If you do not think the Wikileaks shooting was a mistake, what do you think was the motive?

what else?

there is no crime, there is no error, what you see is war. Your vote empowers and enables this.

Dead guys in pakistan fall the same. Except there is no video for you to analyze. You dont get to make a monday morning call on an event like this. Unless there was a clear crime (execution of a cuffed man), it is the judgement on the ground that counts.

Dont like that, dont put people there to fight.

Taxes also enable this

And some people need to take lessons of previous peace movements and ahem take action. Yes people went to jail for protesting the First World War, very brave... these days, with a few exceptions, nothing like that.

Come on...

How about "following orders, no matter how absurd".

BTW, I watched the entire 39 minute video all the way through before all these comments became a slaughterhouse of accusations. The first reaction of mine was- what a tragic command structure they had. Those boys were playing it like it WAS a video game, and they had convinced them to dehumanize their targets... It didn't matter who was being targeted, not when you're trying to hang on to something when you're deep in the mire of this mess.

... So, they are trained to do tis and it is wrong to do this, and if you ask anyone who served in the 2nd world war, I dare say they would tell you they were following orders the same way.

IF WHAT YOU HEARD MAKES YOU THINK THEY ARE DIFFERENT THAN ANY OTHER FOOT SOLDIER, THEN YOU'VE MISSED A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF STORIES FROM SOLDIERS WHO DID THE SAME.

We've lost it in trying to figure out the reason Iraqis are being targeted, but then what the hell do all of you THINK we've been doing for 8 years on here?

We have less and less military leadership and these young gamers are doing what they're told.

it's still murder. And yes, that is what I think of ALL theaters of war. See my sig line. This isn't a 'war'.

It's really very simple: Pointing a gun at someone and shooting them is murder. If they're shooting back at you, it's murder in self-defense, but murder nonetheless. All the institutional rationalizations in the world will never change that.

It's just risen to the highest degree of absurdity, so I wonder why everyone is surprised and shocked, shocked, I tell you, when they view this video. It's been going on and on and on. We have to stop.

So, I cry inside when I'm reminded of it once again with this video. It's because of my feeling that these newest crops of KIDS (troops) are having/will continue to exhibit the highest degree of PTSD when fully understanding their role in this. I wonder - will our president suffer internally as he should about this? He certainly has a lot on the plate, but Jesus, this has to STOP.

Meanwhile, I hate the reactionary vitriol within its context as a breaking story.... It's not, it's an ONGOING disgusting, mind blowing, military industrial complex nightmare of a story. AND, once again WE are going to HAVE to try to DEAL with all the destruction, including these troops. You signature line states that well. I am so angry, I grow limp about it. :cry:

But some will call it targeting journalists. We've done that before, but I doubt this was that.

I like to shoot shit like targets and what not. Hell, put me in war, jack me up on ambien, Afghan opiates, Afghani Kush and whatever else, and maybe itll be game on.

Abu Ghraib proved that.

Don

Cause its fun.

Once brown people become as important to you as empty beer bottles, it might be just as fun blastin em away (or funner, since they move).

Its not good when they become just as important.

and no one ordered the murderers to shoot - they begged for permission. Not even a nice try.

that's their job. YOu have a job? painting, fixing old cars, teaching, you may enjoy it and do it well. They did their job with enthusiasm. If you actually listen the quote was "just pick up a weapon buddy". So they did not shoot him until others arrived.

Shove your bullshit somewhere else bud - they exaggerated every detail, come on let us shoot!

I have a j ob and in all the jobs I've had I had to be sure of what I was doing, not just ASSUME or invent things so I could do what I wanted.

IDIOT

you vote you pay taxes? You own the splatter matter in pakistan right now. You know, last week, today. There are 5000 tapes just like this one and 10,000 incidents that never made it to video.

Killing people is their job. You may flip burgers or may be a reconstructive surgeon, they took pride in their work. They had rpgs and died. getting run over by a tank is pretty much not a big deal once you are dead.

Dont like it, dont vote for people who support wars. DK did not make it on the ticket for some reason. SO there you have it.

that's their job. YOu have a job? painting, fixing old cars, teaching, you may enjoy it and do it well. They did their job with enthusiasm. If you actually listen the quote was "just pick up a weapon buddy". So they did not shoot him until others arrived.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i5ZUfpxnV0

"They" killed some of ours so we kill some of theirs. "They" being as broadly defined as possible.

Repeat ad infinitum.

"I don't see any method... at all... sir".

If you give an eight year old boy a stick and then step back and watch, you'll observe that he'll start hitting things with it. It seems to be human nature

If you give grown men a collection of fascinating toys (tools) of death and destruction, they're going to find something to kill or destroy. They're not going to sit down and say, "How can we avoid ever having to use these, or having to use these unnecessarily?"

The pilots should be prosecuted, but they're not really the ones to blame. It's the people that are so anxious to give them those toys and put them in situations in which they can use them.

I think the OP was looking for some complex concept that was a far off reach and nonsensical. Heh. Maybe they don't get out much.

It's a mistake to drive drunk and kill someone. It's also a criminal act.

Shooting before properly identifying a target is reckless disregard for one's duties. That's what I would call what they did. They acted like boys playing a video game instead of men about kill a dozen people.

And that only applies to the initial attack. When they attacked the van and the wounded, that was not a mistake. It was the use of deadly force to stop those rendering aid or already wounded.

I'm always amused when people who know nothing about international law or war crimes conclude neither are applicable to war excesses by the USA. Anyone who thinks the only standard is the one by which the military judges itself really misses the point.

amused at people who have never been in combat don't know the physical and mental stress of combat and the horrible toll it takes on a human and how people who have no clue would automatically call it murder and a war crime

Your assumption is invalid.

at best the guy broke ROE, but probably not. Mistakes happen in war, they are not crimes. You dont send guys to war and then get to monday morning qb it. Take your gripe to dc where the war is run and funded.

There is no ambulance, and the guy identified everyone as a threat.

The only thing you know is that the incident fits your understanding of the event from the perspective of the US military. You agree with their whitewash, and that's the end of the issue for you. You're just a gung ho guy who thinks all things military are fine.

If it's prosecuted as a war crime, I'm sure the troops will want to call on you for your "expertise" in international law and war crimes. You'll find out how useful your "rules of engagement" defense is. The ROE defense is only good inside the military.

in your comfy home, back home, where the normal rules of live exist that would be a crime.

In a war zone it is not. It is a tragedy, but not a crime... and save the morality play, there is no morality in war.

By the way, I'd have a clue or two about the ad hoc ambulance. If they had put a WHITE FLAG on it, then you'd have MORE of a point... because at that point it is STARTING to be properly marked. And yes a WHITE FLAG is the flag of truce and confers certain protections, at least in theory.

And by no means I am justifying this, but shit, take it to DC.

Oh and this comes from somebody who actually GOT SHOT AT by bad guys in a nice white van with shiny lights and sirens and what those in the bizz call, a target acquisition device or cross hairs on all proper places per the Geneva Convention, You may know them as RED CROSSES. Hey they were even reflective and shit.

You know why I was shot?

I mean who'd shoot at the red cross? Well my kids made a HUGE MISTAKE. They loaded an Army Lt into the ambulance... now it wasn't the loading that was the problem. It was the damn FAL Assault Rifle and the 45 Army COLT Automatic. At that moment we lost all kinds of neutrality and that round whizzing by my ear... yes they sound like mosquitoes, did not meet the characteristics of attempted murder.

If that casualty had been a cop we would have been borderline, but an army officer in an army action... the boys that took pot shots at me, even after I made a SHOW of disarming this guy, were not committing a crime. In fact, they were fully in their right to shoot, blow the ambulance up and all that. Ain't that wild?

SO do you really want to have a discussion on the laws of land warfare? I'm game.

It might be prosecuted as a war crime. It probably won't be prosecuted as a war crime.

Your attempts to sound knowledgeable on this matter are laughable.

10 years as a red cross worker

2 of them spent in Refugee processing and testimony taking from that other war you have no idea about, and yes there are reams upon reams of actual war crimes... oh the testimony

4 years as an instructor, and one of the things I actually taught was this, Geneva Convention and how they apply to war, warzones and the duties of the Red Cross (A lot of it went into silly shit like telling things apart like an actual military action from a crime... see that testimony I took.

Oh and University Level coursework on the subject matter, like International Humanitarian law.

So what are YOUR credentials?

You will not take my word, but this event is not going to become a war crime.

Now there is this other one that SHOULD go there, and TO has the story of it. Two Iraqis shot at night, when they posed no threat whatsoever, just for breaking curfew,you see they were tilling their land... when all the escalation of force needed was a loud voice.

Now that one rises to the category of murder.

So tell me, apart never having been to a warzone, or having the legal background, what are your credentials again?

Do me a favor go to DC and make sure they bring the boys and girls home. Given Obama campaigned on escalation good luck, and that I mean it.

now you can have all the moral outrage you want... but at least we know you don't have the credentials.

As they say, thanks for playing.

Oh and do me a favor, keep agitating to bring them home so more horror will not happen.

Thanks for playing.

how bout them apples. That CWO made his call and the army will back him.

The military has already approved this incident and buried it.

You're attempting to argue something no one is arguing. It's a given the military has done nothing and will do nothing about this incident. There's nothing in any of this discussion to suggest that the military might suddenly see the error of its ways and reverse field.

both american and Iraqi. There was no reason for the US to be there. and contrary to popular belief we did not really get oil for our efforts.

This tape and the ten thousand like it are part of the failed war policy.

My over arching point in all these posts it that the responsibility is not with the CWO but with the men who put him there.

As far as the Army is concerned this is over. As far as that CWO is concerned... he will live with it for the rest of his life.

and thanks for playing. If you are a war vet. then you know the Laws of Land Warfare, what is allowed and what is not.

So are you going to keep the insults going? Or are you going to probably admit that perhaps you don't have all the info on this to make a judgment. I know I don't.

And if you are a war vet, you do know of truce flags, don't you? You also know that you do not shot at an ambulance UNLESS that vehicle has lost its neutrality.

Again, thanks for playing.

What war and did you actually see combat? Or were you one of those rear area motherf*****s

Have you ever been in combat?

Or are you willing to listen as to WHY this is not a crime, not even murder. (War crime fall in a whole different category)

speaking as a retired military officer with knowledge of both combat and the Geneva Convention.

and my apologies.

By the way I posted this yesterday, trying to inform some folks on this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8102922

it yesterday and was very impressed with your knowledge, Keep up the good work

as a historian (that other hat) I see something evil building here, and when that happens (A civil war) many folks who think of the blue and the gray will be disabused of that honor and glory pretty damn fast.

Oh and you keep safe in the field... you are leaving the fire service in time. The violence from the war on drugs is coming north... and those A-holes don't respect fire rigs

You stay safe also

are speeding drivers in the rain

:-)

case watch out for those crazy drivers, sometimes they are more dangerous than someone shooting at you.

6 months to retirement, whoohoo:woohoo:

are far better.

My second big worry is why the heck is my parrot losing his tail feathers.

Ah soon you will also have those pedestrian worries, no more checking all kinds of hose, and all that fun.

Oh wait you will keep volunteering. Glad you can do that. My back died in a gully.

:-)

I wont be doing the Fire thing just riding one of the Ambulances, already talked to the Fire Chief and he told me that at a fire scene all I will do is stand by in case one of the firefighters goes down or a civilian needs medical so no more pulling hose or doing entry, just the Paramedic schtick

and ended up doing entry, firefighting, ventilation and extrication.

And I know nobody will get it why I am laughing.

At least when I was just wearing, the ambulance driver hat as our friend above so dismissively put it.

now but once a firefighter always a firefighter so I'll probably keep my hand in it but not like i do now

I got it what it took to go into the towers.

And what we gave, military family, was some money to the Firefighting fund... in NYC.

And a prime example of where military indoctrination leads- to the dehumanization of others. They way those military ASSHOLES laughed as they killed those people makes me hope those guys do not come back alive because they are irretrievably damaged by military indoctrination and will only be a danger to normal society.

in Vietnam I laughed alot also, it was my way of relieving the constant stress of being in war, so how do you know that maybe this is how they relieve their stress, not saying it is but just maybe

warzone, and having had been shot at for losing neutrality disabused me of this idea that there is morality in war. It kind of checks itself out when the bullets start flying. Why if we ever get an actual civil war in this country, people are going to quickly realize that war is not what Hollywood portrays. It is dirty, it is painful, and far from moral... in fact it is amoral by it's very nature. Why it is treated as a legal matter, not a moral one.

Now you as an individual may be morally outraged... me as an individual might be morally outraged... but if you expect justice... well there are reams upon reams of testimony of a couple wars oh twenty years ago. Those include things like torture, rape, yes even genocide... you know when the perpetrators are going to see a court of law? And I mean those were as black and white as you can get in a warzone.

What these treaties have done is prevent the worst of human impulses in a war zone. See WW II.

who has never been in combat. I wasn't there and neither where you so you don't know exactly what happened. I can sympathize with these troops and can understand their state of mind, now mind you I'm not saying it's right what happened but as a former combat vet I understand the stress they were going thru.
During my time in Vietnam I got so that every Vietnamese was an enemy and anything they carried was a weapon, was that right? Probably not but thats the nature of war

You know that excuse doesn't fly. Soldiers are responsible for what they do, and have the power to not go through with any order that is illegal or immoral.

In this case, you have trigger happy soldiers who don't care if they're shooting somebody who is armed or not. They couldn't wait to shoot, even if the people they killed were perfectly innocent.

I will say that it is a probability that these young pilots have lost their humanity and sense of morality due to their training, supervision and what appears to be a culture of disregard for law and human rights in the US Military.

The WikiLeaks film does cast a serious question as to what happened and why. The incident should be more thoroughly investigated.

...of the entire military mentality, the training given, the mindset of the people going into the service (or perhaps coming out of training) that are trained to shoot anything that is brown and moves, that every armstrap is an AK-47, that every round tube is an RPG, and that it's okay to shoot the wounded and those trying to save them, that Arab children's lives aren't worth anything.

No one bothered to tell the soldiers in the Apaches that they were supposed to be helping the Iraqi people, not tearing them to shreds in the name of God And USA Number One.

firing on a group that did in fact possess an RPG and rifles within a mile of a U.S. element?

:sarcasm:

There is no debate about that, it has been admitted by the Pentagon, and proven by Reuters. There was no RPG, no one shot at the chopper, they stood in the middle of the street looking up at an armed chopper and waited for the chopper to fire on them. They didn't take cover, they didn't return fire and when the van with the kids pulled up no one got out with a weapon and provided cover for the guys trying to help the man who was crawling on the ground with a bullet in him. They are either the worst soldiers in the history of mankind or they weren't soldiers at all.

Now lets say that you aren't a troll and didn't come in here to just stir up some shit by spreading falsehoods. What do you do now? Your facts are not really facts at all, just some more lies used to try to cover up the old lies. It's a good tactic really, eventually we'll all get lost in all these lies and no one will know what the fuck happened. So do you admit you are wrong? Or do you find a new "excuse"? Go ahead and post your next "excuse" I'd be happy to shoot that one down as well.

there is no article 15 for the guy unless he broke ROE. He judged a threat and killed it. There was an ak and there was an RPG so they got shot. The bradley on the ground was actually calling in the strike.

Bottom line, there is nothing here except the face of modern war. Its not like the movies, here, or in Pakistan where we kill people with remote controlled planes.

No one HAS to shoot at the chopper, the bradley can make the call.

What do you expect to come out of this piece of footage, like many others on liveleak right now?

Unless he shot a man on his knees in flexcuffs there is nothing here except images that disturb.

So take what you want from that. You think I don't know nothing is going to come of this? We live in a nation that protects torturers, enjoys a bit of the old racism, thinks it's ok to level an entire country based on lies, and most of all we think it's ok to kill someone if there might be some kind of threat in the future.

The real bottom line is if you can watch a video of people being massacred in the street including two children, and just chalk it up to the "face of modern war" and then go back to eating your twinkies, then it's you with the fucking problem not me.

when the war on drugs started in earnest. The Army Colonel had all us Paramedics (who might respond) and the reporters. Well he gave us a long lesson in how in a second flat some of our gear (tele lenses, long military stretchers) could be confused for actual weapons (and how to avoid accidents, which we were willing to avoid)

This is why this is a true tragedy... but unfortunately they do happen. Oh and I wish there was a way to prevent them, though these are not blue on blue incidents, in my mind their rise to that level.

Looks like someone found that sock they lost in the dryer a few years ago.

:shrug:

This of course refers to the first incident, when the machine gun was used to fire at the guys. I can't tell where US soldiers were when they fired at the van with the little girls inside. And I'm not sure at all about the later incident, when they fired missiles at a building. In that case, all the people I saw going into or walking by the building looked like they had nothing. The missile attack bothered me a lot.

Yeah thats real brave of you, ever been in combat brave person?

It really looked like a bunch of unarmed people getting shot.

...in my view, it is likely to be (a) informal "kill quotas"; and (b) a video-game mentality that removes them from having to think about what they are really doing.

http://cpj.org/reports/2006/12/killed-06.php

Who says the military learned nothing in Vietnam?

they are cold-blooded murderers (oh "sanctioned" and "legal" of course) who get off on killing and have not a shred of humanity, decency, or soul.
the motive is "fun."

It must be bad if he is having to backtrack...the Pentagon cannot find a copy of the footage. Right.

According to the US officers who investigated the incident, the official decision was that there was no mistake. The motive was to kill people who looked like they may be carrying weapons they could use to kill US soldiers. In Iraq, and other places, US soldiers kill people who may look like they are carrying weapons they can use to kill US soldiers. This is a decision made by the soldiers and officers in the location at the time.

As they say in Brooklyn, the first thing US soldiers have to do is look out for number one. Since the iraqis in this case are number two, the US soldiers are allowed a certain moral flexibility. One has to put this in context, these men are sent into an hostile city where even the children give them the finger and throw rocks at them. And then the fun starts, they are shot at, have bombs thrown at them, and the stuff comes flying in from everywhere. They can't even trust a woman, because she may be carrying a vest full of explosives. So of course these guys have a real problem dealing with all that hostility the face from the natives in the nations they invaded. It's very tough. This is why so many US soldiers arrive in the US and commit suicide.

My suggestion to you who are Americans is to give these guys in the helicopter some slack. They are sold a story about defending America, then they get there, see reality, and they realize their number one job is to survive, and help their friends survive. And it's a horrible experience for most of them. What you guys should do is just pressure your leaders to get your soldiers out of these stupid interventions you do. And please remember, this is something done by the Democrats and the Republicans. After all, who was President when you became so deeply involved in Viet Nam? And Somalia? And who bombed Yugoslavia 11 years ago? And who is escalating the war in Afghanistan? Democrats. So this isn't a problem for Republicans only, this is a problem all of you share.

And charge Bush and Cheney with war crimes.

the candidates made their positions clear, DK is not POTUS. Bush and Cheney will never be charged with any crime. Although in history the Iraq war will be viewed as a total waste.

Yeah and Lynndie England was the mastermind at Abu Grahib and Jessica Lynch fought off an angry mob of insurgents with just her guts and an assault rifle... And Saddam had WMD's and was going to kill us all at any moment...

When you are trained to hate brown people, you will use them for target practice. That indoctrination warps minds and renders them unfit for civil society.

Considering that they don't care about the truth - just invented facts that are made to achieve some sort of goal. I will not give anybody who committed murder, or strafed an innocent family of a father and kids who were trying to help, and then laughed about it slack.

:shrug:

Standard operating procedure. War crimes are committed every single day, which is the direct result of the dehumanization "us versus them" that occurs during indoctrination or what the military euphemistically calls training.

As for a motive, the act of War dehumanizes virtually everyone participating in the wanton destruction, it consumes the soul/spirit/psyche of those people closely involved.

That's what PTSD is about, the adrenalin rush from fear, hatred, loathing and violence becomes an addiction; engraving those intense emotions on the mind and logical motive becomes irrelevant.

That's why war should only be waged as a last resort and never based on a foundation of lies.

I think they did it because they could. Murder.

http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/official_culture.htm

It delves into how these cultural pathological strains are more common than what the collective obviously cares to acknowledge

:hi:

Via twitter from award-winning journalist Jeremy Scahill:
http://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/11820693805

i am a bit confused by the twatter source.

...

AMY GOODMAN: That is from the military’s own footage. Again, this is military footage from the Apache helicopter with those radio transmissions of the soldiers speaking to each other. What did the residents say about that body?


RICK ROWLEY: Yeah, now, I mean, I’m a journalist, and I go and talk to people and report what they said. And these residents came and told me that the man who they drove over was alive, that he had crawled out of the van that had been shot to pieces and that he was still alive when the Americans drove over him and cut him in half, basically, with a Bradley or tank or whatever armored vehicle they were driving in.

...

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/8/exclusive_witnesses_describe_deadly_2007_us

I notice you haven't contributed a thing to this thread other than your original one liner query.