Wikileaks Collateral Murder Video

[Good_Apollo]

good post.

back on topic now,


Ok i'll ask you guys a question.
what is the best way to fix a problem?
analyse the cause's and reassess the systems in place behind it...... or sweep it under the rug?

This was a monumental fuck-up that led to the death of civilians, i think we can all agree on this, however as history has shown us if we choose not to acknowledge the mistakes and actions of our past we doom ourselves to repeat them.
You get the world believing that the holocaust never happened, and it will happen again. Simple as that.

The only way to Fix this problem is to do the opposite of what the military did and considering the amount of guns and money these guys have at their disposal, thats a very scary thought.

There's a difference between assessing a situation and calling for improvement and what we actually have (addressed in video comments, this site even) which is nothing more than a lynch mob calling for these guys to be tried as war criminals. There's a big difference.

Right, because it's not ridiculous to kill another fucking human being.

Read the Geneva Conventions.

If I was shooting an enemy combatant, whether they fight under the GC or not, then disengage firing thinking I had terminated them only to later see them struggling to move (read: they're still alive) it would be illegal for me to firing or attack them from then on. We'd be require to give medical aid.

This is why they tell you to Shoot To Kill.

I hate to be associated with this kind of scum. Begging to engage some targets which you're viewing from a very low resolution camera. Saying "their own fault for bringing their children to a battle". Mother fucker, that wasn't a battle, it was a massacre. There was no enemy fire, only your own.

Hell, their attire didn't even look to be that of typical insurgents.

Had that van held a Red Cross (or culture equivalent) symbol...I have to wonder if this fucking prick gunner would still have been begging to engage. Because then we'd know that he was knowingly begging to be a war criminal.

I was going to post and say I agreed with you about the 'shoot to kill' bit but the bolded just made me grimace in disbelief.

I remember from some training event that (I forget where exactly, I think in something like that of GC, but GC itself doesn't govern weapons. Or it could just be under UCMJ) it's illegal to use more force than needed to take out a target. IE, you wouldn't drop a bomb on a single enemy combatant.

No, however you would use every advantage you have when even a single man is a threat to you and your squad. This wasn't quite analogous to dropping a nuke on a few people.

[Kornman00]

Either way, opening fire with heavy ordinance was still wrong.

I remember from some training event that (I forget where exactly, I think in something like that of GC, but GC itself doesn't govern weapons. Or it could just be under UCMJ) it's illegal to use more force than needed to take out a target. IE, you wouldn't drop a bomb on a single enemy combatant.

[thehoodedsmack]

There's a difference between assessing a situation and calling for improvement and what we actually have (addressed in video comments, this site even) which is nothing more than a lynch mob calling for these guys to be tried as war criminals. There's a big difference.

And we're past that. Pretty well everyone realizes by this point that both parties hold their own faults, so instead of backtracking, get with the current discussion.

[Roostervier]

is there a scale or something that tells you when you're using too much force?

[thehoodedsmack]

Had that van held a Red Cross (or culture equivalent) symbol...I have to wonder if this fucking prick gunner would still have been begging to engage. Because then we'd know that he was knowingly begging to be a war criminal.

I was going to post and say I agreed with you about the 'shoot to kill' bit but the bolded just made me grimace in disbelief.

Need I remind you that you are also guilty of hypothetical demonizing and emotional preying?

And suppose, instead of being two kids in that car, men popped out and blew those helicopters out of the sky? Wonder what you'd say about the deaths of those soldiers, probably good riddance, the war in Iraq is a sham anyway..?

You are honestly so biased, it hurts. You could have easily passed over that bit and moved on. Learn to ignore comments that offend you personally. Remove yourself from all equations. Focus instead on what offends the basic human spirit: in this case, the preventable deaths of civilians.

[Amit]

God damn, please don't join any military with a thought process like that.

Too late for that :/

Ha, this is really getting juicy. I've got my own opinions on the matter, but they have been voiced in many ways already so I'll take a backseat to this one. To be honest, I like to see the various points of view on the topic and attacking another person's statement negatively stifles the thought process. The root cause of the problem is what must be identified and it has been already. The rest is open to what you interpret from the video. I haven't been glued to a thread like this in many a month.

[Good_Apollo]

Need I remind you that you are also guilty of hypothetical demonizing and emotional preying?



You are honestly so biased, it hurts. You could have easily passed over that bit and moved on. Learn to ignore comments that offend you personally. Remove yourself from all equations. Focus instead on what offends the basic human spirit: in this case, the preventable deaths of civilians.

Except I'm preying on the posting habits that I see everyday from individuals here, not some soldier I don't even know aside from a few minutes of audio.

[Kornman00]

is there a scale or something that tells you when you're using too much force?

Why yes, yes there is. It's called The Scale of Snafubar. We page Snaf everytime we're about to drop a bomb or something. He replies with an animated image of himself. If he's smiling, we're G2G. If he's stone faced, abort-abort.

(so, no, there isn't a scale that I know of)

I was going to post and say I agreed with you about the 'shoot to kill' bit but the bolded just made me grimace in disbelief.

No, however you would use every advantage you have when even a single man is a threat to you and your squad. This wasn't quite analogous to dropping a nuke on a few people.

I was referring to "shooting to kill" (almost sarasticlly) the enemy so that they're taken down the first time. If you fail to take them down, you're then also using medical resources in order to aid a wonded soldiers instead of just bullets. Also, it's illegal to attack red cross labeled transports.

In an unbounded war maybe. However, the US military is bounded by GC, UCMJ and the Theater's RoE. This isn't a free-for-all game. Your tactics are goverened. Our military isn't based on Guerilla Warfare.

e: Also, I think it's rather bullshit that they diverted the medical attention of those children to a lower-quality local hospital. We as a military have to face our action's consequences. If go in and destroy cities to only rebuild them, yet when he damage the lives of those cities we don't use our same resources to aid them. We fired upon a van which had no sign of returning fire. Instead if was acting as an aid litter, picking up wounded. Cheap.

[Bodzilla]

Now Bod, I have to ask: are you suggesting that the military revamp it's ROE, to possibly include a more definitive requirement for recognizing weapons, or perhaps some sort of recognition software that could be loaded into these cameras which would help to define possible weapons more accurately? Then I have to point out, that if you revamp the former, you potentially endanger the lives of the soldier. Now I know that while some may argue, that in that situation, the civilian has priority over the safety of the soldier, we have to concede that they're both still in an active war zone. I know we shouldn't be there, and that this is their home, but I can't help but see your suggestion as a potential threat/hazard to our soldiers. A life is a life, but if you have to choose between an Iraqi adult male, and an adult male from the US, I'm kind of biased there. I know that this may have come out in the wrong way, but just hear me out on this one.

while thats a good idea in itself (camera enhancements ect) why i'm saying is that when the shit hits the fan with whatever your doing you need to do a review on it and reassess if what your doing is the right way to do it.
have to do it all the time in cabinet making, from the way we make cupboards, and tops, the orders we do it in, how we do it... everything is up to scrutiny or atleast should be.
if you take the approach "well thats the way we do things 'round 'ere, been doing it since dickity two, so therefore we cant even think about changing anything" well thats just a crazy way of denying and ignoring the evidence in front of you that suggests that, yes things could be done better and yes we should always try to do better.

[Kornman00]

I'm not sure of how this unit conducts itself, but typically there is an After-Action-Review/Report done when it comes to training exercises and actual missions.