not good enough.

Not only are you wrong, as Bigross pointed out, but....

I'll tell you what. When you become a soldier and live in a combat zone for months on end, and know what it's like to face death from every direction every damn day, then you can talk about how well you do or don't do at your job back here in the hideously dangerous United States.

[bigross86]

The got tiny scraps of body parts from the twin towers. Are you telling me that after that they won't be able to find an unexploded warhead?

If it's an emphatic no than what can be improved? Maybe he could have reported exactly what he saw and not what he expected to see? Maybe if he did that he would have seen 2 children and not 2 terrorists?

We have nothing more to discuss. Clearly, you refuse to listen to the arguments brought against your claim. We have brought support, proof and logic to reinforce our claims. You have not supported even a single one of your claims beyond some stories you heard from one soldier friends of yours, which has absolutely nothing to do with your claims about Katrina. But even though you were specifically asked for proof at least twice, you've decided to ignore that in favor of more ranting. Fine.

Next: You yourself admitted that in the comfort of your computer screen you didn't see the children, but at the same time it's impossible that the soldier in the Apache flying over the city who is slightly more occupied than you didn't see them. He must have obviously targeted the children on purpose.

Moving on: You keep bouncing around from topic to topic, from subject to subject. First you have issues with the entire attack. "If he had reported what he had seen instead of wanted to see", even though weapons were clearly identified. Then with the attack on the van, which in hindsight was unfortunate, but at the time was completely legal, due to the different contexts in which it was seen. Now if he had reported what he had seen instead of wanted to see, the attack on the children would not have happened, once again overlooking that he could have missed the children, same way you did.

I can not tell you one way or the other if they discovered the RPG or not, if it blew up or not. However, I'm fairly certain that most armed patrols in Iraq don't usually carry the same kind of Forensic Investigators that were present at the WTC.

But still, we keep going: You deemed it perfectly acceptable to make a sweeping general statement about all soldiers in the world, and upon all US soldiers as well based upon your experience talking with one friend and your debate with me. Then you topped even that with an argumentum ad hominem on my person. I'm waiting for Godwin's Law to take effect and for you to somehow even insert a reductio ad Hitlerum argument.

Sir, I'm more than perfectly content to keep debating with you, pointing out all of your mistakes for them to be summarily ignored, but unfortunately it is extremely late where I am and i must leave now. If you're still around with your asinine comments when I wake up, I'll be more than happy to let you know where you have departed from your sense and strayed from the path of logic, if Gunnut or someone else hasn't endeavored to do it before me.

I wish you a good night, sir, and once again, I'd recommend that you read the WAB Survival Guide, found on the Member Introduction page. Here's the link, so you don't get lost on the way and forget to read it:

http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/mem...val-guide.html

Good Night, Sir