Wikileaks Collateral Murder Video

[Bodzilla]

No really what can you do. We are firing the most lethal and effective weapons known to man that have ranges varying from 800 yards to 4 miles, not to mnetion artillery and air support. You can't always control who gets hit and who doesn't. Polar said tbis perfectly. You guys crtisize their actions now being able to take the time to evalute the situation but you weren't there in their shoes trying make a decision with only moments to act. This is war guys, this is what happens. What the fuck do you think happened during ww2. You think innocent deaths are high now? Think back to the days of carpet bombing, random artillery strikes, IN CENTRAL EUROPE. We should be happy how low the civilian casualties have gotten. However, this is war, decisions need to be made under pressure none of us will ever understand and in such short timing. Accidents happen. We can't control everything

i'm not critising the soldiers, i'm criting the military bureau that tried to cover up what actually happened.
THAT IS THE ISSUE HERE.

[Cojafoji]

I'm not criticizing the soldiers, I'm criticizing the US Government that tried to cover up what actually happened.
THAT IS THE ISSUE HERE.

Yes. Yes it is. It's a shame that most people can't see that. Things like this happen all of the time, and have happened since the dawn of civilized warfare. There's no justification for people making mistakes, except that they're to be expected. What those men did was wrong; none of us are arguing otherwise. But when the government decided to step in and perform the good ol' cover up, that's when things become morally dicey to the extreme.

[p0lar_bear]

Why are people in this thread defending the soldiers? Their actions, that is, point and click murder, was not justified, and pretending it was does no favor to their credibility.

I'm not necessarily defending these soldiers, I'm more or less putting up an argument as to why people need to stop and think before they go off and post the first thing their bleeding heart demands. Internet commentary, especially on topics such as this, tend to be a shit-flingfest of pure emotion, which is asinine. It's kind of ironic, now that I think about it, that people tend to act on impulse to criticise how other people are acting on impulse.

And you are right to not defend one's actions, and that we should own up to our mistakes. In this case, the army might be smart to invest in better equipment for chopper pilots and gunners, such as a camera that can show things a little clearer, and they'd probably do well to reprimand their gunner for his attitude.

Then why did you say those who have not experienced life threatening scenarios to leave the thread if you know already even if you have your life threatened it is not anywhere near the same?

He's saying that having a single person out to kill you is a summer picnic compared to warfare.

i'm not critising the soldiers, i'm criting the military bureau that tried to cover up what actually happened.
THAT IS THE ISSUE HERE.

It is the issue, and they do it for the purpose of propaganda. As said, if this got out (which it did), the media would have a fucking field day with it and blow it out of proportion. US soldiers are portrayed to be noble and the best of the best our country has to offer. While any sensible person can realize that soldiers are human and as accident prone as any other person, all of the people wrapped up in more trivial bullshit back home fail to realize this, so the media sees a way to capitalize on it; grab the attention of the uninformed and show them something that'll blow their mind so they will (literally) pay attention.

[SiriusTexra]

Uh, saying there was a "mistake" implies that there was actual careful thought involved in this that fucked up somehow. A plan. Discerning thought processes. Genuine good intentions that went south. Remorse for the situation.

They shot a bunch of faceless fucking "brownies" on a screen. That's about as far as the thinking went.

These "terrorisers" have AK's molotovs and RPG's , drugo here and there and clothes with the bullet protection equivalency of a pillow case at the best of times. We have every toy invented, for the purpose of eliminating this "threat".

Who the fuck are the insurgents in this situation? Were killing all these people and assuming all this fear of a people, destroying what used to be culture, albeit extreme in cases, but every culture has it's wacos. We don't go apeshit at the catholics in Ireland. Were killing scores of fucking people, over a group of shady boogeymen who quite literally did fuck all apart from burning CIA poppeyfields, and that Bin Laden fella who they still can't find but had several nose jobs and facial reconstructions.

What would America do, if Russia invaded you after you say, I dunno, appeared to have killed a bunch of people in a moscow airport? Kind of like a staged event. If a whole country went to war at you, threw the kitchen sink at you, based on the actions of a few of your people, because there was an underlying motive to destroy your culture and implant their own.

You'd fight back and you'd be called Patriots, not Terrorists.


I don't know all the info in this story, and I don't trust the way media is buying and selling this, but at base value, the core argument, this is fucking ridiculous to defend. Someone has to stop this shit from happening again, and shifting blame and putting it all up to accidents and mishaps is just pathetic. Reading this thread gives me massive flashbacks from Hot Fuzz.

[CN3089]

hey man that innocent father carrying his kids to work who stopped to assist a wounded journalist was just ASKING for it



look, you just don't understand how much stress this pilot was under being completely safe laughing giddily while raining hot steel death upon civilians


those kids were probably going to grow up to be terrorists anyway we were just being proactive


support are troops 9/11 changed everything freedomland is spreading democracy!!

[sleepy1212]

You are hindering discussion, and restricting the development of new ideas and theories. Understand that you are slowing down the advancement of the discussion, and please try to contribute.

Obviously, you're not going to stop posting, and I don't expect anyone to. I'm trying to give perspective. I'm pointing out that most of the posters in this thread have never had to react to someone trying to kill them. Let alone a whole country trying to kill them...on a daily basis.

I'll tell one of my stories to show you what i mean...

Me and a friend were driving to the beer distributor one night. I stopped my truck at the bottom of a hill where there was a man waving his arms around in the intersection. I asked him if he needed some help. He appeared distraught, something was wrong. His reply: "FUCK YOU!". Then he came up to my window, which was down and spit on me. I tried to get out to beat his ass but he pressed up against the door. I turned around in the seat to kick it open, good thing because it put me just out of reach of the knife in his hand. It barely touched my throat. I grabbed both his wrists and tried slamming them off the roof of my truck. My friend was already on his way around the truck. I shouted several times, "he has a knife, he has a knife!"

He withdrew and threw a hay-maker at my friend..the knife caught him in the back of the neck. He yelled, "he stabbed me!" then punched him and somehow got the knife. the man went down and my friend stomped his head and then i field-goal kicked him across the jaw. This all happened in a few seconds. From the time he went down to the time he was literally snoring from my superb punt was only milliseconds.

But here is my point: I've been in lots of fights and i've always maintained some control. Enough to know not to seriously hurt someone by curb stomping them or using a weapon, or simply knowing when the fight is over and letting the other guy go. This fight was different. The guy was down. He was out. I didn't have to punt him. But there is no instant replay, no rewinding the video, no second guessing, no research and development let's have a vote and see what the consensus says is the best course of action when your life is at stake. Only milliseconds and one chance to react.

I can look back and say that wasn't completely necessary but at the time it most certainly was. I didn't know the knife was too dull to do much damage. I didn't know that this guy was the crack-head son of a fairly influential man in town until he had the police threaten us when we tried to press charges. I didn't know the distraught man in the intersection was really just high on crack. This was not a perfect display of neutralizing a hostile.

Soldiers at war deal with situations like this ten-fold. They do all day it everyday. They cope differently than we do. What I learned from these kind of experiences is not to expect neat and clean and exemplary. If you do you watch too much TV, you're living in a fantasy land. The only new theories and ideas that you could possibly make is not to judge soldiers but to judge war. Anything less is still going to be ugly.

[CN3089]

Soldiers are trained to kill and sometimes in the heat of combat they will engage in killings that are not strictly justified, for example, at Haditha. But this -- all of it -- was simply gratuitous and the killing of the wounded journalist and the shooting up of the minivan trying to pick him up to save his life went beyond gratuitous and was just plain sadistic murder.

Forty years ago, when Charlie Company went into My Lai to inflict some collective punishment, a helicopter pilot watching from above saw the carnage and did something to stop it. Nowadays, helicopter pilots make movies of their killings and beg a wounded man to make a suspect move so they can pump more 1 1/4" rounds into him. How completely depraved.

I served four years in the Armed Forces of the United States and was always proud of my service. Not anymore.

[Maniac]

This wouldn't have happened if it were Dutch helicopters.
This wouldn't have happened if it were French helicopters.
This wouldn't have happened if it were British helicopters.
This wouldn't have happened if it were German helicopters.
This wouldn't have happened if it were Canadian helicopters.

Stereotypes are there for a reason.
British people have terrible teeth.
French people are arrogant.
Canadians are over polite.
Americans are trigger happy.

Blah blah.

[thehoodedsmack]

Obviously, you're not going to stop posting, and I don't expect anyone to. I'm trying to give perspective. I'm pointing out that most of the posters in this thread have never had to react to someone trying to kill them. Let alone a whole country trying to kill them...on a daily basis.

You don't have to have been shot at/attacked/in a war to comment on it. Nobody's saying they don't have it tough, and we've all pretty well conceded that given the equipment and circumstance, the soldiers themselves are only partly to blame. Adopting the stance that "you don't know what it's like, you don't know what they go through" is just blatant defense of people who have clearly committed unnecessary killings. Move past it, and catch up with the rest of us discussing how future such incidents could be avoided.

I'll tell one of my stories to show you what i mean...

Me and a friend were driving to the beer distributor one night. I stopped my truck at the bottom of a hill where there was a man waving his arms around in the intersection. I asked him if he needed some help. He appeared distraught, something was wrong. His reply: "FUCK YOU!". Then he came up to my window, which was down and spit on me. I tried to get out to beat his ass but he pressed up against the door. I turned around in the seat to kick it open, good thing because it put me just out of reach of the knife in his hand. It barely touched my throat. I grabbed both his wrists and tried slamming them off the roof of my truck. My friend was already on his way around the truck. I shouted several times, "he has a knife, he has a knife!"

He withdrew and threw a hay-maker at my friend..the knife caught him in the back of the neck. He yelled, "he stabbed me!" then punched him and somehow got the knife. the man went down and my friend stomped his head and then i field-goal kicked him across the jaw. This all happened in a few seconds. From the time he went down to the time he was literally snoring from my superb punt was only milliseconds.

But here is my point: I've been in lots of fights and i've always maintained some control. Enough to know not to seriously hurt someone by curb stomping them or using a weapon, or simply knowing when the fight is over and letting the other guy go. This fight was different. The guy was down. He was out. I didn't have to punt him. But there is no instant replay, no rewinding the video, no second guessing, no research and development let's have a vote and see what the consensus says is the best course of action when your life is at stake. Only milliseconds and one chance to react.

I can look back and say that wasn't completely necessary but at the time it most certainly was. I didn't know the knife was too dull to do much damage. I didn't know that this guy was the crack-head son of a fairly influential man in town until he had the police threaten us when we tried to press charges. I didn't know the distraught man in the intersection was really just high on crack. This was not a perfect display of neutralizing a hostile.

The civilians weren't hostiles, so your story doesn't properly relate in the way I know you mean it to.

Soldiers at war deal with situations like this ten-fold. They do all day it everyday. They cope differently than we do. What I learned from these kind of experiences is not to expect neat and clean and exemplary. If you do you watch too much TV, you're living in a fantasy land. The only new theories and ideas that you could possibly make is not to judge soldiers but to judge war. Anything less is still going to be ugly.

The idea of being a "realist" is nothing but being a pessimist. Nobody expects neat and clean and exemplary in regards to war. We expect soldiers to die, and to do so willingly. That's theirjob, and they agreed to it. Civilian casualties, however, are different, and deserve the utmost respect and scrutiny in developing ways to make war safe for those uninvolved.

[StankBacon]

lots of trolls in this thread :|