Wikileak'd video shows eager-to-kill troops firing on Reuters reporters and children

[☭proletarian☭]

How about following the Rules of engagement?
or even the Geneva convention?

Look there are spotters on the ground that probably saw some activity like GUNS, EXPLOSIVES in this group, they send radio that intel in and then they are taken out. IT IS FUCKING WAR not a local bar brawl.

When the sole surviving child comes to America and detonates a bomb in Times Square on New Years Eve, just remember your own words.

 

[☭proletarian☭]

YouTube - US Soldiers Execute a wounded iraqi writhing in agony

Funny how these same idiots sing a different tune when it comes back around and Americans are killed.

 

[QUENTIN]

An active duty U.S. soldier currently deployed in Southeastern Baghdad, where this incident occurred, writes a very thoughtful and nuanced analysis of this matter to Andrew Sullivan, and says:

90% of what occurs in that video has been commonplace in Iraq for the last 7 years, and the 10% that differs is entirely based on the fact that two of the gentlemen killed were journalists.

War is a disgusting, horrible thing. As cliche as that excuse has become, for people to look at the natural heartbreaking nature of it and say that they're somehow anomalous just shows how far people who have not experienced war have to go to understanding it.

Precisely. This incident is commonplace, not unusual, because it's what war is and it's what has been happening in our wars throughout the decade. We just don't usually see it, and this time we did. That -- and the fact that Reuters journalists were killed and it thus generated more pressure than normal -- are the only things that make it unusual.

Despite being disgustingly depraved in their justification of killing completely innocent people, including those attempting to get medical help for unarmed and wounded civilians, and their proposal that we put ourselves in the shoes of the soldiers who were never at any time in danger during the incident, killed the group from afar while congratulating each other and joking about it, and went home safely to their beds that night but unwillingness to put themselves in the shoes of the murdered civilians who were simply walking around their neighborhood in their country which the soldiers invaded and were killed without any instigation, those defending this as just what war is are actually much more honest than those who will attempt to paint it - like Abu Ghraib - as the work of a "few bad apples." Murdering civilians as a matter of daily routine is just what we do in wars, and though it's not usually intentional, the threshold established to provide the justification for doing so is spectacularly low as this video demonstrates and as one need to do little more than look at the death toll of Iraqi civilians to realize.

Iraq Body Count

 

[☭proletarian☭]

the soldiers in the Apache did not take a single step -- including killing those unarmed men who tried to rescue the wounded -- without first receiving formal permission from their superiors.....

What they did was consistent with their training and orders and the way soldiers behave in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I believe that's called the Nuremberg Defense.

 

[QUENTIN]

And for a hilarious, quite telling example of why perceptions of the continued occupations and knowledge about the realities of those occupations are so different in the rest of the world than they are among the sheltered American public, it's hard to do better than this:

 

[QUENTIN]

the soldiers in the Apache did not take a single step -- including killing those unarmed men who tried to rescue the wounded -- without first receiving formal permission from their superiors.....

What they did was consistent with their training and orders and the way soldiers behave in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I believe that's called the Nuremberg Defense.

Exactly.

And just like the atrocities committed by German soldiers, while their individual actions are monstrous and reflect poorly on them, ultimately those truly responsible for the needless and wanton murder of so many innocent people are not the individual troops carrying out the orders but those directing the policy that allows for, and in fact guarantees, those deaths happen.

To go after a concentration camp grunt while ignoring Hitler and Goebbels would be missing the point. So to lay the blame primarily at the feet of these soldiers rather than the architects of war policy, as we did with the Abu Ghraib scandal where only the low-level guards caught acting out the torture that was a widespread and the result of official policy, would be a sham and have no real benefit.

This is not the work of a few bad apples. This is simply how America conducts its wars. It's important to recognize and reflect on that, not dismiss the war crime as some kind of aberrational tragedy.

 

[eots]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN5Lu94l_E0&feature=related]YouTube - Soldiers talk about what they saw and did in Iraq[/ame]

 

[Nonelitist]

Story is unraveling for you idiot liberals...


"Julian Assange, a WikiLeaks editor, acknowledged to Fox News in an interview Tuesday evening that "it's likely some of the individuals seen in the video were carrying weapons."

"... images gathered during a military investigation of the incident show multiple weapons around the dead bodies in the courtyard, including at least three RPGs."

"the military says that because the van had no visible markings to suggest it was an ambulance or a protected vehicle, it was fair game under Army rules."

"Hanzlik called the death of the Reuters photographers "incredibly unfortunate." That sad part is, he said, they weren't wearing any markings or jerseys that would have signaled to U.S. forces they were members of the media."


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...tions-credibility-leaked-iraq-shooting-video/

 

[Kalam]

"We were coming back and we saw an injured man. My father said, 'let's take him to hospital.' Then I heard only the bullets ... Why did they shoot us? Didn't they see we were children?"​

Get the fuck out of Iraq. America has no business meddling in the affairs of the Islamic world.

 

[MuslimAgorist]

For the people of Iraq the crimes of the American Military are a daily occurrence. Just Imagine. What attitude will these wounded children have toward America growing up? When they are teenagers, desperately trying to make sense of the chaos of their lives, how will the ability to witness the cold blooded murder of their own father affect them? When they are adults, and trying to chose between the fake Republic the American Empire gives them and the militant resistance their neighbors continue to fight what do you think they will chose? What would you chose?

Read More

 

[Tom Clancy]

"We were coming back and we saw an injured man. My father said, 'let's take him to hospital.' Then I heard only the bullets ... Why did they shoot us? Didn't they see we were children?"​

Get the fuck out of Iraq. America has no business meddling in the affairs of the Islamic world.

Shouldn't we blame both?

First: The Father who brought his children in the middle of a fucking war zone is a outright idiot.

Second: The Pilots for not knowing Children were in there before shooting the Van.

 

[Nonelitist]

"We were coming back and we saw an injured man. My father said, 'let's take him to hospital.' Then I heard only the bullets ... Why did they shoot us? Didn't they see we were children?"​

Get the fuck out of Iraq. America has no business meddling in the affairs of the Islamic world.

Shouldn't we blame both?

First: The Father who brought his children in the middle of a fucking war zone is a outright idiot.

Second: The Pilots for not knowing Children were in there before shooting the Van.

Blame the pilots for not assuming children are in a vehicle on a battlefield?

Not sure how you can assign that blame.

 

[Nonelitist]

It is interesting that Libs were all over this thread when they wanted to spread the lies about these people being innocent civilians.

When that story gets exploded into a million bits they disappear.

 

[eots]

oh its a battlefield now

 

[Tom Clancy]

"We were coming back and we saw an injured man. My father said, 'let's take him to hospital.' Then I heard only the bullets ... Why did they shoot us? Didn't they see we were children?"​

Get the fuck out of Iraq. America has no business meddling in the affairs of the Islamic world.

Shouldn't we blame both?

First: The Father who brought his children in the middle of a fucking war zone is a outright idiot.

Second: The Pilots for not knowing Children were in there before shooting the Van.

Blame the pilots for not assuming children are in a vehicle on a battlefield?

Not sure how you can assign that blame.

Correction: How did they know? Your right.

 

[eots]

It is interesting that Libs were all over this thread when they wanted to spread the lies about these people being innocent civilians.

When that story gets exploded into a million bits they disappear.

so now your claiming they were insurgence ?

 

[Nonelitist]

It is interesting that Libs were all over this thread when they wanted to spread the lies about these people being innocent civilians.

When that story gets exploded into a million bits they disappear.

so now your claiming they were insurgence ?

Absolutely. They saw weapons from the air and then found them when they got to the scene.

Someone claimed an "RPG" was actually a lens. There isn't a lens used in the field that is anywhere near the length of an "RPG"... I know.. I am a photographer.

The Reuters employees weren't insurgents, but what are they doing hanging out with those that are?

 

[QUENTIN]

That's the awesome thing about American military presence.

You may think you're standing around in your own neighborhood in your own country or driving down your main street to take your kids to their tutor.

But when the military of the invading, occupying nation decides they're gonna show up there that day, now it's a battlefield and you're an idiot who deserves to die for having the gall to live there.

Nonelitist, you're a liar and you don't know what you're talking about. What was mistaken for an RPG did turn out to be a telephoto lens, which you're right, is substantially shorter than an RPG. The guy in the chopper was way off. At the scene after the murders, US troops (with a Washington Post journalist embedded) arrived at the scene and found some guns, some camera equipment, and no RPG. There is absolutely no reason to believe anyone killed was part of an "insurgency." They never engaged nor attempted to engage anyone.

Having a gun in Iraq does not make you an insurgent anymore than having a gun in America does. Gun ownership is even more widespread among the Iraqi civilian population than the American civilian population, for obvious reasons. Do you suggest Iraqis are not allowed to protect themselves (against say, Al Qaeda who target civilians) and their families without becoming fair game for assholes in gunships?

 

[Nonelitist]

That's the awesome thing about American military presence.

You may think you're standing around in your own neighborhood in your own country or driving down your main street to take your kids to their tutor.

But when the military of the invading, occupying nation decides they're gonna show up there that day, now it's a battlefield and you're an idiot who deserves to die for having the gall to live there.

Nonelitist, you're a liar. And having a gun in Iraq does not make you an insurgent anymore than having a gun in America does. Gun ownership is even more widespread among the Iraqi civilian population than the American civilian population, for obvious reasons. Do you suggest Iraqis are not allowed to protect themselves and their families without becoming fair game for assholes in gunships?

Weapons were seen from the air and when they got to the scene.

Even the editor of the website where the video was posted admits "it is likely" they had weapons.

And no... the possession of an RPG in the streets of Iraq is going to eventually get you killed.

 

[QUENTIN]

That's the awesome thing about American military presence.

You may think you're standing around in your own neighborhood in your own country or driving down your main street to take your kids to their tutor.

But when the military of the invading, occupying nation decides they're gonna show up there that day, now it's a battlefield and you're an idiot who deserves to die for having the gall to live there.

Nonelitist, you're a liar. And having a gun in Iraq does not make you an insurgent anymore than having a gun in America does. Gun ownership is even more widespread among the Iraqi civilian population than the American civilian population, for obvious reasons. Do you suggest Iraqis are not allowed to protect themselves and their families without becoming fair game for assholes in gunships?

Weapons were seen from the air and when they got to the scene.

Even the editor of the website where the video was posted admits "it is likely" they had weapons.

And no... the possession of an RPG in the streets of Iraq is going to eventually get you killed.

Yes, some of the men had AK47s, as is extremely common among Iraqi civilians.

Gun ownership is legal and widespread in Iraq, as in America. Mere possession of a gun does not permit or warrant a death sentence.

No one had any RPGs, they went to the scene afterward and discovered no RPGs. The guy in the chopper thought he saw one, he was wrong. You can't just keep repeating the lie that there really were RPGs hoping it'll eventually become true. You're welcome to your own opinion but not your own facts.