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Soldier in Wikileaks video of 2007 Apache attack reveals what happened that day

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Re: Soldier in Wikileaks video of 2007 Apache attack reveals what happened that day

#41

Post by CamperBob »

techiferous wrote: post #27
ErrantX wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my ex girlfriends held views similar (a little more extreme) to the one your expressing. Ultimately I came to the realisation there is a limit to how much we can care for the animal kingdom on a philosophical level. Speaking purely as animals the need to hunt/rear/kill is perfectly natural ("if god wanted us to be veggies why does meat taste so damn good"). I realised that, yes, we have to counterbalance that…

> Ultimately I came to the realisation there is a limit to how much we can care for the animal kingdom on a philosophical level. I agree with you 100%. I think we probably disagree on where that limit is, and I think we as humans are way overstepping our bounds. > Speaking purely as animals the need to hunt/rear/kill is perfectly natural You have a good point, and I would add that factory farming is very far from nat…

You have a good point, and I would add that factory farming is very far from natural.

It's "natural" for a certain, non-negligible percentage of humanity to starve to death, or to suffer from malnutrition. Factory farming is a very important reason why fewer people starve to death every year. Screw your idea of what's "natural."

Re: Soldier in Wikileaks video of 2007 Apache attack reveals what happened that day

#42

Post by ck2 »

The innocent people who were killed will never get to talk to the media or their family and friends. Imagine if a foreign military had been flying around your city with high powered weapons looking for insurgents among civilians and were making deadly assumptions and saying things like they did in that video

If this video had not come to light, we'd keep thinking that war was cut and dry. Why are people attacking Wikileaks when the guilty had months to put together a calm, cooling anti-story for the media in hindsight?

Things like this video probably happened dozens if not hundreds of times over there, so you want to find an excuse for this one? What about all the others?

Re: Soldier in Wikileaks video of 2007 Apache attack reveals what happened that day

#43

Post by earl »

pg wrote: post #8
roboneal wrote: post #5

The commentary of this soldier, and possibly others, would have provided some context to this incident. He supports the initial engagement, but criticizes the secondary attack on the van and a later firing of a Hellfire missile into a building. A context the Wikileaks' "Collateral Murder" campaign was sorely lacking.

Yes; I lost a lot of respect for Wikileaks after that. It seemed as if they'd branched out into the propaganda business. I wonder what made them change direction after so long.

Maybe it was watching US soldiers gleefully murder civilians, or gloat over the children they shot?

Re: Soldier in Wikileaks video of 2007 Apache attack reveals what happened that day

#44

Post by sunchild »

alexgartrell wrote: post #17
techiferous wrote: post #15

[EDIT: The following comment is off-topic; therefore I wish I hadn't posted it. I didn't delete it, though, so that you could make sense of the comment responses to it. My apologies for being off-topic.] I'm about to express an unpopular opinion, so I'm expecting lots of downvotes, but at least I believe that what I'm expressing is rational and from the heart. Regarding this whole WikiLeaks incident, I felt bad for b…

I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, but you really cannot expect us to hold the lives of children in Iraq anywhere near that of Cattle. It's hardly hypocrisy to eat a burger after calling out the soldiers, as people and animals really are, according to almost every person as well as almost every religion/philosophy, on completely different planes of existence. I support the troops who did this, but I don't think…

"...according to almost every person as well as almost every religion/philosophy, on completely different planes of existence..."

This whole thread is OT, but this statement is extremely dubious. You have no basis for evaluating another being's "plane of existence" — whatever that is. That's like saying that non-English-speakers' lives are worth less because you can't understand what they're saying.

Re: Soldier in Wikileaks video of 2007 Apache attack reveals what happened that day

#45

Post by roboneal »

caffeine wrote: post #40
roboneal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Registering a domain name called collateralmurder.com with the lede "WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people" is not releasing "raw info".

They released the video, didn't they? That's the raw info (assuming they haven't doctored it). It is true, however, that they stamped it with their own interpretation, which is that the slaying of a dozen people was indiscriminate. This is contradicted by the soldier in the OP who feels that some of the slaying was discriminate. However, WikiLeaks and the soldier both agree that the man in the van was collaterally mu…

Not sure what your definition of "raw" is --

The video itself is not even raw - opens with a George Orwell quote, spliced in commentary, a slideshow of the children of the victims, edited, arrows pointing at "cameras", etc.

It's painfully obvious that Wikileaks "leaked" a video with a carefully constructed point of view.

Re: Soldier in Wikileaks video of 2007 Apache attack reveals what happened that day

#46

Post by brlewis »

Psychologically, it's very difficult to question a war you're fighting. Believing it's worthwhile is a coping mechanism. If this fellow can be strong enough to question it, what excuse do the rest of us have?

Quote: I think that the bigger picture is what are we doing there? We’ve been there for so long now and it seems like nothing is being accomplished whatsoever, except for we’re making more people hate us.

Re: Soldier in Wikileaks video of 2007 Apache attack reveals what happened that day

#47

Post by sunchild »

"There’s no easy way to kill somebody. You don’t just take somebody’s life and then go on about your business for the rest of the day. That stays with you. And cracking jokes is a way of pushing that stuff down. That’s why so many soldiers come back home and they’re no longer in the situations where they have other things to think about or other people to joke about what happened … and they explode."

I think a lot of people who jumped to conclusions about this video should take these words to heart.

Re: Soldier in Wikileaks video of 2007 Apache attack reveals what happened that day

#48

Post by metamemetics »

roboneal wrote: post #45
caffeine wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They released the video, didn't they? That's the raw info (assuming they haven't doctored it). It is true, however, that they stamped it with their own interpretation, which is that the slaying of a dozen people was indiscriminate. This is contradicted by the soldier in the OP who feels that some of the slaying was discriminate. However, WikiLeaks and the soldier both agree that the man in the van was collaterally mu…

Not sure what your definition of "raw" is -- The video itself is not even raw - opens with a George Orwell quote, spliced in commentary, a slideshow of the children of the victims, edited, arrows pointing at "cameras", etc. It's painfully obvious that Wikileaks "leaked" a video with a carefully constructed point of view.

The released TWO videos simultaenously. One was a unedited 50 minute long RAW video. The other one with the introduction was edited and shorter. The "biased" edited version does not include the additional missile strike against a building that killed a family of 4.

Re: Soldier in Wikileaks video of 2007 Apache attack reveals what happened that day

#49

Post by techiferous »

CamperBob wrote: post #41
techiferous wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ultimately I came to the realisation there is a limit to how much we can care for the animal kingdom on a philosophical level. I agree with you 100%. I think we probably disagree on where that limit is, and I think we as humans are way overstepping our bounds. > Speaking purely as animals the need to hunt/rear/kill is perfectly natural You have a good point, and I would add that factory farming is very far from nat…

You have a good point, and I would add that factory farming is very far from natural. It's "natural" for a certain, non-negligible percentage of humanity to starve to death, or to suffer from malnutrition. Factory farming is a very important reason why fewer people starve to death every year. Screw your idea of what's "natural."

> Screw your idea of what's "natural."

Ouch.

Re: Soldier in Wikileaks video of 2007 Apache attack reveals what happened that day

#50

Post by roboneal »

metamemetics wrote: post #48
roboneal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what your definition of "raw" is -- The video itself is not even raw - opens with a George Orwell quote, spliced in commentary, a slideshow of the children of the victims, edited, arrows pointing at "cameras", etc. It's painfully obvious that Wikileaks "leaked" a video with a carefully constructed point of view.

The released TWO videos simultaenously. One was a unedited 50 minute long RAW video. The other one with the introduction was edited and shorter. The "biased" edited version does not include the additional missile strike against a building that killed a family of 4.

Yeah - they edited out that part because it shows plain as day people entering that building with weapons (roughly 31min in).

Didn't fit the narrative.

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