Collateral Murder

[Kaldaur]

The website link and video will give you most of the necessary information, but the long of it is that this video was recently obtained by the website Wikileaks from a military whistleblower. It is the view from an Apache helicopter that engaged a crowd of eight men, two of whom were Reuters employees (driver and photographer). Not much else needs to be said; watch the video.

http://collateralmurder.com/

[Fairweather Pure]

I watched it earlier. It made me sick to my stomach. I couldn't watch it all. I haven't seen a mainstream outlet reporting on this.

[Xyun]

This is the kind of stuff that happens in war. Don't like it? Don't support the war. But when there is a war, you can't be surprised or outraged that innocent people died. That's what happens in wars.

[Fairweather Pure]

Are you honestly saying that people do not have a right to be outraged at that video?

[Xyun]

no. You can be outraged all you want, I'm just saying its a waste of time.

[Winnow]

This is the kind of stuff that happens in war. Don't like it? Don't support the war. But when there is a war, you can't be surprised or outraged that innocent people died. That's what happens in wars.

Well said. There's a lot of friendly fire tragedies in war although a lot less than there used to be in the past.

[Boogahz]

I bet they targetted the men just because they were reporters, because that's what military folk do.

[Funkmasterr]

Yeah, it totally couldn't be that it's a fucking war zone, tension is high, it's nearly impossible to tell who is the enemy and who isn't, and a moments hesitation can mean a car bomb going off and killing a lot more people than were killed by this squad.

They saw what they genuinely felt was a threat and neutralized it. Sure, their commanding officers seem to have lied to try and smooth it over afterward, but that's to be expected. Regardless of what many seem to think, the day to day of what goes on over there is none of our goddamn business.

Using the word murder in connection with this, not to mention a lot of the commentary in the video is irresponsible, inaccurate damn the man bullshit.

Not to mention war photographers are fucking retarded. They have no business being where they are, and while I'm absolutely not saying they deserve it, I can't feel too bad for them when something like this happens.

[miir]

The men in the video were not partaking in hostile actions and most of them were not even armed. I could't even spot any weapons... just cameras that were mistaken for weapons.
Heck, the guys in the van were just trying to help a critically injured victim when they got shot the fuck up.


The commentary from the gunner and pilot was nothing short of repulsive.

it totally couldn't be that it's a fucking war zone

It was in a residential area.
Families live in those houses.

[Funkmasterr]

The men in the video were not partaking in hostile actions and most of them were not even armed. I could't even spot any weapons... just cameras that were mistaken for weapons.
Heck, the guys in the van were just trying to help a critically injured victim when they got shot the fuck up.


The commentary from the gunner and pilot was nothing short of repulsive.

it totally couldn't be that it's a fucking war zone

It was in a residential area.
Families live in those houses.

What is it that you don't understand about the nature of what goes on over there? Most of the people that end up being suicide bombers aren't partaking in any hostile actions right before they blow a fucking school up. If they think there is any chance that person is going to do something, they need to make the call, and I can't say I feel they made the wrong one here.

And same logic applies to the van, I'm not sure what's so hard to understand.

And you're right, it's so disgusting that they are over there protecting all of you ignorant egotistical motherfuckers rights to be ignorant egotistical motherfuckers, and in the bloody, horrible process of doing that they get desensitized as fuck to what's going on. How dare them.

Yep. Families live in those houses. And they live in all the other places that fucked up shit happens in Iraq. There isn't a fenced off area in the middle of the desert with big signs on the fence that say "MAKE WAR STUFFZ HERE PLS"....

Jesus fucking christ.

[Bubba Grizz]

And you're right, it's so disgusting that they are over there protecting all of you ignorant egotistical motherfuckers rights to be ignorant egotistical motherfuckers, and in the bloody, horrible process of doing that they get desensitized as fuck to what's going on. How dare them.

Miir can still be outraged though right? We're not directly protecting Canadians.

[Funkmasterr]

And you're right, it's so disgusting that they are over there protecting all of you ignorant egotistical motherfuckers rights to be ignorant egotistical motherfuckers, and in the bloody, horrible process of doing that they get desensitized as fuck to what's going on. How dare them.

Miir can still be outraged though right? We're not directly protecting Canadians.

I am always willing to give miir a pass, he's not half bad for a Canadian

[miir]

And you're right, it's so disgusting that they are over there protecting all of you ignorant egotistical motherfuckers rights to be ignorant egotistical motherfuckers, and in the bloody, horrible process of doing that they get desensitized as fuck to what's going on. How dare them.

The US invaded and occupied a sovereign nation under the guise of finding non-existant 'weapons of mass destrustion'. It's obvious the real reason was to secure contracts for American compaines and install a more US friendly government.

There was no noble mission to protect the world from a dangerous madman hell bent on destroying america and it's allies.
Saddam had few ambitions beyond his direct neighbours.

[Funkmasterr]

And you're right, it's so disgusting that they are over there protecting all of you ignorant egotistical motherfuckers rights to be ignorant egotistical motherfuckers, and in the bloody, horrible process of doing that they get desensitized as fuck to what's going on. How dare them.

The US invaded and occupied a sovereign nation under the guise of finding non-existant 'weapons of mass destrustion'. It's obvious the real reason was to secure contracts for American compaines and install a more US friendly government.

There was no noble mission to protect the world from a dangerous madman hell bent on destroying america and it's allies.
Saddam had few ambitions beyond his direct neighbours.

The soldiers flying around in that Apache != George W Bush, sir.

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

Fuckheads like Miir do not understand that distinction. They do not understand that those people are sent wherever the powers that be send them and they do not get an option B. While they are in a war zone, they are trying to stay alive so they can get home to see their kids, wives, parents, etc. The reporters are not required to grab a camera and plant themselves in the middle of a war.

If you want to place blame, blame the terrorist fucks that use schools and neighborhoods as their cover. They would not need to be running Apaches over neighborhoods if these scum did not scatter themselves in there. The U.S. is not carpet bombing places to kill civilians on purpose like happened in the first world wars. They are using targetted strikes and in some cases those strikes end up in bad places due to error or misinformation.

[miir]

Have you two even watched the entire video?

[Funkmasterr]

Have you two even watched the entire video?

Yes, I watched it in it's entirety yesterday before it was even posted here.

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

I love how someone who has not been off their couch in a decade can always sit and hammer people who make a mistake in an arena where split second decisions can mean coming home in a body bag or missing limbs. When the hardest decision you have to make is whether to log into WoW or EQ 2....or bust out a console, I can see where you have those real close calls that have the heart racing.

[Fairweather Pure]

I love how someone who has not been off their couch in a decade can always sit and hammer people who make a mistake in an arena where split second decisions can mean coming home in a body bag or missing limbs. When the hardest decision you have to make is whether to log into WoW or EQ 2....or bust out a console, I can see where you have those real close calls that have the heart racing.

Now you have a taste of how I felt watching you and the the rest of the neocons rush at breakneck speeds with unprecedented levels of ignorance and stupidity to place our fighting men and women into this situation from the confort of your couch.

[Tyek]

It was in a residential area.
Families live in those houses.

I agree Miir. The video was, well not sure how to put it in words. I do disagree with you on this one point though. Militant groups have shown in the past that they have no issue using civilians, churchs, schools, or whatever to protect themselves because they know the outrage that comes if the US or any country dares to attack them.

I am not saying that was the case here, just that in some cases, the area means little to the the group using it as a shield.

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

I love how someone who has not been off their couch in a decade can always sit and hammer people who make a mistake in an arena where split second decisions can mean coming home in a body bag or missing limbs. When the hardest decision you have to make is whether to log into WoW or EQ 2....or bust out a console, I can see where you have those real close calls that have the heart racing.

Now you have a taste of how I felt watching you and the the rest of the neocons rush at breakneck speeds with unprecedented levels of ignorance and stupidity to place our fighting men and women into this situation from the confort of your couch.

Oh really? I was not aware I had that level of control over our military. You ignorant imbecile. Should I bother to state for the 8 billionth time that if it were up to me that we would pull ALL of our people and ALL of our money out of helping anyone else on this planet? I guess it would not matter since you and the rest of the idiot liberal herd only actually read the parts you want.

[Wulfran]

My take from the short video.

We can go back and rehash the same arguments that have gone on for 7 years, since Bush ordered the invasion but I have a hard time faulting the soldiers involved in this.

I saw something suspiciously like rifle shapes in the hands of guys around the 3:40-4:00 of the shortened video. I can't fault them for coming to a conclusion that the men on the ground were hostile. They were in communication and relaying the data they had over the radio, and were acting according to orders (i.e. the whole asking permission to engage thing).

If reporters were with armed insurgents, well, thats the risk they took to try and get their big story and all the awards and accolades. They took a gamble and lost.

The van, who knows? They could have been completely innocent and being good samaritans or they could have been more insurgents. We can sit here and say "why weren't there warning shots?" and shit but the bottom line is soldiers are trained to kill the enemy in combat. Hesitatiion gets them dead. Listening to them, you can tell their blood was up, they were excited, they were aggressive but they were doing their jobs, within their defined parameters. Soldiers aren't cops.

[Bubba Grizz]

I couldn't get over the fact that it sounded like your typical raid night in vent. As much as it is painful to watch I can't fault anyone in this. It's war. It isn't supposed to be pretty. That's why war isn't all that popular.

[Ashur]

Anyone get a parse?

[Funkmasterr]

Anyone get a parse?

If I wasn't already confident I was going to hell (assuming it exists), I'd feel bad about laughing at that.

[*~*stragi*~*]

I watched it earlier. It made me sick to my stomach. I couldn't watch it all. I haven't seen a mainstream outlet reporting on this.

It's been on CNN and MSNBC, on the actual TV.

[Gzette]

I saw it on NYT.com as well. As a journalist, I'm less outraged about the fact that some journos died because of military misperceptions than the fact that DoJ would not release the videos to Reuters. That is compounded by the fact that it took a whistleblower and some crack decryption folks to make this public. There is no reason to obfuscate things like this after the fact. The real story here is wikileaks IMO; that the future of news reporting may become dominated by anonymous postings. Makes me shiver, considering the retardation often spewed here. But then again, if it's the only way the message gets out then so be it.

Wasn't wikileaks the site that leaked Sarah Palin's e-mails? Edit: Yes it was (and some grammarz)

[pyrella]

I watched the long version Kwon posted on the Modern Warfare thread that had no commentary. I watched the entire thing, and thought it was another standard op video. I kept waiting to see the part where journalists were blatantly killed. When they show the inital group of 8 and the 2 guys with the cameras and such, and the guy peeking around the building, it looked to my admittedly untrained eye that yes - there were some guys walking around with weapons. Of course I went in to the situation biased, assuming they were moving in to a hostile area, where recent gunfire had been reported, as was put in the captions at the very beginning.

In fact, until I saw the short version where they break it all down bit by bit - I thought the 'naughty' part was right near the end where they put hellfires in to that building, and the very first one has a guy just walking in front of the building as it hits.


As far as how the people involved are acting - are they supposed to be mechanical drones, not having any emotion at all? Excited people with adrenaline coursing through their veins are usually hyper focused....and sound hyperactive.

End of the day - and what it really is about, is the command structure's terrible attempt at a cover up. All the people involved in the video were all basically wrong place wrong time - but they themselves were not 'in the wrong'. Not the apache pilot and gunner who were requested to investigate and provide a response to an action. All protocols were followed based on the information provided. A soldiers job is to follow orders. In fact, when the guy is wounded and is crawling away - the gunner says 'you just need to pick up a weapon'. Following protocol after having brought down and disabled everyone in the area. He did not cowboy it and go crazy and light the guy up.

The journalists themselves say according to the site that they knew they could die at any moment. As was mentioned above - that's the risk you take seeking your goals. Risk vs. reward - you might die, you might end up a pulitzer prize winner. Lives were lost, and that's a tragedy. People attempted to cover this up, and that's criminal. But the people directly involved in that video deserve no blame for their actions, and probably are harsher on themselves, than any words you could hope to convey the injustice they committed.

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

The truest shame is that they were not lawyers...or papparazi.

[Winnow]

Pyrella...posting like madman! Welcome back!

[Xyun]

If I'm an Iraqi I'm never ever going to be carrying anything that even remotely looks like a gun, an rpg, or a bomb (even a fucking video camera), when there are US choppers flying overhead. It's just about the dumbest fucking thing you can do.

I think the people who are outraged and crying "murder" are doing so because they have no concept of war. American mainstream media doesn't truly show war, they give you a candy coated fairy tale about heroes and villains. So when you get a video like this of real war with people dying on camera, some people's frail protected brains are shocked at the atrocities. But that's what war is, and endless cornucopia of atrocities. Which is also the reason why throughout human history, armchair warmongers have been and continue to be the most evil people in this world. George W. Bush included.

[Kwonryu DragonFist]

AT 34:39
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik

Couldn't they have waited a few seconds for the dude that strolled by to pass the building before firing the missile?

[Sueven]

On the one hand, the video is a lot more ambiguous than straight-up murder. On the other hand, it's a lot more troubling than "just a routine instance of war."

On the one hand, these are the sorts of things that happen in war. On the other hand, the fact that we invaded a nation and some of its citizens took to suicide bombing does not give us the right to kill any civilian in that nation because they might be a suicide bomber.

[Drolgin Steingrinder]

Up until the "c'mon, pick up a gun" - did anyone else get a Shane / Bill Hicks vibe here? - I thought this was horrible, but a "this is what happens in war" scenario. After that, I practically threw up at the thought that my country supported this "war" effort. From then on, these people were looking for an excuse to continue their game of MW:2.