Wow, the apologists are springing into action. Watch the video again. At the exact moment the correspondent is in the crosshairs of the camera and you see that he is carrying a small black bag you hear the crew saying "Yeah that's a weapon." and "Fucking prick". For God's sake, it's a guy sauntering down the middle of the road carrying a little bag and the crew is making out that they're tracking a dangerous insurgent. Then they start talking about another guy with a weapon and I would swear that the person they're looking at in the crosshairs is actually hobbing along with a crutch. Then the FireDogLake guy makes out that because the black van appears twice it is somehow ominous. He defends firing on the van because one crew member says that the person is the van is picking up weapons. Listen to the video. What he actually said is that there's a van in the area "possibly picking up weapons". Yeah, possibly doing anything. I agree that a video doesn't tell the whole story but so far the people defending the actions of the crew haven't come up with much.
Wikileaks has really misled the public
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Re: Wikileaks has really misled the public
#22After I saw the first video, I did some googling around and reading about the rules of engagement during an insurgency. Under the Geneva Convention, clearly identified medical personnel treating combatants removed from combat are protected. However, if an armed combatant is attempting to help another combatant get to cover, they're both fair game. There's a grey area when it's not clear if a person helping a combatan…
Everyone picking up the bodies and from the van was clearly UNARMED. Unarmed non-combatants were picking up the body of an unarmed non-combatant who never held a weapon.
Re: Wikileaks has really misled the public
#23The following comment was posted by Deviltry on Reddit.
"That's the problem with the war in Iraq... It's insurgency based. They use vans to come up and pick up the bodies, but truth be told they don't care about the bodies, they come to get the weapons/rpg's.
I know it's popular to hate America and our military action on reddit, but this particular engagement is necessary. Anyone who's ever spent time on the ground in country will tell you the same. If you are going to fight an insurgency war, you have to engage these individuals. We have made it VERY well known throughout the country that they cannot even make it look like they are going for weapons. The problem with this situation is one i've seen personally on multiple occasions... The Van pulls up, takes the bodies of the men, leaves any children/women, and takes all the weapons. Then they take pictures, and blast them across the airwaves saying Americans murdered unarmed women/children.
Queue the downvotes, but i speak from experience. If you sent us over there to operate under the absolute "good guy" mantra that you all expect, we'd end up with 100x more losses than we already have... And the insurgents would know they could get away with doing virtually anything. Honestly, the only way to end this is to get the government to get us out of that country."
http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/bmooi/wikileaks_video_j...
Re: Wikileaks has really misled the public
#24After viewing the video, it clearly is an unprovoked massacre.
LINK:This is clear considering they approached the hot zone at the beginning of the video with intel, either from ground troops, or from the another Apache, that there were armed combatants in the area.
The video indicates there was ONE combatant, and that the group of people was NOT him. @2:49: air: “we had a guy shooting, now he’s behind the building” @2:52: ground: “Uh, negative, he was uh, right in front of the Brad. Uh, ’bout there one ‘o clock. Haven’t seen anything since then”
LINK:As for the possible observation of an RPG, which some suggest could be a tripod,
The “RPG” @2:32 was clearly a telephoto lens pointed at the ground. I’ve never heard anyone claim it was a tripod, it is clearly a photo camera with a telephoto lens. I don’t see how you can refute this if you examine the frame between 2:40 and 2:41, it is CLEARLY the camera with a telephoto lens that he is holding completely in front of him pointed at the ground.
When the van comes to pickup the target, NO ONE IS ARMED. The CO should never have given them permission to engage unarmed people “for picking up the bodies”, PERIOD. According to the Huffingon Post the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session.
Re: Wikileaks has really misled the public
#25After I saw the first video, I did some googling around and reading about the rules of engagement during an insurgency. Under the Geneva Convention, clearly identified medical personnel treating combatants removed from combat are protected. However, if an armed combatant is attempting to help another combatant get to cover, they're both fair game. There's a grey area when it's not clear if a person helping a combatan…
The reality is that there were kids in the van and they were trying to help a wounded journalist.
Re: Wikileaks has really misled the public
#26Hammers home the point that the integrity of any journalism is contingent on editing, and context. Yet still I’m glad for the leak - for the first time in months I heard more discussion and awareness that a war we’re bankrolling is still raging instead of celebrity infididelity.
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Re: Wikileaks has really misled the public
#27There's clearly something fishy about the video if only because we're obviously coming in half way through whatever happened. But the real problem isn't the behavior of the soldiers as much as it's the military not making it's case before this video broke. The author here is raising some valid points but they're all speculation because the military hasn't released anything officially. Military tribunals should be pub…
The military has now released the records on their investigations:
http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%2...
I suppose that this information wouldn't have been released, at least for a long time, without their hand being forced by wikileaks. However it is also not reasonable to expect everything to be immediately public; there is going to be a ton of sensitive information, and it's not practical to redact and release everything by default. Obviously, it's in the US interest for this kind of thing not to be front page news, but that doesn't mean that by not publicizing it there is a coverup or something illegal going on either. Everybody, including Wikileaks, has an agenda.
Re: Wikileaks has really misled the public
#28After I saw the first video, I did some googling around and reading about the rules of engagement during an insurgency. Under the Geneva Convention, clearly identified medical personnel treating combatants removed from combat are protected. However, if an armed combatant is attempting to help another combatant get to cover, they're both fair game. There's a grey area when it's not clear if a person helping a combatan…
Everyone picking up the bodies and from the van was clearly UNARMED. Unarmed non-combatants were picking up the body of an unarmed non-combatant who never held a weapon.
But, the vehicle was already transporting suspects.
That's like using a medical vehicle to transport combatants and then come back and pick up the wounded from the same vehicle.
Re: Wikileaks has really misled the public
#29Re: Wikileaks has really misled the public
#30After viewing the video, it clearly is an unprovoked massacre. LINK: This is clear considering they approached the hot zone at the beginning of the video with intel, either from ground troops, or from the another Apache, that there were armed combatants in the area. The video indicates there was ONE combatant, and that the group of people was NOT him. @2:49: air: “we had a guy shooting, now he’s behind the building”…
if you examine the frame between 2:40 and 2:41
I don't think people do that in combat. If you're ever in combat, or in a situation with armed people who think you may want to kill them, I highly recommend that you make it very obvious you're not armed. If they look at the footage of how you died and say "Oh! If we examine the frame, it looks like he wasn't going to kill us, after all!" I guess you'll be vindicated.