If later the murdered fishermen are identified and their stories known, is it possible for their families to seek compensation from USG?
Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission
171–180 of 278 posts
Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't matter if you can take the cost. It's forbidden to kill civilians. You can only kill non-civilians, and there's nothing allowing you to hide the bodies of civilians or interfere with their burial rites.
Specialist missions normally have custom RoE not always mirroring those in conventional theatre, but nevertheless appropriate for the mission specifics.
I don't think it's so much about the Rules of Engagement but more about "Don't indiscriminately murder people"
Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission
#173It would have been nicer to kidnap the fishermen.
The laws of war don't allow that either. It's forbidden to attack civilians. You're not allowed even to wrestle them. Having been discovered by civilians is not sufficient to justify attacking them.
I didn't say it would've been legal, just nicer.
Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't matter if you can take the cost. It's forbidden to kill civilians. You can only kill non-civilians, and there's nothing allowing you to hide the bodies of civilians or interfere with their burial rites.
Specialist missions normally have custom RoE not always mirroring those in conventional theatre, but nevertheless appropriate for the mission specifics.
Yes, but this it's clearly forbidden to make civilians object of attack, and it doesn't matter whether you risk discovery or whatever. Surely the RoE should be at least as restrictive as IHL.
I think it might be legal to hide the body, but if you do so you must do something to ensure that it can be recovered, either informing the enemy afterwards or some other measure to that effect.
Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission
#175If you can stomach the bravado and unclear factual accuracy, the 2007 book Lone Survivor gives an account of a similar failure, in Afghanistan, where a SEAL team was discovered early in their mission. But, it devolved into a running battle and a disaster for the US special forces where most of the team and many rescuers also died. As a result of those prior events, I can imagine they have different rules of engagemen…
SEALs are macho glory hounds. Army special forces are so much better at mission and role focus. The SEALs talk in open media constantly. There's a reason you have no idea what the Green Berets do.
JSOC units, including Delta Force, carried out raids in Iraq and Afghanistan that killed many civilians, often women and children. We cannot measure the exact ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths, but multiple investigations show civilians bore the brunt, often children.
In these expeditionary wars, the only good guys were groups like MSF, WFP, and the ICRC.
Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
The laws of war don't allow that either. It's forbidden to attack civilians. You're not allowed even to wrestle them. Having been discovered by civilians is not sufficient to justify attacking them.
I didn't say it would've been legal, just nicer.
Ah, I see.
Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my best understanding as well. I have watched a lot of ex-special forces guys on YT. Needless to say, I take it all with massive grains of salt, including the claim that they were even SF in the first place. However, they all describe the selection processes similarly. And, my educated assumption is that this part is probably too dull for them to lie about, much less lie about in unison across many accounts a…
> I have watched a lot of ex-special forces guys on YT. > Needless to say, I take it all with massive grains of salt I think it needs to be said that people who choose those careers are probably one of the worst kinds of people. They choose to use their unique, advantageous talents to murder people on command. And then you select out of those the ones that think being interviewed on YouTube about that is a good idea.…
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Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Assuming you also weren’t in the armed forces, so correct me if I’m wrong.) I don’t think it’s worthwhile for laypeople to armchair quarterback the decisions of possibly the most elite soldiers in the US armed forces. By the time the mission was given to them, the collateral risk had already been accepted by JSOC, national security advisors, and likely Trump. I could feel more comfortable questioning their judgment,…
+1. This does seem like an operation gone wrong, and I certanly condemn the killing of innocent civilians, but it's shocking how quick HN commenters are to throw America under the bus based on reporting from a leak. There's so much information about this operation that we simply don't have, including the risk/benefit analysis, the other operations that were successes that we don't know about, etc. I'm not saying Amer…
Maybe try and shake the propaganda you've been ingesting all your life and it be clearer - Easily done by reversing the situation:
North Korean special forces get ashore in the US to plant a listening device. They run into issues and are spotted by a boat. So they shoot the civilians, then puncture the lungs of the dead Americans so their bodies don't float, and escaped unharmed.
Is throwing North Korea under the bus for this shocking ? I'm not saying North Korea is all good......
Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s important to clarify that yes, they’re more comfortable with risk taking but they’re highly-trained for high-risk missions and taking calculated risks with massive amounts of intelligence work and contingency planning beforehand. It’s not just “lol, let’s try it. If we die, we die!” And their success rate should be and is, pretty high. That said, this was a National Command Authority (came down from the White Ho…
What is their success rate? What is "pretty high?"
We don't know. It's classified. That's the part of the point. I get why the OC might assume the success rate is pretty high because the successful missions can be talked about so the public hears about them. Very rare to hear about the failures like this one. But we just don't know if its rare because they don't happen much or because they happen a lot and are kept as a state secret.
Re: Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a wide consensus that the US succeeded in killing Bin Laden 14 years ago. Here is why: - On-scene & eyewitness identification by the SEALs (including identification by a wife). [1] - CIA facial-recognition match to known images. [2] - Rapid DNA testing matching bin Laden to family members. [3] - Existence of classified post-mortem photos/videos acknowledged in court. [4] - Official U.S. account of Islamic-ri…
Most of the cited sources come from the U.S. military, government, or intelligence community. These institutions have a long record of politically expedient deception - from WMD in Iraq, to the Gulf of Tonkin, to the bombing of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza - so their claims should not be taken at face value. The Letters from Abbottabad also fall into this category. Their timing and content are unusually convenient f…
When French marsouins killed Droukel, one of the first thing they did was take a picture, then sent it to their friends in the navy, operational security be damned (and from what I've heard, that triggered a lot of jokes). The french troops there were more or less aware of the kill way before it was confirmed, which took days. It might be because Seals are tighter at opsec than Marsouins for sure, and that the Cia was ready to confirm the kill while Droukel was less prepared, but the timeline is for sure extremely tight. Still think it happened, I just think the whole story lacks information on insiders.