Wikileaks Collateral Murder Video

[Jelly]

The possibility of the presence of weapons does not grant the right to directly engage, so no, they were not well within their rights, what fantasy world do you live in? If anything, they should've been put on observation. God damn, please don't join any military with a thought process like that.

Isn't that why they checked with their superiors?

[SnaFuBAR]

Isn't that why they checked with their superiors?

They need to positively identify weapons and threats. Their altitude made distinguishing a pipe from an rpg or ordinary objects from small arms nearly impossible. A superior depends on people on the ground to make the ID, since he's not there. It's the warfighter's responsibility to distinguish threats and weapons, not the superior's, since he is incapable of doing that since he's not in the immediate area of operations.

[paladin]

So, he fucked up. he identified them as weapons.

[SnaFuBAR]

He didn't have enough care about the ROE to get a real positive ID to engage a real threat. He sounded more like he wanted an excuse, especially with begging to be allowed to open fire. Ultimately, for his misconduct, he should be held responsible.

[staticchanger]

I'm pretty sure it is against the law to willfully harm aid to the wounded on the battlefield.

Thats ridiculous your killing the enemy

[=sw=warlord]

Thats ridiculous your killing the enemy

The point of war is not to kill, but to disable your enemy from being a threat.
Medical staff are no direct threat to you as their job is to tend to the wounded, not fight as combatants.

[flibitijibibo]

warlord is correct about the medic part. Or rather, he should be...

[Cortexian]

Medics are just as trained and armed as any other soldier, they're just further trained in providing battlefield medicine. Soldier First.

Anyways, some of the comments I've read in here are just completely stupid so I'm out, and before I go I'm going to leave this here:

[SnaFuBAR]

Medics are just as trained and armed as any other soldier, they're just further trained in providing battlefield medicine. Soldier First.

Lol no, they are medic first and treated as such under the geneva convention. It's a war crime to shoot a medic unless he is shooting at you. The geneva convention also seeks to protect wounded fighters. Either way, opening fire with heavy ordinance was still wrong.

[Disaster]

After further investigation, I believe it is only a war crime to kill a medic who is marked with the proper identification. The man was not marked and thus not protected. However, whether marked or not, its morally wrong in my opinion.

I believe this was a complete accident. I don't think the chopper pilot/gunner in any way wanted to hurt innocent people. However, this should never have been covered up.