Leaked Iraq video: Journalists for Reuters shot

[luckytxn 2,265]

As long as the public cannot access it, it is secret.

At the same time, there are people who see that the military can do no wrong, and any incident showing otherwise is a conspiracy against the military.

Then you don't know soldiers. Try to peruse the military and Vet sites sometime. No one is more critical then us.

This vid was no secret. There are a few websites that this vid would look saintly on. Some vids are so graphic that I wouldn't advise to go see.

We see that you hate the military so that is OK. Many do.

Edited April 7, 2010 by luckytxn

[alienlovechild 75]

At the same time, there are people who see that the military can do no wrong, and any incident showing otherwise is a conspiracy against the military.

Anyone that doesn't know the military can and does screw things up doesn't know where the acronyms SNAFU and FUBAR came from.

[_Simpson_ 250]

I have a real hard time excusing this video. If we had seen the video all the way up until the cameraman was peaking around the corner without any audio from the helicopter I would of thought that they had might of had a good reason for shooting, it did look like a possible threat but we he had audio and It sounded like from the get go that the soldiers were "looking for a fight", I understand that in a war soldiers are constantly being shot at and when your life is in danger you take very little chances but they had "fight" on there mind from the very beginning.

Another problem I have with the situation is with the soldier that made the comment " Well its there fault for bringing the kids to a battle.", thats cold if you ask me,a quick I'm not to blame comment.

[sandinista! 1,816]

i'm with glenn greenwald on this one.

But there's a serious danger when incidents like this Iraq slaughter are exposed in a piecemeal and unusual fashion: namely, the tendency to talk about it as though it is an aberration. It isn't. It's the opposite: it's par for the course, standard operating procedure, what we do in wars, invasions, and occupation. The only thing that's rare about the Apache helicopter killings is that we know about it and are seeing what happened on video. And we're seeing it on video not because it's rare, but because it just so happened (a) to result in the deaths of two Reuters employees, and thus received more attention than the thousands of other similar incidents where nameless Iraqi civilians are killed, and (b) to end up in the hands of WikiLeaks, which then published it. But what is shown is completely common. That includes not only the initial killing of a group of men, the vast majority of whom are clearly unarmed, but also the plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men (with their children) carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety -- as though there's something nefarious about human beings in an urban area trying to take an unarmed, wounded photographer to a hospital.

A major reason there are hundreds of thousands of dead innocent civilians in Iraq, and thousands more in Afghanistan, is because this is what we do. This is why so many of those civilians are dead. What one sees on that video is how we conduct our wars. That's why it's repulsive to watch people -- including some "liberals" -- attack WikiLeaks for slandering The Troops, or complain that objections to these actions unfairly disparage the military because "our guys are the good guys" and they act differently "99.99999999% of the time." That is blatantly false. Just as was true of the deceitful attempt to depict the Abu Ghraib abusers as rogue "bad apples" once their conduct was exposed with photographs (when the reality was they were acting in complete consistency with authorized government policy), the claim that what was shown on that video is some sort of outrageous departure from U.S. policy is demonstrably false. In a perverse way, the typical morally depraved neocons who are justifying these killings are actually being more honest than those trying to pretend this is some sort of rare and unusual event: those who support having the U.S. invade and wage war on other countries are endorsing precisely this behavior.

As the video demonstrates, the soldiers in the Apache did not take a single step -- including killing those unarmed men who tried to rescue the wounded -- without first receiving formal permission from their superiors. Beyond that, the Pentagon yesterday -- once the video was released -- suddenly embraced the wisdom of transparency by posting online the reports of the so-called "investigations" it undertook into this incident (as a result of pressure from Reuters). Those formal investigations not only found that every action taken by those soldiers was completely justified -- including the firing on the unarmed civilian rescuers -- but also found that there's no need for any remedial steps to be taken to prevent future re-occurence. What we see on that video is what the U.S. does on a constant and regular basis in these countries, and it's what we've been doing for years. It's obviously consistent with our policies and practices for how we fight in these countries, which is exactly what those investigative reports concluded.

The WikiLeaks video is not an indictment of the individual soldiers involved -- at least not primarily. Of course those who aren't accustomed to such sentiments are shocked by the callous and sadistic satisfaction those soldiers seem to take in slaughtering those whom they perceive as The Enemy (even when unarmed and crawling on the ground with mortal wounds), but this is what they're taught and trained and told to do. If you take even well-intentioned, young soldiers and stick them in the middle of a dangerous war zone for years and train them to think and act this way, this will inevitably be the result. The video is an indictment of the U.S. government and the war policies it pursues.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/06/iraq/index.html

a really good piece actually.

[Pooky 3,929]

i'm with glenn greenwald on this one.

But there's a serious danger when incidents like this Iraq slaughter are exposed in a piecemeal and unusual fashion: namely, the tendency to talk about it as though it is an aberration. It isn't. It's the opposite: it's par for the course, standard operating procedure, what we do in wars, invasions, and occupation. The only thing that's rare about the Apache helicopter killings is that we know about it and are seeing what happened on video. And we're seeing it on video not because it's rare, but because it just so happened (a) to result in the deaths of two Reuters employees, and thus received more attention than the thousands of other similar incidents where nameless Iraqi civilians are killed, and (b) to end up in the hands of WikiLeaks, which then published it. But what is shown is completely common. That includes not only the initial killing of a group of men, the vast majority of whom are clearly unarmed, but also the plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men (with their children) carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety -- as though there's something nefarious about human beings in an urban area trying to take an unarmed, wounded photographer to a hospital.

A major reason there are hundreds of thousands of dead innocent civilians in Iraq, and thousands more in Afghanistan, is because this is what we do. This is why so many of those civilians are dead. What one sees on that video is how we conduct our wars. That's why it's repulsive to watch people -- including some "liberals" -- attack WikiLeaks for slandering The Troops, or complain that objections to these actions unfairly disparage the military because "our guys are the good guys" and they act differently "99.99999999% of the time." That is blatantly false. Just as was true of the deceitful attempt to depict the Abu Ghraib abusers as rogue "bad apples" once their conduct was exposed with photographs (when the reality was they were acting in complete consistency with authorized government policy), the claim that what was shown on that video is some sort of outrageous departure from U.S. policy is demonstrably false. In a perverse way, the typical morally depraved neocons who are justifying these killings are actually being more honest than those trying to pretend this is some sort of rare and unusual event: those who support having the U.S. invade and wage war on other countries are endorsing precisely this behavior.

As the video demonstrates, the soldiers in the Apache did not take a single step -- including killing those unarmed men who tried to rescue the wounded -- without first receiving formal permission from their superiors. Beyond that, the Pentagon yesterday -- once the video was released -- suddenly embraced the wisdom of transparency by posting online the reports of the so-called "investigations" it undertook into this incident (as a result of pressure from Reuters). Those formal investigations not only found that every action taken by those soldiers was completely justified -- including the firing on the unarmed civilian rescuers -- but also found that there's no need for any remedial steps to be taken to prevent future re-occurence. What we see on that video is what the U.S. does on a constant and regular basis in these countries, and it's what we've been doing for years. It's obviously consistent with our policies and practices for how we fight in these countries, which is exactly what those investigative reports concluded.

The WikiLeaks video is not an indictment of the individual soldiers involved -- at least not primarily. Of course those who aren't accustomed to such sentiments are shocked by the callous and sadistic satisfaction those soldiers seem to take in slaughtering those whom they perceive as The Enemy (even when unarmed and crawling on the ground with mortal wounds), but this is what they're taught and trained and told to do. If you take even well-intentioned, young soldiers and stick them in the middle of a dangerous war zone for years and train them to think and act this way, this will inevitably be the result. The video is an indictment of the U.S. government and the war policies it pursues.

http://www.salon.com...iraq/index.html

a really good piece actually.

A really good piece? Really?

From the outset, the author's bias is in plain sight. The terms "slaughter" and "sadistic satisfaction" take away any relevance the author might have hoped for in his analysis of the situation. He doesn't understand that this opinion piece is a slap in the face for every serving member of the Armed Forces and their families.

It is a sickening, one-sided view of a war from someone who will never understand that war is never civilised. Even when the other side is wearing a uniform, bad things happen. When they do not, the choices made by the military can often look bad in hindsight, but Apache crews don't use hindsight, they only have gunsights. The Rules of Engagement are there to give our service men and women a reference point for their course of action. It is never going to be perfect, but it will reduce the number of incidents like this, by giving set criteria for action, such as the carrying of weapons. But the author doesn't want to see it that way. He wants to see ROEs as a licence by our servicemen to take action.

War is never civilised. It is never fair. And the civilians aren't the only ones to feel the brunt. One incident that springs to mind is the 6 British Military Policemen, who were killed by a mob of Iraqis in Basra. As far as I know, none of the Iraqis had firearms. Would you shoot unarmed civilians? Trying to civilise war, tame it and make it palatable for the masses is naive in the extreme. Deal with the fact the people make bad decisions and die. Warzones are not safe places. The American servicemen here followed the rules.

[Niels Bohr 72]

What if these people are trying to get away from the war zone area. It's sad how short sighted some people on this thread can be. Or, when a relative heard his sibling was shot. Who in their right mind wouldn't want to see the truth? Want to go immediately?

It takes a nut to kill people and try to justify it.

Edited April 7, 2010 by Niels Bohr

[_Simpson_ 250]

i'm with glenn greenwald on this one.

a really good piece actually.

A good piece. Just because you agree with it doesn't make it a good piece, its very one sided and it makes no attempt to look at this from both sides, that is what I would consider a good piece. You have set your standards very low if you think this was a good piece.