Wikileaks Collateral Murder Video

[SnaFuBAR]

Firing from an Apache helo, they were slinging 30mm shells meant for hard targets (vehicles, armor, covered positions) would definitely destroy cameras.

[SnaFuBAR]

I was about to post on the troubles of software recognition, and that got me thinking about the nature of the situation in general: in almost all situations, you're dealing with incomplete information. It's usually possible to create an algorithm that makes the correct decision in every case when given all the relevant information, but by definition when the information is incomplete there will be times when you make an incorrect decision. In terms of software, if you had some sort of image recognition suite that for example highlighted people carrying weapons for the gunner to shoot, it would be a matter of time before that suite made a false positive (or a false negative, allowing a combatant to get away), and then the scandal would be on the people who developed the software. Is the programmer to blame for the deaths of the people caused by the failure of his software?

But in general, people will do the same thing. Actually, the human eye is far, far better at object and pattern recognition than software. The human eye tends to be more reliable at picking out something that looks like a gun. It's still imperfect, though, relying on incomplete information, and to complicate it further the human brain has built-in biases for situations- it's pretty common to distort what you're seeing in order to make it fit with what you expect to see.

In this case, a soldier was looking through a grainy black and white camera at an area where US ground forces were being attacked and saw people carrying what looked like weapons.


Now, once again, a wrong decision is a wrong decision, and those involved rightly bear the blame. But I still don't think we can condemn them entirely because of the simple fact that from a probabilistic standpoint, this sort of misidentification is bound to happen again and again. The only solution is to continually refine imaging technology, always provide as much information as possible to people making decisions- in this case, simply provide a larger, clearer image. But by nature it is impossible to always get all the information and so by definition there will always be mistakes.

The technology gap is being dealt with by using low level surveillance drone helicopters. They've even got a couple in the works that can resupply, give support fire and medivac the wounded, and has high resolution cameras (though i'm sure that's to ID high value targets before they escape rather than to keep the locals out of harm's way).

[Rob Oplawar]

just...I'm pretty sure there was at least ONE soldier in that bunch to smell something fishy

AFAIK the soldiers expect Iraqis to pick up weapons from the aftermath of the battle- it seems that's what the gunner expected of the people in the van, which is why he opened fire on it. Perhaps the soldiers that came in after the "battle" didn't think twice about the absence of guns because they get that a lot when coming to the aftermath.Or, perhaps they, I dunno, were distracted by the fact that they were in a combat zone surrounded by corpses that had been torn apart by the giant fucking gun on an Apache, expecting more attackers to arrive at any moment. Ack, sorry Lag, that was a bit of sarcasm. These damn threads just force it out.

[Cortexian]

I'd like to clear up a few things about my previous posts in this thread, specifically my position on the whole "cover-up" situation. I received a few PM's as well as various IM's on this situation which lead me to believe that some of my posts were unclear. I don't condone that the military tried to cover-up this situation, and I'm fully with you all when you say that this would have been better served in the light of day from the beginning. I still stand by all of my previous statements defending the fact that the Apache crew were doing the correct thing in engaging possible threats to a ground column that had, only minutes earlier, called in air support due to hostiles firing at them. However, once the real situation was determined it should not have been covered up like it was, it should have seen the light of day so that steps could be taken to prevent similar mistakes from happening again.

Now, I have read that there WERE at least three different weapons found on the scene after the fact by our Forces from a couple different web sites. As I've stated before, none of us were actually there and involved in the situation, so I can't comment on the reliability of the sources claiming that weapons were found. That said, apparently there WERE two AK style weapons and an RPG found at the scene during the aftermath. These weapons were believed to be in the possession of local security forces assigned to protect the photographers while they were out "in the field", I myself see the RPG and at least one rifle in the video footage.

I'm not going to reiterate what I've already said in previous posts any more than I have, if you want to see what I typed out previously you can go re-read my posts yourself.

[sleepy1212]

What's this about not covering it up? Everyone keeps saying they shouldn't have covered it up...

I'd expect them to send the tapes to someone responsible in the military so that it could be reviewed and learned from and certain actions could be taken.
certainly no one's suggesting tapes like these be mailed to CNN every time it happens? ...right?

[p0lar_bear]

What happened, sleepy, was those two journalists were killed by the US military, and Reuters wanted to know why. The US Military told them that they reviewed the footage and claimed that, while it was unfortunate that the photographers were killed, the soldiers had followed the Rules of Engagement and there was nothing to be done except offer condolences. Reuters invoked an act that forced the military to give them the footage for their review, and then an anonymous source within Reuters leaked the footage.

The footage contradicts what was told, and shows a side of the soldiers that typically isn't seen by the public. Because of that, the military wanted to cover it up so they wouldn't get bad publicity. Even if it's not the case, the masses see one example of a population and assume that it applies to everyone, so in this case, if I were to apply my opinion of that chopper gunner to the US military, it would be my belief that they're all trigger happy sadists that just want to shoot people, innocent civilians included. However, I'm more sensible than that and realize that this was a one-off tragedy and feel that those directly involved should be reprimanded, and measures taken to make sure the probability of this happening again is reduced (eliminated is unrealistic, we're human and shit will happen).

[Kornman00]

I thought they were denied the video when they requested it? And that this video was actually from a whistle blower in the military?

p0lar: There are at least two rather immature soldiers I have to work with everyday that act like that if placed in the gunner seat. *sigh* One is even reclassing to infantry so he can shoot at people. I really don't think he realizes what he's getting himself into.

[sleepy1212]

ah, thanks for answering

the masses see one example of a population and assume that it applies to everyone

That's what i was getting at...sampling bias and, obviously, intentional bias in reporting. I'm not sure i agree with the "shouldn't have covered it up" sentiment. at least not yet. I agree they shouldn't sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn't happen but disclosure to a populace who knows nearly nothing of the situation at hand is dangerous to the mission. We've always had war correspondence but in recent decades the reporting has gone from "make them look good" to "make them look bad". This obviously impacts the military's disclosure. Improvements to ROE aside an honest and objective media complex would alleviate some of the "cover up" issue.

@Korn: growing up near several military bases i've met a lot of soldiers like that too. remember though, a lot of them are still just kids. or maybe i'm old lol

[Kornman00]

Knuckle head #1 is 24/25. #2 is in his mid-30s

[SnaFuBAR]

I think that a lot of the "make them look bad" sentiment comes from the fact that we're so bragadocious about our capability to fight a "clean" war and our precision and intel that we demand them to do better than to gun down civilians. When the world is told our government speaks for us and they send our military to war in our interests and to protect us, it makes us look very bad when they basically fuck up. We basically want to show the world we don't condone this, and we expect people held responsible. The last administration was known for stacking lies upon lies about the going-ons of this war, and we don't want to look like a decietful people.