US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporters

[watermelony2k]

12+ people were shot including some attempted rescuerers. Reuters was trying to use freedom of information act to obtain the classified video of that event in Baghdad. Note that this was from like 3 years ago:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/05/wikileaks-exposes-video-o_n_525569.html

here's the full video that got leaked out recently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik

edit: oh, BBC posted news about the leak:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8603938.stm

meanwhile cnn has tiger woods on its front page

 

[Lonemagpie]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

Just watched the wikileaks video actually - the captioning is very much with a specific agenda in mind.

Trying to stay objective, I'd say:

1) I don't think I'd necessarily have not opened up on the group at first (if I was a military person in Iraq with whatever orders and thought they were about to attack my side) - from the footage, it's not clear what the people are carrying, and it's reasonable to have thought they were weapons.

2) While its easy to see why the chopper crew thought the guys on the ground were armed with some variety of AKs, it's hard to tell why they thought someone was aiming an RPG at them - there's nothing in the frame that looks anything like one. But they may have been referring to something not in the gun-camera view at the time.

3) It's a bit iffy that they're so keen to open up on the wounded men crawling away. I could understand that if we were talking about ground forces here, and were concerned that lying man could shoot at them - but that's a bit excessive for a gunship crew.

4) It's interesting that when the van turns up, the gunship crew say there are folks from it picking up the bodies *before* anyone actually gets out to do this - either they're looking for an excuse to kill some more and trying to pre-justify it, or the sound has been edited around to make it appear so. But I'm guessing Option 1 here. They also say there are more people than there actually are (maybe they think Westmoreland's still around and bodycounts are everything)

5) The two guys who get out of the van to try rescuing the wounded journo are fucking idiots. They've just seen a gunship attack what they presumably know are civilians, and they try now to bring him out into open ground instead of taking him to a position that the gunship can't shoot at.

6) The guys from the van are clearly unarmed and carrying an unarmed body. This is the bit where the gunship guys cross the line into unnecessary force. There's no threat and if they just wanted to stop them getting away they could have trashed the van while the guys were outside of it.

7) We now get the "oh there were two kids on board" caption. They're totally impossible to see. Even when the video zooms in and labels two vague blurs as kids, they're not recognizable as such. They could be headrests, bits of paper, fucking lens flares. I don't think there's any sign that the gunship crew were out to kill kids there.

8) Did I mention the van guys being fucking idiots? What kind of motherfucking moron takes their kids into the firing line of a fucking gunship? I mean, seriously, that's a fucking Darwin award right there.

I find myself in two minds. On the one hand I disagree with the war, but on the other hand I can't see this as anything other than... "shit happens." The Reuters journalists knew and presumably accepted the risks. The gunship crew should have stopped shooting earlier, but it's plain enough to see why they started. It's a perfect example of "Look, stay the fuck out of war zones, man!"

To be honest the folks I find myself most angry at are the two fools who took the children into the firing line in their van.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

Oh, and it's not an ambulance, either. Just somebody's van. No red crosses or red crescents on it, or any other colour.

 

[Candlelight]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

See, this is why we need a sentient computer controlling an army of pilotless drones and - for the sake of argument - terminators, to do the fighting for us.

Either that or centurions, raiders.

You know, something you know won't come back and bite us in the ass.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

See, this is why we need a sentient computer controlling an army of pilotless drones and - for the sake of argument - terminators, to do the fighting for us.

Either that or centurions, raiders.

You know, something you know won't come back and bite us in the ass.

 

[captcalhoun]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

^rofl

 

[farmkid]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

I haven't seen the video of this, but I did hear a discussion about it on the radio. I'm not sure where the guys I heard talking about got their information; perhaps they saw an extended version of it. Anyway, they pointed out that there was a battle going on only a block away, and the gunship was providing support for the soldiers in that battle. These guys got out of the van and looked exactly like the guys a block away holding weapons. It's reasonable for these guys to believe that the guys getting out of the van were on their way to join the battle. Apparently that fact was edited out of the wikileaks video but it should probably be kept in mind when evaluating the video.

 

[clint g]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

I'm going to just restate what I said in the TNZ thread...



You have no real way to tell what was going on or what the pilots were thinking when this happened. With that said, Apache pilots are among the best trained, most highly skilled soldiers in the Army. I'm willing to bet that there was some perceived threat that made them act the way they did. On top of that, the gun camera only shows one thing; what the gun was pointing at. It doesn't show the situation surrounding them.

 

[gturner]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

Actually, even the head of Wikileak admitted that the film was heavily edited and that in an earlier version they were going to point out that several of the people in the footage they obtained were openly carrying RPG's and AK-47's, and were the only people walking around openly in an area of live combat. All the actual civilians were hunkered down indoors.

Not being armed doesn't give anyone a free pass when they're acting as soldiers, since not all soldiers in combat do everything armed. Officers, for example, were traditionally unarmed or carried only ceremonial weapons, and people assigned to crew served weapons and vehicles often don't have a rifle in their hands during combat. Normally such people stand out because of their uniforms, but in Iraq the enemy wasn't wearing distinctive markings, in violation of the Geneva conventions.

Other elements of insurgent forces would try to rescue their wounded, booby trap the dead, place IED's at the scene to inflict further casualties, or film the attack for Al-Qaeda or various militant recruitment videos.

In this particular battle's aftermath, the bodies of those in the video were indeed found with RPG's and AK-47's, along with the cameras carried by the Reuter's stringers, many of whom had definitely been working alongside and with insurgents.

 

[Withers]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

You have no real way to tell what was going on or what the pilots were thinking when this happened. With that said, Apache pilots are among the best trained, most highly skilled soldiers in the Army. I'm willing to bet that there was some perceived threat that made them act the way they did. On top of that, the gun camera only shows one thing; what the gun was pointing at. It doesn't show the situation surrounding them.

I'm the son of a retired US Army Colonel so nobody is a bigger advocate or quicker to defend men in uniform than I am... but having watched this video, I can't help but feel uneasy about what I saw. I would never jump to the more sensational claims ("They were out to kill kids!") but to gloss over the whole incident with the knowledge of how well trained these guys are is essentially giving them a free pass and I'm not comfortable with that because of the precedence it sets.

I've also now read that the video we've all seen is heavily edited (somehow) and if that's the case I don't think anyone can truly make a judgment that's fair. I think the incident warrants investigation by officials who know what they're doing.

-Withers-​

 

[clint g]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

You have no real way to tell what was going on or what the pilots were thinking when this happened. With that said, Apache pilots are among the best trained, most highly skilled soldiers in the Army. I'm willing to bet that there was some perceived threat that made them act the way they did. On top of that, the gun camera only shows one thing; what the gun was pointing at. It doesn't show the situation surrounding them.

I'm the son of a retired US Army Colonel so nobody is a bigger advocate or quicker to defend men in uniform than I am... but having watched this video, I can't help but feel uneasy about what I saw. I would never jump to the more sensational claims ("They were out to kill kids!") but to gloss over the whole incident with the knowledge of how well trained these guys are is essentially giving them a free pass and I'm not comfortable with that because of the precedence it sets.

Who said anything about glossing stuff over? All I've said is that you can't tell what happened. I am, however, going to give them the benefit of the doubt because

a- They ARE well trained and it's unlikely they did this for the hell of it

b- They've already been cleared once, as this issue was investigated after it initially happened

c-The gun camera only shows what the gun is pointing at, not the area surrounding it so the footage shown is not enough

d-As you've noted, there have already been reports that this footage doesn't paint the whole truth. As someone who is serving in the military, I can see how this can be the case

That being said, I at no point said that there shouldn't be an investigation. I'm not going to condemn these guys however over an incident that not only has been investigated once before, but also (given the context) seems incredibly over the top. I have a hard time believing that experts as good as the Apache pilots would just open fire just 'cause.

 

[Withers]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

You're willing to bet there is a good explanation for why they reacted the way they did and so am I. What I was making clear (as you now have as well) is that I wouldn't be comfortable leaving it there. We can't just say "We can't know what happened. Let's assume, based on who these guys are, they were in the clear." We have to investigate and I wasn't clear on that you thought so until your second post.

-Withers-​

 

[Kirkman1987]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

This is a tragic thing. I'm just glad that this kind of footage is being seen by so many.

There are many people unaware of the violence inflicted on civilians during a war, or who don't give the full violence of war enough thought. Whether you are for or against the war, people should understand the reality of it.

 

[gturner]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

Um, by "civilians" I hope you mean "insurgents". The violence inflicted on civilians during war these days is nothing compared to the 20th century norms, in which we incinerated them by the hundreds of thousands without so much as a press release.

Now we're down to episodes like this, in which we target people dressed as civilians but carrying RPG's and AK-47's, and target them individually. We are several orders of magnitude more discriminating that just sixty years ago, which is mind boggling.

One of the strange features of the war against Iraq is that the usual peace groups went behind the lines to film the horror of war, but our operations were so clean that on tape they were moaning that if war just looked like this, nobody would be against it.

We're sitting here debating an action that was at squad level, involving a dozen or so people on both sides. Ninety or so years ago a day's action would've involved the death of fifty thousand soldiers, and twenty years after that would've involved fifty thousand or so actual civilians, as in women running with babies, instead of a half-dozen insurgents running with anti-tank rockets, as in this video.

On top of that, keep in mind that a large part of the reason for the casualties on both sides was the anti-war movement. They are the ones that convinced ignorant Iraqis that the US couldn't fight an insurgency, that conventional armies couldn't win against an insurgency, etc., despite the US having won over a hundred wars against insurgent movements without blinking an eye. They believed the moronic drivel put out by our press, and as seen in this video, they paid with their lives for no point at all, other than keeping our soldiers momentarily amused.

 

[opali]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

Um, by "civilians" I hope you mean "insurgents".

Um, I hope by "insurgents" you don't mean two young babies with their stomachs and lungs blasted to pieces.

The violence inflicted on civilians during war these days is nothing compared to the 20th century norms, in which we incinerated them by the hundreds of thousands without so much as a press release.

huh? We incinerated hundreds of thousands of civilians without so much as a press release? In one blow? That was the norm?

Now we're down to episodes like this, in which we target people dressed as civilians but carrying RPG's and AK-47's, and target them individually. We are several orders of magnitude more discriminating that just sixty years ago, which is mind boggling.

What is mind boggling to me is how people can compartmentalize and think that because we can target people discriminately and tell what flavor gum they are chewing before we shoot them, that it makes a war more efficient and successful.

One of the strange features of the war against Iraq is that the usual peace groups went behind the lines to film the horror of war, but our operations were so clean that on tape they were moaning that if war just looked like this, nobody would be against it.

I'd like to hear that quote myself. Link?

...seen in this video, they paid with their lives for no point at all, other than keeping our soldiers momentarily amused.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

Well, putting any moral issues aside (and I don't want to get into a big wartime morality debate because it just causes me grief ), whatever you think about the issue, whatever your stance on war in general or this war in particular, children are going to die in wars. People of all description are going to die in wars. Whether you choose to discriminate or not, make any form of distinctions or not, go out of your way to shield children or not, at least some children will die. Sorry to be ridiculously obvious, but that's what happens in a war- large numbers of people die, often in complicated or ambiguous circumstances. The only way to stop any children dying in war is to not fight war- and as I'm sure some people will be quick to point out to pacifists like myself, that requires a universal decision not to fight wars or else people will still die anyway. As has been pointed out up thread, children have died in vast amounts in any number of wars, whether the war targeted them or not. War is not a game; it's not a movie in which the baby in the pram miraculously survives the disaster intact, and that's true whether you practice any form of discrimination or not, and/or whatever form(s) that discrimination takes.

Am I personally upset at the children dying? Yes. I'm equally upset about the adults dying. I'm equally upset to see children, men, women, civilians, soldiers, whoever, dying. But people die in wars. Distinctions and systematic segregations won't ever fully work even if you do try your hardest to enforce or live by them (and I know US soldiers are trained to do so, no matter what anyone thinks of that), and that isn't even taking into account not everyone is going to.

 

[John Picard]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

War is hell.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

War is hell.

Indeed; that's a far less rantish way of putting it than my post, yes.

And whatever your viewpoint is on the "who should die/be targeted/be in whatever situation, etc" issue, whether you're a gung-ho shoot-em-all-up type, a thoughtful soldier, a pacifist, whatever, none of it changes the fact that people die in wars, and that whoever dies, in whatever way, whatever form of discrimination you employ, there will always be those who are outraged at that situation or attitude or outcome, and are morally opposed to it. And thank the gods for that! As far as I'm concerned, we should never consider matters of war, or anything else with such power over our lives and societies, to be reduced to any certainties, definitive "answers" or prescriptive ideologies.

The day our people all agree on issues such as wartime morality and ethics is the day we're doomed.

 

[gturner]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

Hey, Captain Kirk never had qualms about firing a full spread of photon torpedoes even knowing that the Klingons were observing 'take your daughter to work day.'

 

[Colonel Green]

Re: US gunship kills civilians, fires on ambulance and reuters reporte

^ Their membership in the elite paramilitary organization known as "Girl Scouts" made them all legitimate targets.