Murder? What can that video possibly show that would justify calling this incident “murder”? And what’s the motive? Killing journalists can only be a bad move for the US military, so why would they do it on purpose? We already know that those journalists were killed by US military, so that alone wouldn’t be news.
I’m curious.
– edit: I have now seen the video, looks like major incompetency combined with what looks like the wrong training for those situations. Also a possible coverup of this incompetence on part of the investigators. No murder. Bad enough. I would probably argue that this is negligent homicide. Has definitely a different effect than just reading the New York Times article.
At 3:45 and until 4:25 everything is kinda suspect. It really looks like at least one guy is carrying a big weapon (could be an AK like they say or even some launcher) and by 4:09 one of them kneels at the end of the building with something in his hands then he quickly gets up, turns arounds and it seems like he's shooting something (I'd say he was trying to take a picture but that's not clear at all).
I believe the war was wrong, etc, but I can understand why the army was so alerted by this. I'm not shocked by it (until the van arrives, what happens next is not easy to explain, maybe that move happens a lot?) and while I'm completely against it, I also understand that this can happen sometimes.
To call this a murder is a much simpler version of what happened there.
I think it's fair to call firing on the van murder. The people in the van were pretty obviously trying to remove the dead and help the wounded. They did not appear to be armed, though it's certainly possible to conceal weapons in a van. They were clearly not taking any aggressive action.
Well, a lot of people would happily tell you that war in general is murder, but killing people who aren't obviously and convincingly an immediate threat to you is certainly "more murderous" than killing enemy soldiers.
If the guys in the helicopter weren't soldiers, or if they were somewhere else and not Iraq, then it would legally be murder, so personally I have a hard time understanding why this is morally different. It's true that they're under a ton of pressure, and certainly they aren't totally to blame for murdering people, but it doesn't make their morally addled actions any more right. It's a shame that there is nobody who will ever answer for most such tragedies.
Many people are against our operations in the area. To them, any incident involving innocent people is "murder" and the USA must be held accountable. You don't protest by calling this an accident.
They should have requested intel (more accurate images) for that zone. I think the Apache was clearing for enemies, because the ground troupes were near.
It was a warzone (?) and at the start of the video you can see it, because the journalists were sneaking at the corner (they were trying to photograph something).
I’m curious.
– edit: I have now seen the video, looks like major incompetency combined with what looks like the wrong training for those situations. Also a possible coverup of this incompetence on part of the investigators. No murder. Bad enough. I would probably argue that this is negligent homicide. Has definitely a different effect than just reading the New York Times article.