
Wikileaks has really misled the public - nreece
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/39215
======
steve19
The following comment was posted by Deviltry on Reddit.

"That's the problem with the war in Iraq... It's insurgency based. They use
vans to come up and pick up the bodies, but truth be told they don't care
about the bodies, they come to get the weapons/rpg's.

I know it's popular to hate America and our military action on reddit, but
this particular engagement is necessary. Anyone who's ever spent time on the
ground in country will tell you the same. If you are going to fight an
insurgency war, you have to engage these individuals. We have made it VERY
well known throughout the country that they cannot even make it look like they
are going for weapons. The problem with this situation is one i've seen
personally on multiple occasions... The Van pulls up, takes the bodies of the
men, leaves any children/women, and takes all the weapons. Then they take
pictures, and blast them across the airwaves saying Americans murdered unarmed
women/children.

Queue the downvotes, but i speak from experience. If you sent us over there to
operate under the absolute "good guy" mantra that you all expect, we'd end up
with 100x more losses than we already have... And the insurgents would know
they could get away with doing virtually anything. Honestly, the only way to
end this is to get the government to get us out of that country."

[http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/bmooi/wikileaks_video_j...](http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/bmooi/wikileaks_video_just_got_released_its_titled/c0nitc0)

~~~
andreyf
I watched both the short and long versions a couple of times, and there I see
no justification for the claim that the truck or those in it were doing
anything but trying to move the wounded man to safety. Considering (1) there
were children in the front seat visible about as clearly as the weapons the
men were supposedly carrying and (2) the dialogue on the radio, it seems clear
that the gunman was a little too eager to engage without really considering
the lethal gravity of his actions.

While on one hand, it may very well be that troops are more effective (by some
simple measure) when they fire first and ask questions later, on the other, if
those apache gunmen were in the shoes of the marines on the ground who have to
carry wounded kids out of the rubble, or worry about those same orphans
throwing grenades into their humvee windows a week later, maybe they'd be as
careful looking for children as they are for RPG's.

~~~
steve19
I would guess that what made the van suspect was that it drove into the middle
of a battle. Everyone within a couple of miles must have heard the 30mm High
Explosive shells detonating.

~~~
rdtsc
> Everyone within a couple of miles must have heard the 30mm High Explosive
> shells detonating.

The shooting has stopped by then. There was a long pause after the shooting
and before the van arrived. Their fatal "mistake" was to assume Americans
wouldn't shoot at a van that picked up an injured journalist to be taken to
the hospital.

> would guess that what made the van suspect was that it drove into the middle
> of a battle.

Just to clarify things. Americans here are the invaders that _created_ the
battle (both on a micro and macro scale). The children in the van were just
going to school and their father wanted to save a man's life. Shells exploding
around them is just business as usual. That is their country, their backyard.
They didn't want it, they didn't drive "into" it. It came _to them_ on their
way to school.

------
GiraffeNecktie
Wow, the apologists are springing into action. Watch the video again. At the
exact moment the correspondent is in the crosshairs of the camera and you see
that he is carrying a small black bag you hear the crew saying "Yeah that's a
weapon." and "Fucking prick". For God's sake, it's a guy sauntering down the
middle of the road carrying a little bag and the crew is making out that
they're tracking a dangerous insurgent. Then they start talking about another
guy with a weapon and I would swear that the person they're looking at in the
crosshairs is actually hobbing along with a crutch. Then the FireDogLake guy
makes out that because the black van appears twice it is somehow ominous. He
defends firing on the van because one crew member says that the person is the
van is picking up weapons. Listen to the video. What he actually said is that
there's a van in the area "possibly picking up weapons". Yeah, possibly doing
anything. I agree that a video doesn't tell the whole story but so far the
people defending the actions of the crew haven't come up with much.

~~~
Maktab
There are weapons visible at various points in the video and an RPG was found
at the scene, these people were not all unarmed. That the journalists were
killed is tragic and may very well be due to mistakes or incompetence or even
malice, but none of that is clear from this video.

What is clear is that the journalist and his driver were in the presence of
armed Iraqis carrying AK-47s and RPGs at the wrong time and in the wrong
place. It was common practice for Iraqi stringers for news agencies like
Reuters to embed themselves with insurgents in the hope of being extremely
close to the story and getting pictures they would not otherwise have been
able to obtain, but it was a very risky thing to do. If soldiers have already
seen the people around you carrying guns and RPGs, they're a whole lot more
likely to misinterpret your camera lens as an RPG when it peeks around a
corner.

There were also two Apaches at the scene, but it's not entirely clear which
crew is making each comment on the radio and what they can see as we only have
one viewport into this event, which comes from the gunner's sight of only one
of the Apaches. It is entirely plausible that the other Apache crew _did_
clearly see weapons and that, outside the field of view of the camera we're
looking at, they saw the black van picking up weapons. Further, each
helicopter also has a separate sight for the pilot which can be slewed on its
own axis and which we cannot see.

In short, the video lacks context and it's difficult to make a conclusive
judgement without that context. We are given only one limited viewport into
this event and expected to pronounce judgement on four guys who at once had a
much broader and more detailed view of the situation but who also, unlike us,
had to process that information in real-time, not from a video which could be
rewound and played back. Whatever happened here, I'm not as ready to call it
murder as WikiLeaks and some of the commenters here have been.

~~~
Alex3917
"There are weapons visible at various points in the video and an RPG was found
at the scene, these people were not all unarmed."

The official military statement about the incident was as follows:

"The Apache crew fired because militants 'were endangering the stability of
Iraq' and because they had positive identification that the militants 'had
weapons and were using them against coalition and Iraqi security forces.'"

There aren't any coalition or Iraqi security forces in the area, and none are
ever mentioned in the video. So while it's possible that an RPG was found at
the scene, it's just as possible that the military was lying about both.

~~~
Maktab
The second-to-last photograph [1] taken by Namir Noor-Eldeen shows an American
Humvee and the radio calls make it clear that there is a ground force in the
vicinity which was reporting a contact with the individuals on the ground, was
able to see the individuals at various points in the action and was close
enough that it took only 8 minutes for them to mount up and arrive on the
scene. This group (apparently "Bushmaster element") appears to be the one
which radios "Yeah, we had a guy shooting. And now he's behind the building"
at 04:22.

Your assertion that there were no Iraqi or coalition ground forces in the area
is not supported by the video.

[1]
[http://duckbar.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/c7/c76f1e685afe...](http://duckbar.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/c7/c76f1e685afea0b6172abd701e69a42d890d2bd5.jpg)

~~~
Uchikoma
They need to drive 8 minutes to get to the scene, when they are "near"? Even
when halving the time for mounting and going by 20kmh they were 1km around
1.5km away. Near? What does "in the area mean"? Bagdad?

~~~
Maktab
Merely halving the time for mounting and assuming a 20km/h travel speed
without any stops (bearing in mind this is a combat zone) seems a bit
arbitrary. In any case, the radio calls seem to affirm that the ground element
was in visual range of the people before the gunships even opened fire and
Namir's photo, if it was indeed taken at the scene as we assume, shows the
ground force as being pretty close, perhaps no more than 100-300 m away.

~~~
Uchikoma
If they were 100m away, why did it take them several minutes to arrive while
the helos circled? Even when crouching (from my exp in the the army), looking
for ambushes during house fighting you're faster going down a street than
this.

~~~
Maktab
Maybe they had soldiers spread out and it took a while to call them back and
mount up? Maybe one of the vehicles had mechanical problems? Maybe they even
decided to hold for a few minutes to wait and see if any more surprises would
show up? We can't know.

Regardless, this discussion is now irrelevant, as it has been confirmed
elsewhere that the photo I posted above was taken at this scene, presumably
while Namir was peeking around the corner. That photo shows US troops no
further than 200 m away, if I recall that lens's capabilities correctly.

------
jeswin
I am not American; though I usually side with democratic countries as much as
I can.

However, if you made a really big mistake and went to war with a country which
posed no credible threat to you (at least in hindsight when this shooting took
place) I'd imagine people would err on the side of caution when shooting
somebody's family and loved ones.

At least in this part of the world, what is coming across is that your army
does not care much about killing people - if they are not American or Western.

And to add some rhetoric, what gives America the moral right to talk about
human rights when the Iraqi death toll exceeds well over one hundred thousand?
-- What happened in Tiananmen is a mere _hundredth_ of what is happening in
Iraq.

Killing ten Iraqis to save an American soldier is not justifiable, any which
way you look at it.

~~~
alexgartrell
_Killing ten Iraqis to save an American soldier is not justifiable, any which
way you look at it._

As messed up as it may sound to you, I'd rather my friends make it home. As
far as I'm concerned, the blood is on the hands of the people who started and
continued the war; not the ones who have to actually fight it.

~~~
WalkingDead
> the blood is on the hands of the people who started and continued the war

> not the ones who have to actually fight it.

The nazis probably said the same.

~~~
alexgartrell
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law>

I think it's laughable to try to draw a comparison between soldiers messing[0]
up and causing collateral damage and the Holocaust.

[0] edit: unnecessarily foul language

~~~
WalkingDead
> I think it's laughable to try to draw a comparison between soldiers fucking
> up and causing collateral damage and the Holocaust.

That's not what you said. You said...

> the blood is on the hands of the people who started and continued the war >
> not the ones who have to actually fight it.

I disagree with that statement. With the same argument, one can justify all
war killings. Even the act of Nazis. We don't bring in Godwins law when
discussing and comparing war and killings.

~~~
alexgartrell
but there's a difference between being a German soldier and manning the death
camp. No one takes issue with the German soldiers who invaded France -- they
were doing their jobs. The problem is with the people who rounded up the
innocent women and children, put them in trains, and then sent them off to
die.

You can certainly make an argument that they're the same, but I think there's
a pretty clear practical distinction between the two.

~~~
Empact
Is it really much comfort to say: well, at least we're not rounding them up
into death camps?

I don't find people do much discriminating between different groups of Nazis.
The infantry perpetuated violence and death just as much as the death-camp
members. After all, what do you think they did to the newly-conquered
populations those polite infantrymen rounded up?

There's also a difference between the world 100 years ago and today. We live
in a more civilized, more peaceful time. The violence in Iraq is some of the
broadest and most destructive of our day.

------
lionhearted
After I saw the first video, I did some googling around and reading about the
rules of engagement during an insurgency. Under the Geneva Convention, clearly
identified medical personnel treating combatants removed from combat are
protected. However, if an armed combatant is attempting to help another
combatant get to cover, they're both fair game. There's a grey area when it's
not clear if a person helping a combatant to cover is a civilian or a
combatant.

That's the first part. The second part is that the Army and other forces have
made it very clear that attempting to take any weapons from the battlefield
counts as engagement, and they will fire at anyone attempting to do so.
Apparently this was a big problem during the start of the war - if they took
out insurgents, their guns would often be grabbed and ran away with, and
presumably used again later. So that's a clear situation right now -
attempting to remove weapons from a battlefield will get you fired upon.

It's unclear who was in the van, and if they were attempting to take weapons,
though.

~~~
metamemetics
Everyone picking up the bodies and from the van was clearly UNARMED. Unarmed
non-combatants were picking up the body of an unarmed non-combatant who never
held a weapon.

~~~
tsally
If I was running an insurgency in Iraq, I would keep a guy in the back of an
unmarked van with an RPG and I would drive around pretending to pick up
bodies. I think I'd probably get a lot of kills that way. I don't think it's
fair to say the van was clearly unarmed, especially when you consider the fact
that the van could have been called in to make a pickup by a group of people
confirmed to have at least one RPG and at least one AK-47.

In the moment of the firefight it was unclear whether the van was armed or
not. Was was clear to the soldiers was that the van responded very quickly to
a group of wounded people who had several confirmed weapons among them. Also,
as others have mentioned, the soldiers knew the insurgency has used similar
tactics in the past to salvage weapons and ammo.

~~~
ahlatimer
It doesn't surprise me they found an RPG on the ground after the chopper
reported there was one.

I have it on good authority from people who were actually on the ground that
soldiers regularly keep RPG's and AK-47's in the Humvees such that if they do
kill an innocent civilian, they just place the AK-47 or RPG on or near the
victim to make them look like an insurgent. I don't know if that's what
happened in this particular instance, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was.

Edit: I guess I'm being down voted for hearsay? Well, I worked with a number
of soldiers and have a few friends who are infantry. This _does_ happen,
whether people want to accept it or not. Again, it could be that there was
someone, or multiple people, were armed in this particular instance. I don't
know. I haven't, to my knowledge, met anyone that was involved in this
incident to ask. I have, however, talked to a number of people that were on
the ground, that did have to take the lives of other people, and did have to
cover things up when they made a mistake.

~~~
ErrantX
I hesitated before downvoting you; but I feel I have to because it's very easy
(even with the edit) to make these claims online with little or no substance.

I feel if this was readily admitted to yourself it would have been admitted to
others too and, by now, made it to the mainstream news. Where it would have
been a massive, massive story.

I also feel all we have is your word and really that's not enough for such a
huge claim!

Finally statements such as _whether people want to accept it or not_ sound a
lot like "typical" internet style rhetoric used to attach credence to a story.

~~~
ahlatimer
You're right, and I hesitated before even posting it.

There's a difference in what some people are willing to say to a friend and
what people are willing to say to a reporter. Honestly, it's surprising to me
that more things like this incident and other like it haven't made it to the
mainstream media. Ask any soldier that was on the ground (especially around
2007), and they'll tell you that, maybe, 10% of what is going on in Iraq is
actually being reported. There's a bunch of stuff that goes on that you will
never hear about.

From what I can tell, most people that were over there would rather leave most
of it behind them. I haven't met anyone that's come back better for it, and
very few of them are willing to go into any detail about the incidents unless
it's with someone they're extremely comfortable with. When they do open up, it
seems to come with an understanding that it won't be shared, and if it is, no
names or specifics will be brought up.

Even after leaving Iraq, these guys can still face penalties if it's found
that they were covering things up. I'm not sure what, if anything, they'd be
charged with, but most of them are still within the Statutes of Limitations of
the UCMJ for Court Marshal, and there are worse punishments beyond that that
have no Statutes of Limitations.

I trust the stories that were told to me because they came from multiple
people that weren't connected save for being in the military and having been
stationed in Iraq at some point in time. If my word isn't enough for you (and
I don't blame you if it isn't) then feel free to pass it off as another random
person on the internet repeating a possible fabrication.

~~~
ErrantX
I mulled over this last night and today; here's my current thinking.

If this is true it is more than a step beyond what we have seen here. In the
video we see a tragically mistaken engagement (which I understand) and then a
terrible, idiotic, but I feel not malicious, attack on unarmed civilians. Even
the restriction of information released by the army, whilst something I don't
agree with, is understandable.

However; finding a mistake on the ground then covering it up by planting
weapons? That's fraud and a war crime. _It's morally and legally
reprehensible_.

This is why I feel it is probably not true (or a one off you have heard
about); if it is a prevalent thing then it surely would have been reported by
now (I cannot believe there is not one person in the US army that would be
morally outraged by this).

If it is true; it needs to be outed, stopped and prosecuted.

Of everything posted on this subject this idea is the one that sickens me the
most :(

~~~
ahlatimer
There's several issues at stake here. The first is that these guys are under
extreme amounts of stress. The level of stress the average soldier faces in a
war zone (and that's what it is) is unimaginable to pretty much anyone that
hasn't been there. I've heard stories of some things these guys are faced
with, and none of it is pretty. I've had to take a step back from some of it,
and I didn't even experience it directly. When you get an RPG shot at you that
bounces off the front of your Humvee and by some miracle, it doesn't go off,
you don't walk away from that the same. Having to stab someone repeatedly in
order to save your own life. Shooting at actual people. Not some
representation of people, but actual living, breathing human beings, and
seeing the carnage wrought by your bullets. It's hard to even comprehend.

Now, imagine these guys come back and are generally able to continue to carry
on some sort of a normal life at home. There's a lot of training involved
here, and part of it is that you were simply ordered to do it. The chain of
command is a real force, something the average soldier respects enough to go
into a situation that very well could end their life. They also fear it. It's
a force that's almost worse than death. Would you want to admit mistakes, or
would you feel better about simply covering them up? This hypothetical soldier
is already hardened enough to take the life of another person without feeling
intense amounts of guilt. What is covering up a mistake compared to that?

There's also an insane amount of camaraderie amongst soldiers. These guys are
willing to go into the line of fire to get back a _piece_ of their buddy to
send back home, because no soldier gets left behind. Would you risk your hide
to get back part of your friend's dead body in order to have a proper burial?
I don't know if I would, but that's a fairly ubiquitous feeling amongst
soldiers. These guys will fight and die for their fellow soldiers, dead or
alive. If you would already put your _life_ on the line for someone, why
wouldn't you help them cover something up?

Finally, the perception of people (civilians or combatants) from the view of a
soldier is horribly skewed from what it is at home. They aren't really humans
when they're on the battlefield. They're targets. The guilt doesn't really hit
until after these guys get home. When you're in the midst of it, you're
worried about your own survival, and the survival of those you care about.
They don't seem to be particularly worried about the collateral damage. If
they make a few mistakes, oh well. It's better than not pulling the trigger
and finding out they were actually the enemy.

I'm not saying it's okay. It's certainly deplorable behavior. I'm just saying
it's understandable, from where I sit. If I were put in a similar situation,
I'm not sure how I would react. No one does, but the only way to prevent is to
simply not go to war.

------
nl
"Regardless, no one is allowed to be armed except for Iraqi police and
Coalition forces. There is no such thing as an armed Iraqi escort for
journalists"

Err.. no. Under Iraqi law, everyone was allowed to keep one gun at home. These
guns were mostly AK-47s (because that was what was issued to the army). See
<http://johnrlott.tripod.com/armediraqis.html> for example discussion of this.

I believe there was an attempt to change this law during 2007, but
confiscation was not widely enforced and the law has since been changed back.

~~~
Maktab
But as I understand it, by 2007 they were not permitted to take those guns out
from their houses. This is why the US's rules of engagement pretty much stated
that anybody in the street with a weapon who was not part of the Iraqi
security services was fair game.

So the quoted comment may not have been entirely accurate with regards to
Iraqis as a whole, but it was in fact accurate with regards to Iraqis carrying
weapons in the street and the fact that there was no such thing as an armed
Iraqi escort for journalists.

------
aresant
Hammers home the point that the integrity of any journalism is contingent on
editing, and context.

Yet still I’m glad for the leak - for the first time in months I heard more
discussion and awareness that a war we’re bankrolling is still raging instead
of celebrity infididelity.

~~~
izendejas
Re: your second point, here's a good example of what you mean:
<http://i.imgur.com/NVih0.jpg>

(via @chrisloos)

------
SamAtt
There's clearly something fishy about the video if only because we're
obviously coming in half way through whatever happened. But the real problem
isn't the behavior of the soldiers as much as it's the military not making
it's case before this video broke. The author here is raising some valid
points but they're all speculation because the military hasn't released
anything officially.

Military tribunals should be public record (like civilian trials) and the
public that funds the military should be allowed to see what's going on over
there and why certain things happened. ESPECIALLY when there were possible
non-combatant casualties (I'm talking about the alleged camera men)

Clearly the names of the soldiers would have to be withheld to avoid
retribution but there should be some public record when something like this
happens

~~~
aheilbut
The military has now released the records on their investigations:

[http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%2...](http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fsites%2ffoia%2frr%2fCENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210%2fDeath%20of%20Reuters%20Journalists&FolderCTID=&View=%7b41BA1AAF%2d785A%2d481A%2dA630%2d12470AFCD6FD%7d)

I suppose that this information wouldn't have been released, at least for a
long time, without their hand being forced by wikileaks. However it is also
not reasonable to expect everything to be immediately public; there is going
to be a ton of sensitive information, and it's not practical to redact and
release everything by default. Obviously, it's in the US interest for this
kind of thing not to be front page news, but that doesn't mean that by not
publicizing it there is a coverup or something illegal going on either.
Everybody, including Wikileaks, has an agenda.

~~~
plinkplonk
"he military has now released the records on their investigations: [url]

The site seems to be down.

"Unknown Error

Troubleshoot issues with Windows SharePoint Services. "

SharePoint? :-P

------
blhack
:(. A lot of people seem to be _completely_ missing the point of this video.
It isn't that some journalists were killed, it's that they were killed _in
sport_. The people speaking while they're shooting them are acting as though
they _want_ them dead, not as though they're taking their lives in an effort
to protect themselves.

Did you see the part where the dying journalist is bleeding out on the curb
and trying to crawl for cover? The helicopter gunner is saying something to
the effect of "just pick up a weapon just pick up a weapon"; he's looking for
an excuse to pull the trigger. Howabout the part before they shoot of the van
that was trying to help people get out of the area? The gunner kept changing
the subject _back_ to whether or not he could open fire on it. Again, he
_wanted_ to kill the people inside, wanted to see a big explosion.

Yes, there are bad things that happen in war, this video is meant to
illuminate the manner in which some of these bad things are happening.

Again, it isn't _that_ people were killed, it was _how_ they were killed and
_why_ they were killed.

~~~
gruseom
I find this outrage prissy. I don't know anything about war, but even I know
that it's utterly naive to expect that soldiers wouldn't get off on killing
people. It is completely to be expected. The fantasy that war would somehow be
more acceptable or even possible without it is not serious; it's a head-in-
the-sand refusal to consider the ugliness of the thing. Next up: they aren't
faithful to their wives while on tour, either.

Edit: this comment comes across a little more harshly than I intended. The
reason isn't you; it's that I just finished watching the Wikileaks founder in
an interview, and his self-righteousness in making the same point really
turned me off. The guy could barely contain his glee. I think this kind of
outrage is all about stroking one's own moral delicacies. Expecting anything
at all about killing people to be decent is foolish.

Mainly I'm angry at him for ruining my faith in Wikileaks and turning my world
into one in which now no one plays that vital role. Guess I was the naive one.
I had thought they were something like the Red Cross of information. Now they
seem like ideologues who want to get on TV.

One more edit: now that I think of it, I should have figured this out from the
way they were hyping the video before they released it.

Ok one more: there's clearly controversy about whether the soldiers followed
the rules or not. _That_ question is serious. But I highly doubt any rules of
engagement have anything to say about how much fun killing is not supposed to
be. This is part of the don't-ask-don't-tell contract (the real one) that
society has with the military: here are the conditions under which you can be
a serial killer; we will call you a hero for it; just don't tell us about it.

~~~
foldr
> I don't know anything about war, but even I know that it's utterly naive to
> expect that soldiers wouldn't get off on killing people. It is completely to
> be expected.

How far are you willing to take this argument? Statistically speaking, it's to
be expected that invading armies will rape a substantial portion of the female
population. Would it therefore be "prissy" to be outraged if this happens?

>This is part of the don't-ask-don't-tell contract (the real one) that society
has with the military: here are the conditions under which you can be a serial
killer; we will call you a hero for it; just don't tell us about it.

I think it's still ok to be disturbed by that. It may be true that this
incident is just one example of the generally terrible nature of war. But that
doesn't make it any less terrible, or make people's reactions to it
illegitimate.

I hope that this sort of reaction becomes more and more common, so that we
eventually figure out that war is, you know, a bad thing.

~~~
gruseom
The difference is that we ask soldiers to kill people, we don't ask them to
rape them. To ask, pay, and celebrate them for doing the former and then
fastidiously insist that they only do it in a way that conforms to our hero
fantasies is incongruent.

That being said, it is naive to unleash violence and not expect it to spill
over. So I guess in the case of war rape I would say that while it's not
prissy to be outraged by it, it is to be surprised.

As a side note, I've never been comfortable with these kinds of arguments that
go too far beyond the immediate context. A context grounds a problem; it gives
you a real situation to refer back to and prevent going off the rails. The
more purely abstract these things become, the more arbitrary they get. I don't
trust disembodied reason. But that is a complete tangent; sorry!

~~~
foldr
>To ask, pay, and celebrate them for doing the former and then fastidiously
insist that they only do it in a way that conforms to our hero fantasies is
incongruent.

Well, it would be incongruent to do that, yes, but I don't ask them or pay
them or celebrate them.

I expect the soldiers in the video are just doing what a lot of people would
do in the same situation. That might make their behavior in some sense
"normal", but it doesn't make it OK, or beyond reasonable criticism.

Most of what you're saying could equally well be applied to (e.g.) criticism
of suicide bombers. It may well be the case that suicide bombers are not, as a
rule, unusually evil people. If you have the relevant life experiences, you
might even have a sense that you'd do the same thing if you were in their
position -- in the same way that it's easy for an American to feel some
sympathy for the soldiers in this video. Nonetheless, the actions of suicide
bombers are unambiguously wrong, and are rightly subject to criticism.

(Of course, I'm not attempting to equate the soldiers' actions with suicide
bombing, it's just an analogy.)

~~~
ErrantX
_I expect the soldiers in the video are just doing what a lot of people would
do in the same situation._

They are reacting as they have been trained to react; war is hell, the army
build in defense mechanisms like this to ensure soldiers can fight (emotional
detachment, jock attitude), they also ingrain absolute discipline to try and
avoid scenario's exactly like this.

EDIT: supporting evidence - read some military training manuals. They
basically detail the attitude training attempts to instill in a soldier.
_shrug_ this is common to pretty much every standing army in the history of
ever :) (emotional detachment especially)

~~~
foldr
I agree with you, but I don't see how it goes against what I was saying.

~~~
ErrantX
I wasn't disagreeing - just adding something :)

------
vaksel
people are focusing on the wrong area of this story...yes killing that first
group of people was a dick move, but it might get justified by ROE....killing
the people in the van who tried to help was also a dick move...but it can
still be justified by calling it a gray area.

The actual story here is that the army decided to cover up this whole issue in
the first place(i.e. them saying they had no idea how the kids got wounded)

~~~
r0s
This is the real story, and has been from the beginning. All this discussion
is very good, but it's disappointing more people don't care about censorship.
On that note... <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html>

~~~
r0s
_italics_

------
sunchild
I watched this video from end to end. It is entirely possible that this was a
team setting up an ambush and filming it.

The fact that a Reuters photojourno was involved only fortifies the
plausibility of this theory, since wire photojournos are well-known for
"embedding" with insurgents.

I'm not saying one way or the other (unlike many others). I'm proposing an
alternative theory that I believe is just as likely as the "collateral murder"
storyline.

~~~
nl
It's a good theory. Unfortunately no other weapons (apart from a single AK-47
- which was commonly carried in 2007 Baghdad) or bombs were found, so I can
just as easily say that they might have been aliens from Xenu.

I do think that there are more extenuating circumstances than some may think
(it was 2007 in Baghdad - people forget how bad things were there). But claims
that those people were anything other than a random group of people will
require some evidence.

------
daleharvey
I am usually the last to complain about "the state of hacker news" and such,
but the fact that this article has managed to amass such a large number of
points so quickly does indicate that there is a need for moderation.

this has nothing to do with hacker news, it is replying to conjecture with
conjecture, even though the wikileaks story had a very relevant back story
(power of the internet, freedom of press, etc) this ignores it all and just
gives someones opinion on their interpretation of a highly controversial
video.

~~~
jpwagner
actually you've mentioned the state of HN more than most:

    
    
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1223767
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171670
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1148739
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086310
      

First of all, the flagging handles things, so why complain?

And for what it's worth, the discussions on here involve many intelligent,
well-informed people whose opinions are worth high value. Certainly there are
technical things discussed, but I think most people here are interested in all
sorts of other "hacks," including sociology hacks, a category, I would argue,
to which this article relates.

~~~
daleharvey
only one of those mentions the state of hacker news

and the complaining is because the flagging does not handle things, there are
always going to be popular articles that will be inevitably posted that have
absolutely nothing to do with hacker news.

but yeh, the crowd has spoken.

------
motters
For anyone who watched the video, attempts to support the actions of the
helicopter gunner seem to be on very shaky grounds indeed. The victims are
mostly, or entirely, unarmed and attacking people trying to rescue the injured
is an act of questionable legality. This looks like a war crime similar to
those committed in Vietnam.

~~~
jacquesm
The US has a very bad history in 'judging its own' when it comes to war
crimes, only under intense media pressure has there ever been any legal action
against the perpetrators, and usually it was limited to the lower ranks.

And then there is the 'invade the Hague act':

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-
Members%27_Pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-
Members%27_Protection_Act)

------
cia_plant
I can't even begin to follow some of the moral reasoning on this page.

The soldiers have to be there to keep the peace, as part of their humanitarian
mission towards the Iraqi people. Because the soldiers are there, they have to
protect themselves against the violent insurgents among the Iraqi people, by
killing anyone who presents any kind of threat. Don't you see, they had to
kill the Iraqis in order to save them.

If we didn't massacre Iraqis, we wouldn't be able to safely patrol their
cities, and then where would that leave the Iraqis? Completely unprotected.

~~~
analyst74
Please don't protect my country, we'll do what you say!

------
marcamillion
I am not American. I did support the initial Iraq War because in some cases, I
believe the ends justifies the means. Yes, we can argue that Bush went for oil
- which he probably did, but that's besides the point.

At the end of the day, Iraq just had another relatively successful democratic
election where there is even more accurate representation than the first one.
It will likely continue to improve, with bumps as they go along, but that
would have never happened had Saddam been there still. The new government will
be a coalition government run by all major sects. Not one dominating and
robbing everybody else.

Why Iraq? I know. Why go to Iraq and not more 'dire' situations like Rwanda,
Darfur, Sierra Leone, etc.? I get it, yes those would be good too..but that
doesn't take away from the fact that a few million people have some semblance
of a democratic institution that works alongside their religion (despite what
they had been taught for the last few decades).

I too support the escalation in Afghanistan for the same reason. When all is
said and done and the Afghani people have more powerful institutions in place
and it will be well worth it. Al-Qaeda will have less fertile ground to
recruit from. Until then, it will be a difficult road to travel.

Like any war, there is collateral damage. I don't think the issue with this
video is the fact that there is collateral damage in war. It's more the
coverup.

While I tend to be pro-military, I think in a case like this, where I am SURE
their post-operation analysis revealed that they messed up big time, they
should have come clean. Yes, the politics might have made the war more
difficult...but it would have been the right thing to do. At the very least,
for the families of the reporters killed.

------
david927
Make no mistake: this footage is significant. This is America's Jallianwala
Bagh. This is the wholesale firing on unarmed civilians as an everyday
activity.

To say, "But they were in a war zone," is disingenuous. America made it a war
zone. America came there under a false premise and won't leave.

And how can they ever leave? Iraq is above nothing less than an ocean of
untapped oil at a time when the Saudi fields are declining. Iraq is an OPEC
breaker. And it's that dedicated supply in a time when the world's _biggest
industry_ had the price skyrocket in a few years from $20 to around $90.
America is one of the only countries that can't survive if oil hits about $120
for any extended period. This isn't about money; this is about survival.

But when you find yourself killing unarmed civilians because they have under
their feet an untapped fortune, because they have under their feet what you
need to keep your lifestyle, you have to stop and look at yourself in the
mirror at what you've become.

Wikileaks didn't mislead us. The U.S. Government mislead us, and worse, we
mislead ourselves.

------
fbuilesv
The author like many other posters is making the mistake of thinking that some
of us put fault on the individual soldiers. In their own shoes I would've done
the same thing, with the things hanging on the shoulders I couldn't tell if it
was an AK-47 or a camera so I would've opened fire.

What most people is complaining about is the military secrecy and handling of
this business, not the "mass murder of civilians" (like some of WL editors try
to make it look) but the lack of reaction and respect by the army. If they had
released the same video explaining the circumstances instead of hiding the
details the situation would be different now.

Short: The blame's on the high command, not on the individual soldiers.

~~~
analyst74
That's probably the same reason why the commanders want to keep it secret.
Because most people will just have a jerk reaction and blame the soldiers,
which in turn put pressure on the soldiers in the field.

While I think the higher ups are to be blamed for even going to war, it's the
people who elected them. So I don't really know who to blame.

------
ilitirit
No reason to invoke ROE or Geneva convention at all. "Brains are more
important than process".

How on Earth can anyone feel that it's OK to take people's lives based on so
little evidence? "Looks like two of the guys are carrying guns. Let's kill
them all." We all know that this is the kind of thing happens in war, but that
doesn't make it excusable. I can't interpret the actions of the soldiers in
any other way than murder.

------
araneae
It's clear that the author felt "let down" by the video. But I don't think he
can make a case that wikileaks misrepresented the video. Rather, I think he
had unrealistic expectations.

He got his expectations up because a) Reuters had been unsuccessfully trying
to obtain this video via FOIA b) wikileaks employees had been detained by
various gov'ts and c) the video had been heavily encrypted. All of these
things are facts, and not a misrepresentation on the part of wikileaks.

However, these facts seemed to indicate that the gov't cared about this video
not getting out quite a bit, and raised his expectations. Maybe he didn't know
what a helicopter video looks like; maybe he expected it to look like
Generation Kill, with dudes being like "muahahha let's kill babies and rape
women!"

However, I didn't think the video would really be anything but boring. What's
news is that the U.S. tried to bury this video, not that it makes for great
TV.

~~~
uriel
> b) wikileaks employees had been detained by various gov'ts and

This turned out to be _false_ , the guy that was detained in Iceland was
detained for breaking into somebody's business and there is little or no
evidence it had anything to do with his relationship to wikileaks.

------
lurkerperpetual
From the first paragraph it seems the author is angered he did not witness 'an
unprovoked massacre of unarmed civilians'. I think that could have been
rephrased much much better.

------
gxs
I hate to sound cold, but without context that video says absolutely nothing.

All that video, in its present form, with the present information available
says is: investigate further.

------
teyc
In one short clip, the war has been shown up for what it is: a morally corrupt
act that has no hope of making the U.S. friends nor assure it of future
security.

The bombings in Moscow reminds everybody that the price of security in the
future for citizens of the US will be rule under totalitarian government. For
the three hundred million people in the States, I hope you've learnt your
lesson.

------
onewland
I hadn't seen or heard about this video prior to this article.

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001802-38.html> seems to have it embedded
and a description.

~~~
nreece
Its been on HN for more than 12 hours:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1241879>

------
noahlt
What is the video in question? There's a video on the front page of wikileaks,
but it's not a "39 minute video".

------
moo
As pilots and CO were not punished I've learned it is clear that assisting the
wounded ( no weapons were picked up ) will get you full of DU bullets.
Carrying anything in your hands may be the excuse for a gunship a mile away to
open fire.

Given these GI Joe tactics the average Iraqi might as well be carrying an RPG,
and might as well shoot down that Apache helicopter. 7+ years of murderous
Yankee mayhem is enough already.

------
jrockway
Blame the victim. They shouldn't have been in Iraq. They shouldn't have been
near someone bad. They should have marked the van.

You shouldn't have murdered them. Killing should be the last resort, even in
the heat of battle.

~~~
zaphar
ummmm no. The whole point of the heat of battle is death. What you mean I
think is that getting into the heat of battle should be the last resort.

~~~
jrockway
We have non-lethal ways of taking down an opponent. We should be doing that
instead, even if it's more costly.

~~~
ahlatimer
There's no way to have a non-lethal round come out of a helicopter that's a
mile away. If you want something that will maintain any semblance of accuracy
over a mile, it has to be high-velocity. Anything moving fast enough to be
accurate over a mile isn't going to be non-lethal.

Now, you could argue that they could be close enough that they could
reasonably fire an accurate shot with a non-lethal round, but that also puts
them much, much closer to danger. At a mile away, they're comfortable enough
that they (should) be able to take the time to assess the threat and figure
out if lethal force is necessary. If they have to be close enough for a non-
lethal round, I doubt they'd ever switch to it since at that range, you really
want lethality if you're in a big target (i.e. a helicopter).

------
mos1
The comments both here and on reddit contain many vivid examples of how people
react to a marketing message.

Virtually nobody changed their mind (many simply got more strident in their
position when confronted with opposing interpretations.) Many commenters
overemphasized the portions of the video that agree with their existing
beliefs, while downplaying or arguing portions that were not in line with
those beliefs.

It makes me wonder if perhaps precision is overrated when it comes to writing.
Perhaps an imprecise record of one's beliefs would be more popular, as it
would allow room for this sort of selective interpretation.

------
count
There is so much wrong with this article, I don't know where to start.

~~~
Rod
You could start from the beginning...

------
metamemetics
After viewing the video, it clearly is an unprovoked massacre.

LINK: _This is clear considering they approached the hot zone at the beginning
of the video with intel, either from ground troops, or from the another
Apache, that there were armed combatants in the area._

The video indicates there was ONE combatant, and that the group of people was
NOT him. @2:49: air: “we had a guy shooting, now he’s behind the building”
@2:52: ground: “Uh, negative, he was uh, right in front of the Brad. Uh, ’bout
there one ‘o clock. Haven’t seen anything since then”

LINK: _As for the possible observation of an RPG, which some suggest could be
a tripod,_

The “RPG” @2:32 was clearly a telephoto lens pointed at the ground. I’ve never
heard anyone claim it was a tripod, it is clearly a photo camera with a
telephoto lens. I don’t see how you can refute this if you examine the frame
between 2:40 and 2:41, it is CLEARLY the camera with a telephoto lens that he
is holding completely in front of him pointed at the ground.

When the van comes to pickup the target, NO ONE IS ARMED. The CO should never
have given them permission to engage unarmed people “for picking up the
bodies”, PERIOD. According to the Huffingon Post the driver of the van was a
good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session.

~~~
byrneseyeview
_if you examine the frame between 2:40 and 2:41_

I don't think people do that in combat. If you're ever in combat, or in a
situation with armed people who think you may want to kill them, I _highly
recommend_ that you make it very obvious you're not armed. If they look at the
footage of how you died and say "Oh! If we _examine the frame_ , it looks like
he wasn't going to kill us, after all!" I guess you'll be vindicated.

~~~
waterlesscloud
In the military investigation, it is revealed that the man crouching around
the corner with the camera was taking a picture of US troops 100 meters away.
The timestamped photo was found on the camera later.

So he's in an area where combat has occurred, crouching around a corner,
pointing a long tube at US troops. No press is suspected to be in the area.
Other men in his group are undeniably armed with weapons. He's a threat by any
reasonable standard.

Two RPGs are, in fact, found at the site by ground forces, as is an automatic
rifle. There were combatants in this group.

