Ummm...

Did everyone miss the part where group in question was armed? ...and don't play the "I'd be armed if walking around Baghdad, too"--an RPG isn't the sort of thing you carry to defend yourself.

4/8/2010 11:01:34 PM

um did u miss the OP?

4/8/2010 11:12:53 PM

holding american soldiers to a standard of perfection is merely a convenient way to excuse one's hate for them.

4/8/2010 11:13:38 PM

^ exactly

when mistakes are made, nothing needs to be done.

4/8/2010 11:24:05 PM

depends on the type of mistake... was it an honest mistake or was it a moral mistake? most people in this thread except the most rabid anti-americans agree that this at worst an honest mistake. in that case, nothing needs to be done aside from perhaps encouraging the population not to go running around with RPGs and AK47s in the midst of pitched battles.

4/8/2010 11:35:22 PM

Quote :

"Ummm... Did everyone miss the part where group in question was armed? ...and don't play the "I'd be armed if walking around Baghdad, too"--an RPG isn't the sort of thing you carry to defend yourself."

While I realize its your sworn duty to be biased in this situation, however, a camera != an RPG or AK-47 no matter what your CO tells you.

4/9/2010 12:04:07 AM

The "rabid anti-american" and "you must hate our soldiers" line is getting really tiring.


If I'm not mistaken thats one of the same lines the Bush administration used to get us into the shit-hole that is Iraq in the first place.

person 1: Iraq has WMDs we have to get them before they get us!!

person 2: wut? are you sure?

person 1: You anti-american soldier hater!!!! (sends neighbor's kids off to war)

4/9/2010 12:15:07 AM

I feel betrayed by Wikileaks. After all the supposed research and analysis they did on the video, they fail to mention the fact that there were armed individuals in the group. It wasn't just a case of misidentifiying the cameras as weapons.

Quote :

"At 3:39, the men central to the frame are armed, the one on the far left with some AK variant, and the one in the center with an RPG. The RPG is crystal clear even in the downsized, very low-resolution, video between 3:40 and 3:45 when the man carrying it turns counter-clockwise and then back to the direction of the Apache. This all goes by without any mention whatsoever from WikiLeaks, and that is unacceptable."

After watching this part again, I can clearly see a guy with a rifle and another with either a rifle or RPG, which the pilots acknowledge.

Knowing that the journalists were knowingly walking around with armed insurgents makes their deaths less tragic to me. They were basically embedded with the enemy, so they had to know the risks.

Btw, the Army report apparently confirms that they had a rifle and two RPGs. This according to the wikipedia article on the last page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike#Release_of_Army_report


[Edited on April 9, 2010 at 12:53 AM. Reason : .]

4/9/2010 12:38:55 AM

Quote :

"depends on the type of mistake... was it an honest mistake or was it a moral mistake?"

i'm sure this will fly right over your head, but whatever:

if you want to classify the first assault as an honest mistake, then fine. the second attack is less justifiable in my opinion (and in the opinion of many others), however.

the "moral mistake" has (arguably) yet to be made. if we acknowledge that innocent civilians were killed and will continue to be killed without so much as attempting to lower these unnecessary casualties, then we as a country will be actively engaging in a moral mistake. this is the breach in morality that i don't expect you to give a shit about, because you clearly feel that a person in iraq is engaging in risky behavior simply by being in iraq. and by that logic (again, this is your retarded logic, not mine), if we are in fact "at war" with these people, and they manage to kill some of our civilians on american soil, people such as yourself should just shrug it off because we are in a "war zone" and shouldn't be out and about in urban environments with our canon rebels.

4/9/2010 2:06:25 AM

Quote :

"without so much as attempting to lower these unnecessary casualties"

are you fucking kidding me? what do you think the billions of dollars of military research have been going into?

4/9/2010 8:02:24 AM

Quote :

"because you clearly feel that a person in iraq is engaging in risky behavior simply by being in iraq."

Reporting in a war zone is always risky behavior. As is pulling up to a gunfight with a van full of toddlers, regardless of what your intentions are.

And, by the way, why do you suppose it is that our soldiers over there have to be suspicious of armed people in civilian clothes? Do you think that's an environment they relish? Don't you think they would much rather be fighting a clearly identifiable enemy? Do you think they enjoy finding out that kids were inside the van they just shot to pieces? I doubt it. But I guarantee the insurgents are thrilled.

[Edited on April 9, 2010 at 9:22 AM. Reason : ]

4/9/2010 9:22:13 AM

Innocent blood demands innocent blood.

4/9/2010 9:25:37 AM

What's that supposed to mean?

4/9/2010 9:44:05 AM

^^ and people think the "anti-american" label is meaningless in this thread.

4/9/2010 10:05:27 AM

kinda ironic how wikileaks sought to expose the US military's "lies" and cover up by being dishonest themselves.

doh! there goes the credibility!

[Edited on April 9, 2010 at 10:10 AM. Reason : .]

4/9/2010 10:09:21 AM

this was always intended to be nothing more than a hatchet job.

and people wonder why the military resisted releasing the video - because it was obvious that people only wanted it to distort the record and use it as propaganda.

4/9/2010 10:59:34 AM

Quote :

"um did u miss the OP?"

ummm...what does the OP have to do with my previous post about the group in question being armed?

Quote :

"in that case, nothing needs to be done aside from perhaps encouraging the population not to go running around with RPGs and AK47s in the midst of pitched battles."

and at least reinforcing the importance of exercising care and appropriate restraint...


but that's a moot point in this case, as they had AK-47s and at least one RPG.

Quote :

"While I realize its your sworn duty to be biased in this situation, however, a camera != an RPG or AK-47 no matter what your CO tells you."

I'm not being biased. I'm calling things as I see them from my perspective, which I maintain is better than anyone else's who's posting in this thread. I will call a spade a spade where I see it.

...and in this case, the group was armed. Not necessarily every member, but (A) guilt by association...even if you aren't toting a rifle/RPG, running around in that group gives enough indication that you're up to no good that you can be fairly targeted, and (B) an Apache's chain gun isn't a scout sniper platoon...you can measure with a microscope all you want, but that chain gun is, to an extent, cutting with an ax (certainly nothing like a bomb, a Hellfire/Maverick, or even a strafing run by a jet, but they can't pick out which members of a group to kill).

Quote :

"the "moral mistake" has (arguably) yet to be made. if we acknowledge that innocent civilians were killed and will continue to be killed without so much as attempting to lower these unnecessary casualties, then we as a country will be actively engaging in a moral mistake. this is the breach in morality that i don't expect you to give a shit about, because you clearly feel that a person in iraq is engaging in risky behavior simply by being in iraq. and by that logic (again, this is your retarded logic, not mine), if we are in fact "at war" with these people, and they manage to kill some of our civilians on american soil, people such as yourself should just shrug it off because we are in a "war zone" and shouldn't be out and about in urban environments with our canon rebels."

I totally agree that this "well they shouldn't be toting cameras around Iraq" logic is retarded and morally wrong. That said, I don't think that's what got them killed.

I also think that we've gone to pretty great lengths to minimize collateral damage, and as the combat has become less and less intense, we've gotten even less permissive of collateral damage.

Quote :

"and people wonder why the military resisted releasing the video - because it was obvious that people only wanted it to distort the record and use it as propaganda."

Aside from that, all sorts of combat footage is classified for reasons I don't really even know. I've seen all kinds of shit WAY more innocuous than this that's classified. Hell, sometimes stuff is classified at VERY high levels only because of the means by which it was maintained--the information/data/footage itself might be pretty mundane. It almost seems to me like almost all combat footage is classified by default, unless they decide to release it for some specific reason.

4/9/2010 11:18:36 AM

It sa tragedy that this happened.

And there are lessons to be learned here.

Media should coordinate with US Military Command before entering an area.

Media should wear materials that identify them as such.

I don't know if it would be possible, but we could give them IFF transponders.

I'm not saying the people in the video were insurgents, the media might have just had them as bodyguards.

4/9/2010 11:26:31 AM

RPGs are necessary for bodyguards?

4/9/2010 11:50:16 AM

Who the hell knows, if they had RPGs and or AK 47 and they were in a combat zone, I completely agree with the attack.

Overall i think the helicopter pilots followed their training, they acted in what they felt was the best interest of themselves and their fellow troops.

Im sick of people saying that the military hid it and didn't try to learn a lesson.

Just because the public doesn't get to air chair quarterback every accident in war does not mean the military doesn't react to accidents like this, or implement procedures to help mitigate future accidents.

You cant cover everything with Nerf and fight a war.

4/9/2010 1:06:57 PM

Quote :

"I'm not being biased. I'm calling things as I see them from my perspective, which I maintain is better than anyone else's who's posting in this thread. I will call a spade a spade where I see it. ...and in this case, the group was armed. Not necessarily every member, but (A) guilt by association...even if you aren't toting a rifle/RPG, running around in that group gives enough indication that you're up to no good that you can be fairly targeted, and (B) an Apache's chain gun isn't a scout sniper platoon...you can measure with a microscope all you want, but that chain gun is, to an extent, cutting with an ax (certainly nothing like a bomb, a Hellfire/Maverick, or even a strafing run by a jet, but they can't pick out which members of a group to kill)."

Where are we getting that they were armed?

4/9/2010 1:35:28 PM

from the video

4/9/2010 1:47:27 PM

And from the Army report, which states that soldiers on the ground collected an AK47 and two RPGs... which has been posted twice now.

4/9/2010 2:34:21 PM

^, ^^

4/9/2010 2:37:26 PM

shocking - the person with an axe to grind who broke federal laws to leak the video edited it to not include video of the same AC not engaging other suspected insurgents because of children in one case and inability to get a positive ID on weapons in another.

http://gawker.com/5513068/the-full-version-of-the-wikileaks-video-is-missing-30-minutes-of-footage

[Edited on April 9, 2010 at 3:24 PM. Reason : .]

4/9/2010 3:22:42 PM

All this talk about the U.S. military doing what it can to limit collateral damage becomes less credible when you consider the best current research on Iraqi casualties from the invasion. The three surveys with solid methodology suggest 150,000 to 1,000,000 violent deaths. The 2006 Lancet study assigns at least 31% of the 600,000 projected violent deaths directly to coalition action. This stands completely consistent with the history of American imperialism. It's no special case.

4/9/2010 4:37:20 PM

Official WikiLeaks Credibilty Watch Thread?

4/9/2010 4:43:21 PM

seems like if the military would have just been up front about it to begin with, wikileaks wouldn't have been able to control the conversation

4/9/2010 4:52:03 PM

Quote :

"seems like if the military would have just been up front about it to begin with, wikileaks wouldn't have been able to control the conversation"

The military was upfront about it. They investigated it and told the press about the results of that investigation.

Quote :

"The three surveys with solid methodology suggest 150,000 to 1,000,000 violent deaths."

Quote :

"The 2006 Lancet study assigns at least 31% of the 600,000 projected violent deaths..."

Looks like you've got one hell of a margin of error with these statistics.

[Edited on April 9, 2010 at 5:26 PM. Reason : ]

4/9/2010 5:25:16 PM

what % of those Iraqi casualties were caused directly or indirectly by insurgents? suicide bombings, deception, intentionally firing upon US forces from civilian positions to provoke response, etc?

4/9/2010 5:47:32 PM

Quote :

"ummm...what does the OP have to do with my previous post about the group in question being armed?"

You asked why people thought they weren't armed, I was just pointing out that the OP says they weren't armed.

4/9/2010 6:23:16 PM

Maybe a youtube video by some group called "WikiLeaks" isn't the best source to immediately put all your faith in and trust?

4/9/2010 6:34:57 PM

i still don't see an rpg in those videos

and an army report saying they found one on the ground isn't enough to convince me when i've heard countless accounts on the interwebs and some very close friends of shit like this happening: http://www.truthout.org/iraq-war-vet-we-were-told-just-shoot-people-and-officers-would-take-care-us58378

4/9/2010 6:38:49 PM

Quote :

"Looks like you've got one hell of a margin of error with these statistics."

The numbers come from three different surveys, so yes. The 2006 Lancet study says 600,000, the ORB study says 1,000,000, and the Iraq Family Health survey says 150,000. (Numbers rounded for convenience.)

Quote :

"what % of those Iraqi casualties were caused directly or indirectly by insurgents?"

Unclear. To my knowledge, only the Lancet study tried to distinguish. Respondents assigned 31% of the deaths to coalition action, a lower percentage to insurgents, and didn't know about the rest. In the ORB study, 48% died from a gunshot wound, 20% from the impact of a car bomb, 9% from aerial bombardment, 6% as a result of an accident, and 6% from another blast/ordnance.

4/9/2010 7:06:06 PM

jesus christ man, do you even know what an RPG looks like?

at 3:43 in the 17:47 length video, they show a group of 4 men center screen.

the man 2nd from the top of the screen turns counterclockwise. he is holding an RPG in his right hand

i know that you're too busy trying to shit on the military to be bothered with facts, but the evidence is irrefutable - he has an RPG

4/9/2010 7:06:55 PM

I think it was just airsoft though.

4/9/2010 7:10:13 PM

4/9/2010 7:10:32 PM

Quote :

"And from the Army report, which states that soldiers on the ground collected an AK47 and two RPGs... which has been posted twice now."

ROFL

4/9/2010 7:14:05 PM

Quote :

"150,000 to 1,000,000 violent deaths. The 2006 Lancet study assigns at least 31% of the 600,000 projected violent deaths directly to coalition action. This stands completely consistent with the history of American imperialism. It's no special case."

Hey man, better to have my freedums in death than live under a run-of-the-mill islamic dictator like Sadaam. AM I RITE?

4/9/2010 7:26:49 PM

I don't see a problem with the video. They saw a bunch of people with weapons and they shot at them. Don't like it? How about not starting bullshit wars.

4/9/2010 7:29:25 PM

I'm amazed that anyone still cites the Lancet study.

4/9/2010 7:39:05 PM

Quote :

"I don't see a problem with the video. They saw a bunch of people with weapons and they shot at them."

Maybe we watched different videos but I am not seeing any weapons anywhere. I'm seeing what looks like camera equipment. Maybe they are the same in the military, who knows *shrug*

4/9/2010 7:49:37 PM

^ "That could be a weapon but it also might be a camera so I'm gonna study this more closely OH WAIT i'm dead."

4/9/2010 7:57:59 PM

Quote :

"Maybe a youtube video by some group called "WikiLeaks" isn't the best source to immediately put all your faith in and trust?"

I'm not stating one is right or anything, just explaining why people here would think they weren't armed.

4/9/2010 8:02:46 PM

^^^in other words, you don't have the training to be able to identify weapons, ergo there are no weapons

oh, but you can definitively say that you can see a camera. because cameras have 5 foot long telephoto lenses

[Edited on April 9, 2010 at 8:07 PM. Reason : .]

4/9/2010 8:05:50 PM

^ I can identify weapons no problem which is why I don't see weapons in that video.

The military is policing a heavily populated area. Its their job to verify targets before acting on them. I thought thats why we have recon units or do they just get coffee?

^have you seen the cameras used by news agencies? They aren't usually your Best Buy camcorder.

[Edited on April 9, 2010 at 8:15 PM. Reason : .]

4/9/2010 8:15:05 PM

give it up Golovko. you're sounding shrill.

4/9/2010 8:20:03 PM

and not to mention just desperate and ridiculous.

the game's over. you lost.

4/9/2010 8:21:10 PM

truth stings, I know...its ok you'll get over it.

Also, the poor innocent civilians lost along with those soldiers dignity.

4/9/2010 8:22:42 PM

Quote :

"totally agree that this "well they shouldn't be toting cameras around Iraq" logic is retarded and morally wrong. That said, I don't think that's what got them killed. I also think that we've gone to pretty great lengths to minimize collateral damage, and as the combat has become less and less intense, we've gotten even less permissive of collateral damage."

Yeah, I wouldn't ever say that. BUT I am DEFINITELY saying that you do so at your own peril and you've got to realize that it's entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that you'll be killed doing it. You could easily be mistaken for a combatant by either side in the heat of a battle or you could be in the wrong place at the wrong time and be killed by a round or shell intended for someone else. But the closer you are to the action, the more likely it is that you're going to become a casualty in my opinion. Not that I'm saying it's acceptable to kill photographers, but if they go into a war zone voluntarily I have a hard time feeling as bad about it as I would if they were just someone who happened to live there and had to go out for a second just to get some food or something.

As a photographer you are going to try to go towards the conflict rather than away from it and that makes you more likely to appear like a combatant IMO, especially from an aircraft. The people we're fighting in this conflict tend to dress just like normal civilians and it makes things very difficult I'd imagine. Like you said, we are trying to minimize collateral damage. But people need to keep in mind that this is exactly what the enemy wants us to do, accidentally kill civilians. This is just as much a tactic of their style of warfare as any other tactic they use IMO. It helps breed anger and resentment towards the US and, if done properly (ie - transparently and in a non-obvious manner), it can assist them in gaining recruits as well as local support.

So, if you think our goal is to kill innocent people or that we aren't concerned about it, then you really aren't thinking very hard. Our strategy is necessarily more complex than "kill the bad guy". We have to win the hearts of the people there as well in order to actually win the conflict IMO and I'm pretty sure the military is aware of this. Indiscriminate murder is not going to help our cause at all and, as duke pointed out, as the conflict becomes less intense civilian deaths will be seen as less and less acceptable. Anyone who thinks our goal is to kill innocent people or that such incidents are of no concern is really being rather dense and ignorant.


NOTE: I'm mostly referring to photographer/journalist and civilian deaths IN GENERAL here, not necessarily this particular situation. If the people in this situation were photographers though, they certainly took a risk and they almost certainly would have known that's what they were doing. At least I'd hope they knew.

4/9/2010 8:28:50 PM