Uhh, back to the original video.

Here's what I think happened. The soldier in the interview said that they were taking small arms fire from guys on the rooftop, and a bunch of civilians with the Reuters employees just happened to be nearby. However, those civilians may have been carrying weapons in self defense, because the soldier said that he saw AK-47's and RPG's lying on the ground. I think the Apache crew misidentified their target and fired on civilians instead of the insurgents attacking the soldiers. War is tragic, and it's a shame that this happened. Why the Pentagon kept this as a secret is beyond me.

EDIT: More on Ethan McCord can be found here. http://www.youtube.com/user/mmccord1

They actually misidentified a tripod as an RPG at range.

An RPG is death to a helicopter. That's what got them the okay for a preemptive attack.

But then when it was pretty clear it wasn't an RPG, they kept firing. When it was clear that the victims were not part of it (the van and the kids, stopping to help the wounded), they still kept firing. I can understand the initial misunderstanding about a camera/"RPG," accidents happen, but when they insisted on continuing to shoot at them, even when it was painfully obvious that they were not combatants, and that it was a camera, makes this murder. This is military misconduct, plain and simple. Same as when the military air-struck a building just as a civilian was walking by, even when they could have waited a few seconds more for him to have cleared the area.

AC130- To try and save face in a war that was unjustified in the first place.

Look, I'm not trying to justify those actions. I know it's wrong, and I'm just trying to offer a theory of how this accident started.

A part of me still wonders what happened to the insurgents who were actually firing at the soldiers.

You dont know about the guy in the biggining of the film, there is alot we didn't see, there might have been an IED that could have killed many more people, or there could have been insurgents in that building. So they couldn't wait for him to clear the area. Just because they didn't immediatly return fire dosn't mean they didn't have and RPG. They kept firing at the camera men because they thought it was an RPG, as sad as it is, the chopper pilots/gunners didn't wasnt to take that chance, because what if it was an RPG?They kept firing to make sure it (whatever it was) was rendered harmless. Even if it was an RPG, the insurgents would still duck and cover, its a human instinct unless trained by the military. They shot the van up because they had no clue there were children inside. Sure it was pointed out in the video, but it was zoomed in, the chopper pilots didnt see them at the time, they thought it was an insurgent "ambulance" if you will, they didnt want what they thought were insurgents coming back into combat, so they killed who they thought was also an insurgent/threat. They wern't remorsefull at the time because they thought it was an RPG and they had done the right thing. Even when the heard about the kids. They wern't just going on a shooting spree, because before the US soldiers got there, there was a woman with a child walking around, and later a group of men that they never fired at. This wasn't a cold blood murder, it was a mistake which humans make very very often. People tend to forget we are only human. I'm not trying to say this wasn't wrong, it was very wrong, a very bad mistake, but stop blowing it out of proportion. It was a mistake

Of course mistakes happen, but the government's attempt to sweep it under the rug is the most disturbing part. (Just more of the military-industrial-media complex's under-handed attempts to propagandize for an unjustified war.) Though I still think shooting the van was not justified. There wasn't even anything visible at the time that could have been mistaken for a weapon. It was just the van, period. If the men in the van were acting funny/making suspicious movements, then maybe one could justify it under the rules of engagement, but no, what were they doing? They were carrying off the wounded.







Watch the whole thing. Personally, I think Assange makes some good points, especially about the disconnect in war.

Regardless of whatever side you're on about this incident, I think it's safe to say that this entire mess could have been avoided, if the US had not invaded Iraq in the first place. Completely unjustified (does anyone other than the fringe-right still honestly think it was?) But that's a different debate for a different day.

Agreed

It was completely justified, to make sure lunatics like Suddam Hussein (committed mass genecide using mustard gas against Kurdish civilians) and Osama Bin-Laden (was in charge on 9/11 attacks and bombing of several US embassy buildings) were no longer a threat to humanity...Unless you still want them around...

This is very true

They didn't ID the cameras as cameras... Until ground forces arrived.


Tsal, like it or not, the US put a ruthless dictator in charge of Iraq. We can play "Captain Hindsight" and say that should never have happened, but it did happen. And removing him was justified. (Fun fact, at his post "election" meeting, Sadaam had several of his SUPPORTERS shot during the proceedings. Just as an example.) How could you rationalize leaving people under that?

aka justified war

The long-term occupation was not justified however. If the goal was simply to find Saddamn, as soon as we pulled him out of his hole we should have been out of there, let the Iraqi people take the wheel. Sure, there would likely have been bloodshed in the stabilizing process, but it would have paled in comparison to the million+ people killed during the US occupation.

Though regardless of all of that, you can't try and overthrow a government from without, and try to establish democracy, even if he was your puppet in the first place. True revolution must come from within, like Egypt. Mubarak is a US puppet, too, but the Egyptian people are in the process of overthrowing him all by themselves. If given time, the same would have likely happened in Iraq, and like I said before, with likely less bloodshed than under the US occupation. The South African countries overthrew their puppets.

God only knows how much debt we've ran up, and how much innocent blood we've shed trying to be the world's policeman for so many decades. The sooner the US learns to mind it's own business, and learns that it can't coax the world into doing it's bidding, the better. If South America wasn't enough of a lesson, maybe Iraq was.

As for the WMD argument...is it even worth bringing up anymore?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7UmUomUX4g

I never mentioned WMD's.

I'm just stopping it before anyone tries to bring it up.

The whole WMD argument was a fabrication to gain public support, which of course backfired spectacularly.

Yes it was, but if you know the history, it (the war) was justified

That was the original plan when the invasion began but it didn't work. We went in with no plan for what would come afterwards. Anarchy ensued for weeks and this is when the whole insurgency built up. We should have been faster in setting up a strong administrative body to provide policing, basic services, and to stop looting.

So we should have let a dictator continue to kill people in his own country? Not to mention that with history as a guide, most revolutions get hijacked by another autocratic body, especially the army. What we saw happening in Iraq was a struggle for power (i.e. who gets to call the shots after the big guy is overthrown). The majority of average Iraqis want to see a stable and prosperous country. This power struggle would have happened regardless of whether Saddam was toppled or not. You would be naive to think otherwise.

I have had the good opportunity to read many accounts and have talked in person with several people who have lived in places like these, people who have escaped these regions. If we ever withdraw everything from the world, I can say this:

We will be missed.

A lot of these people thought that we could do anything. They wondered why we didn't intervene earlier.

Here is what happened when we did try to mind our own business two decades ago.







-----------------------------------------------------
I approve of the war but I definitely do not approve of how its being handled. We could do it easily and do it right this time around but the public just knows so little. They know so little about Iraq and Afganistan itself. The average person just knows a few words, Islam, sunni, shiite, but has very little concept of what they mean or why it matters in the grand scheme of things. Its not so much religion that drives this but rather economics. Al Queada has a religious idealogical core but the average insurgent fights for other reasons and hardly cares at all about global jihad.

We are losing the war in Afganistan poltically. Both the far left and the far right annoy me greatly. One side shouts that we should just get out and let the place rot and the other shouts that we should just bomb them. It is not that simple.