WikiLeaks posts 'killing' video

[Stofsk]

WikiLeaks has a fairly lengthy video from an Apache attack helicopter which shot up a bunch of people in Iraq a couple years ago, killing two journos and a bunch of civilians after (apparently) mistaking them for insurgents. I found the video to be pretty shocking so just bear that in mind.

WikiLeaks posts 'killing' video

WikiLeaks has posted a video on its website which it claims shows the killing of civilians by the US military in Baghdad in 2007.

The website's organisers say they were given the footage, which they say comes from cameras on US Apache helicopters.

They say they decrypted it, but would not reveal who gave it to them.

The WikiLeaks site campaigns for freedom of information and posts leaked documents online. There has been no Pentagon response to the video so far.

The video, released on Monday, is of high quality and appears to be authentic, the BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington says.

It is accompanied by a recording of the pilots' radio transmissions and those of US troops on the ground.

The video shows a street in Baghdad and a group of about eight people, whom the helicopter pilots deem to be insurgents.

It then shows the individuals on the street being shot dead with the Apache's cannon.

Then, a van drives onto the scene, and its occupants appear to start picking up the wounded.

It, too, is fired upon. Altogether, around 12 people die. Two children appear to be injured.

'Hostile force'

Two journalists working for Reuters were among those killed in the incident in July 2007.

WikiLeaks has published a statement from Reuters news editor-in-chief David Schlesinger saying that the video was "graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result".

At the time, the US military said the helicopters were engaged in combat operations against a hostile force.

WikiLeaks said the video demonstrated that civilians had died in the incident, and that the US military's rules of engagement were flawed.

The website's organisers complained recently of coming under surveillance by the US government, and of harassment by other governments, ostensibly for their role in posting leaked documents on sensitive subjects.

As I mentioned above, this video was very harrowing and shocking. While I don't want to make any snap judgements, at the same time I'm finding it difficult to remain impartial. While according to the BBC article the helicopter crew were called in to engage hostile forces, the end result is that civilians were killed and even two children were wounded. It didn't seem like the gunner and pilot had correctly identified insurgents (the radio chatter mentions them carrying AK-47s and at one point, someone even claims to have seen an RPG, but honestly I couldn't make anything like that out).

The real problem I had was when they opened fire on the van that came along and stopped to pick up one of the wounded guys. They shot the van up (this was where the two children were btw). Isn't that supposed to be a big no-no as far as military rules of engagement are concerned?

I'm curious what you guys think about this.

[The Minx]

The makers of the video and website try to poison the well by calling the site "collateral murder" and they try to suggest the correct reaction to the viewer with their text introduction and by showing pictures of family members of the victims prior to showing the video. This is a bit off-putting to me at least.

Despite this, I find the scene horrific, and it is doubly so seeing that it was hushed up. Assuming that this was some horrible miscalculation on the part of the coalition forces, they should have come clean about it and launched an investigation, since this way it makes it look like it is intentional.

[frigidmagi]

If they were insurgences letting them pick up the wounded just means we'll be seeing them again and they'll be shooting at us. It's not against the laws of war. As to why they fired on the van, Iraqi insurgences like those elsewhere have used vans as sniper or RPG mounts. Bluntly any motor vehicle is suspect.

As for the mistake... It's horrific, video or no video. The guys in the helo made a bad call and killed people who didn't deserve to die. I don't think anyone can disagree with that. From what I can tell, the pilots were told there were armed hostiles in the area and well... They saw what they expected to see. In short, they fucked up. Odds are good they were running low on sleep and might have been stimmed up. Let me also point out they would have been stressed and a helo is not a quiet calm environment. All that said, they still fucked up.

As to the cover up... I'm not at all surprised. I'm not defending it but... If we had released it, we would still be crucified and called a pack of baby eating murders. To put it bluntly from my view it doesn't matter if we cover it up or not, the reaction, the hysteria is still the same. If you're in command, your job is to win the damn war. Such reactions and hysteria make it more likely that you will lose, because popular perception and public opinion matter in a democracy.

There's also the loyality bit. To be blunt about it, most of us in uniform are taught by our elders in uniforms and our own experiences that civilians will not understand us, will not extend us the benefit of the doubt and will not trust us if we screw up even once. That's unfair maybe and may be the left overs of a prior era. Considering that the US is the most pro-soldier state in the western world and I still caught plenty of shit for my uniform in California and other places I can see where it comes from though. Basically, it would be easy for a group of officers to decide that being honest and open while being the most moral option, would only result in making it harder to win and destroying two men (the pilot and the copilot) completely.

Anyone remember what happened to the national guardsmen who lost his job, his wife and his life over firing on a communist Italian journalist? She went at high speed at a national guard barricade and got shot up. She became world famous and a millionaire off of book sales. He has a warrant for his arrest out in Italy and lost his career as a police officer. Tell me if you were an officer if you would be eager to do that to another troop?

That said cover ups are almost always mistakes. It makes it look as if this kind of action is condoned by the higher ups and just gives ammo to those who believe us a pack of illiterate thugs. It shouldn't be done. Just I can understand the temptation.

[Batman]

I think part of the problem is that not only do the people who will eventually denounce a military atrocity (or more accurately what they perceive as one) have massively more information than the military personell involved in it AND massively more time to ANALYZE the situation they already have massively more information on, but they don't REALIZE that (perhaps willfully, in some cases). It's easy to shout 'War Crime' when you have tons of film material on the scene, months to analyse it, and the 'nobody shooting at you as you do the analysis' aspect probably helps too.

[Charon]

To echo Minx, the video is more biased in their opinion than Fox News.

As for the content, tragic shit happens in war. Bad intel leads to innocent people dying, nervous or sleep-deprived soldiers make mistakes. The number of such incidents increased dramatically when the fighting is happening in a city. The heli made a call, it was the wrong call, but hindsight is 20/20.

I noticed that the video seemed to be trying to make a point in the fact that the soldiers were eager to shoot or were being rather light hearted about the killings, in which case you have to keep in mind that as far as these people knew they were firing on insurgents, the sort of people that were blowing up dozens of innocent people every week. In the video before they engaged I definitely saw what looked to be a rifle of some sort, though I didn't see an RPG. As for the van, I know the video tries to point out the kids in the van before the shooting begins, but honestly they look like two indistinct white blobs, and that's with zooming in the video a lot.

For the cover-up? I dunno. Morally I want to say they should have come out with it. But I understand that there was a lot of shit already going down with the war effort and they didn't want yet another scandal that would bring public opinion down any lower. They figured, I imagine, that they'd deal with the fallout once the fighting was over.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Alright, lets review.

We have a bunch of kids who are probably sleep deprived and on stims to keep them operational for longer than they should be.

We have same kids given guns and trained to dehumanize their enemy. It makes for a good soldier (after all, if they agonize over killing, they get shot first), however when you have such individuals occupying a city...bad idea.

Lets be blunt, these kids wanted to shoot someone, they took pleasure in shooting someone. They displayed a callous disregard for the lives of others including children caught in the line of fire. Never once did they think that they may have misidentified anything, when in fact I skipped over all the heart string stuff in the beginning and even I could recognize that equipment as camera equipment.

Fuck, you think it would have passed through their heads that if one guy has an RPG and was about to shoot at them, the others would go for cover against the helicopter gun ship bearing down on them. No. The behavior of those individuals bore no resemblance to a hostile target unless hostile target includes someone casually milling about a street unarmed. This also means that their training was at best poor, and more probably just abysmal. If all else... Invest in higher resolution fucking gun cameras!

This is standard Zimbardo Prison Experiment shit here. You give someone power, an underclass, and no oversight, and these are the results we will always get. However rather than recognize the problem and deal with it, no one wants to admit to having systemic problems in our military(and our society in general). As a result these kids who were set up to be murderers will be hung out to dry (the military may have covered this up before, but they cant anymore... ) and those who are actually responsible (their superiors, those who oversee and train them) will continue to churn out kids who do this same shit over and over again.

[Stofsk]

The makers of the video and website try to poison the well by calling the site "collateral murder" and they try to suggest the correct reaction to the viewer with their text introduction and by showing pictures of family members of the victims prior to showing the video. This is a bit off-putting to me at least.

I actually would have agreed with you, had the video not been so shocking. I was almost cringing how the 3 minute preamble was all about pulling emotional heart strings, but after watching the video it's more understandable.

Despite this, I find the scene horrific, and it is doubly so seeing that it was hushed up. Assuming that this was some horrible miscalculation on the part of the coalition forces, they should have come clean about it and launched an investigation, since this way it makes it look like it is intentional.

Cover ups are always intentional. Also, from a legal sense, what the pilot and gunner did was intentional - ie they did intend to kill their targets. They thought their targets were insurgents, which is where the 'terrible mistake' element enters into it.

People often confuse intention with motive, which is not right from a legal sense. The two terms are completely different.

[The Minx]

Cover ups are always intentional. Also, from a legal sense, what the pilot and gunner did was intentional - ie they did intend to kill their targets. They thought their targets were insurgents, which is where the 'terrible mistake' element enters into it.

Um, I know the cover up is intentional, I was talking about the killing of innocents. As in, whether they knew what they were doing and it wasn't a miscalculation or bad intelligence that led them to strike the wrong target.

People often confuse intention with motive, which is not right from a legal sense. The two terms are completely different.

OK, that's fair enough; I'm not really an expert on legal terminology. But doesn't "murder" as per the page title does mean that they're claiming it was not a miscalculation? While they've shown that the coalition forces were at the very least guilty of really bad decision making and the higher-ups were guilty of an inexcusable cover up, that doesn't mean that it was murder.

Sometimes, people are killed due to another person's bad judgment and the latter panics and tries to hide the body. This could be such a situation.

[Comrade Tortoise]

OK, that's fair enough; I'm not really an expert on legal terminology. But doesn't "murder" as per the page title does mean that they're claiming it was not a miscalculation? While they've shown that the coalition forces were at the very least guilty of really bad decision making and the higher-ups were guilty of an inexcusable cover up, that doesn't mean that it was murder.

Sometimes, people are killed due to another person's bad judgment and the latter panics and tries to hide the body. This could be such a situation.

Murder requires that your intent be to kill someone, and that this killing be not legally justified.

What these guys did is technically voluntary manslaughter, where their intention was to kill, but they mistakenly thought it justified, or there was reduced responsibility or a few other mitigating circumstances were at work.

[frigidmagi]

We have a bunch of kids who are probably sleep deprived and on stims to keep them operational for longer than they should be.

Huh, no, helicoptor pilots are officers and therefore college grads. They are usually in their mid-20s. Kids doesn't apply. If these were infantry grunts sure. Sleep Deprived and on stims, yes
.

Lets be blunt, these kids wanted to shoot someone, they took pleasure in shooting someone. They displayed a callous disregard for the lives of others including children caught in the line of fire.

Let's be blunt indeed. You are attempting to psyche evac people from 4 years and thousands of miles away based on what? 17 minutes of footage? What are you time psychic now? Never mind they believed they were shooting at people responsible for blowing up a damn large number of women and children! But no you have your fucking stereotype and you're going to jam us into it no matter what.

As for the disregard of children. They found out after the fact that they had opened fire on kids... Who they believed to be mixed into a group of armed men. If these guys had been insurgents getting to ambush a military convoy (there was one inbound by the way) and we had found out they had brought their kids... Who exacltly would we have blamed for that? What would you expect a man who found out after the fact to blame? Someone who he knows is part of a group that no problems killing kids, or himself for unknowingly firing on those children? Frankly one of us has more experience with men who have been in that situation and it isn't you and you should damn well know that the human mind protects itself whenever it can from that kind of guilt.

Fuck, you think it would have passed through their heads that if one guy has an RPG and was about to shoot at them, the others would go for cover against the helicopter gun ship bearing down on them. No. The behavior of those individuals bore no resemblance to a hostile target unless hostile target includes someone casually milling about a street unarmed.

The helicoptor was over a mile away, fuck most people wouldn't even see the damn Helo let alone open fire on it. And if you shot at something with an RPG from a mile away... Congrats you wasted that shot. I mean bearing down on them? Are you fucking nuts? Gunships bearing down on people is a product of bad movies, this helo engaged from well outside the ability of the theoretical insurgences to shot back. Why would we do that? Maybe because we don't like helicopters getting shot down. Mogadishu anyone?

Also "they were relaxed and causal"? What the Fuck are you smoking and how is it not impacting your grades? They're the only people out on the street and they Don't Know The Helo Is There! Or do you think everyone who takes up arms is creeping around corners and glancing about furtively? I didn't engage sir, they were sitting around causally in an area they thought was secure because they didn't see me!

There's at least 3 times in the video where I could make the mistake that they were armed and I knew better. Forget the pilot who has been told there has been a number of engagements in the area that day and insurgents are loose in the area. To be blunt, his mind filled in the details on that picture. He fucked up but it was an understandable fuck up.

A horrible fuck up that has ruined the lives of innocent people, not just the men killed who didn't deserve to die but yes their families and friends and who know how many others. I will admit this point blank, this should not have happened, it was a mistake. A godawful mistake. Made worse by an illegal and immoral cover up.

This also means that their training was at best poor, and more probably just abysmal. If all else... Invest in higher resolution fucking gun cameras!

Because you're a goddamn expert in military training aren't ya? Yes, I would love to hear the super-duper training system you have that would magically allow pilots to 100% of the time be able to tell friendly from hostile targets from miles away in the few seconds or minutes they have to decide! Remember if they fuck up and decide hostiles are friendly, they or other US troops will die because of it. Your friends and fellow troops are depending on you not letting anyone pass you. No Pressure!

As for the gun cameras... There are thousands of helicopters in service. Let's buy thousands of super high res cameras that will function in blazing heat, freezing cold, survive impacts from debris, bad landings, gun shoots and be easy to remove, easy to install and readable in the field for quick review. Good luck with that! When you get done with that magic trick, I want you to wave your wave and give me Hum Vees that can survive anti-tank landmines, body armor that will take direct hits from a 50 cal and teleporters for medical evac!


Those men didn't deserve to die. I admit that. I don't think anyone could be just or right and not admit that. But this wasn't a product of bad training or blood thirst. It was a mistake made by failiable men who were operating on bad intell and made bad choices. This is why war is fucked up. This is why we should avoid it if we don't have to fight it.

But was it murder? No.

Was it a war crime? No.

[Stofsk]

Cover ups are always intentional. Also, from a legal sense, what the pilot and gunner did was intentional - ie they did intend to kill their targets. They thought their targets were insurgents, which is where the 'terrible mistake' element enters into it.

Um, I know the cover up is intentional, I was talking about the killing of innocents. As in, whether they knew what they were doing and it wasn't a miscalculation or bad intelligence that led them to strike the wrong target.

I see. The problem is, what they did was intentional insofar as they performed the action that resulted in the deaths of those innocent people.

Bad intel or miscalculations can all be mitigating circumstances, though to be honest I don't know if it can in this case. They were flying a mile away and circled them a few times. There was no obvious and present danger, the people they identified as insurgents were milling about in the open. They claimed to have identified rifles and at one point thought someone had an RPG. Yes, it's easy to judge when you're sitting in an easy chair in front of a computer monitor, that said I still find it hard to draw the same conclusions they did.

'Ah but you're not a soldier. You don't know what it's like to be in their shoes.'

This is correct. All I can do is think 'what would I have done in their shoes?' And I would like to think I would have been a lot more careful and cautious with regards to opening fire.

For example, they shot the van up that came by to pick up the wounded. If they were insurgents then according to frigid this wouldn't be against the law (something which I'm a bit puzzled at, but I'm willing to accept that for the moment). However, if they were not insurgents, then they just shot up an innocent van filled with civilians. 'Mistakes happen' and 'we didn't intend to shoot up civilians' don't cut it. Someone should get shit-canned for this.

People often confuse intention with motive, which is not right from a legal sense. The two terms are completely different.

OK, that's fair enough; I'm not really an expert on legal terminology. But doesn't "murder" as per the page title does mean that they're claiming it was not a miscalculation? While they've shown that the coalition forces were at the very least guilty of really bad decision making and the higher-ups were guilty of an inexcusable cover up, that doesn't mean that it was murder.

I think the act of covering up is damning by itself. A cover up is not something you do if things are working fine. Even a honest mistake isn't something you'd cover up. There is obviously a larger issue here about how to engage targets in an insurgency, how to identify them as targets, how to make sure you're not mistaking them or miscalculating or what-have-you.

The two soldiers in the video don't sound terribly sympathetic, I mean to me they do sound fairly gung ho and a little too keen to pull the trigger.

Sometimes, people are killed due to another person's bad judgment and the latter panics and tries to hide the body. This could be such a situation.

In almost every case, anyone that tries to do as you describe would be guilty of murder.

[B4UTRUST]

I'm with Frigid here. The killings were bad. In hindsight they were wrong. However, from a person who has been in the desert over there and had to worry about someone shooting at my ass or wondering if I would get blown up by a IED or a mortar attack or any number of other things, the mindset over there is totally different.

I use to work on those type of camera systems. Spent a good few years of my life learning the ins and outs of them. Probably more than anyone else on this board I'm use to looking at that type of video and knowing that I'm seeing because my alignments, adjustments and maintenance on those cameras could cause bad shit to happen if they weren't done right.

And let me tell you. I watched that video. I watched the video several times. And with the video at its clearest, all cleaned up and everything detailed out for you, I still could see where they thought they saw weapons. And I'm not talking about the journalists or their cameras. I saw other people there carrying things that looked to be weapons. Again, this is with the video perfectly still on your computer screen on a nice high definition monitor where you get the privilege of playing armchair general to people who had to make a quick decision that if they chose wrong could have very easily cost them and all their buddies with them their lives.

In a helo, it's not always that clear. It's definitely not that still, nor are you by the way. A helo is a bumpy ride, or at least every helo I've ever been in has been. It's loud. There's a ton of shit going on around you. You're in a moving aerial vehicle trying to turn and rotate a camera to maintain a visual on what you're looking at.

Lets be blunt, CT, these 'kids' who are older than you are by the way, more likely than not, and have been through a lot of training, have a good deal of experience and have probably been doing this for a few years, were told there were possible enemy hostiles congregating in the area. They saw things there that to them at the time, given conditions and mental states looked like weapons.

To continue being blunt, CT, those 'kids' as you call them are military professionals who are in an environment and mental state that you can read about and hear about all day long but if you've never lived it probably have no real idea about how it really feels. Frigid knows. I've been there. There's a few others I think. These 'kids' did not have a hard-on for murdering. They're not the psychopaths and deranged assholes with lots of boom boom that you want to paint them as. Paint us as.

You, CT, are not trained. Have no experience in a war zone. Have never had to work with FLIR-type camera systems. Have never had to have the mentality of us or them because they are going to try on a daily basis to kill you and every one of your friends and co-workers and if you don't err on the side of caution you don't make it home. So your second-guessing armchair general color commentary bullshit has about as much credible weight as me trying to tell you the mating habits of a frog.

[The Minx]

All I can do is think 'what would I have done in their shoes?' And I would like to think I would have been a lot more careful and cautious with regards to opening fire.

So would all of us. But honestly? I truly don't know what I would have done if I were in a situation which I thought was life-and-death. Nor can anyone who hasn't been there.

Mistakes happen' and 'we didn't intend to shoot up civilians' don't cut it. Someone should get shit-canned for this.

Of course there should be consequences, starting with whoever covered it up.

I think the act of covering up is damning by itself. A cover up is not something you do if things are working fine. Even a honest mistake isn't something you'd cover up.

That's not something I can agree with, not with the political situation over there being so explosive at the time. Besides, what possible motive could they have for randomly killing journalists? Despite this, the decision to cover up was morally wrong.

There is obviously a larger issue here about how to engage targets in an insurgency, how to identify them as targets, how to make sure you're not mistaking them or miscalculating or what-have-you.

The two soldiers in the video don't sound terribly sympathetic, I mean to me they do sound fairly gung ho and a little too keen to pull the trigger.

I agree with the first point, but as for the second? How do people normally act in combat where its all about split second decisions making the difference between life and death?

In almost every case, anyone that tries to do as you describe would be guilty of murder.

Maybe, but the decision to cover up was not made by the pilots, and this still doesn't prove they knowingly killed innocents.

[Cynical Cat]

It's fairly easy to tell these guys aren't the enemy from the footage. I do, however, have the benefit of not being stressed, not being sleep deprived, not having lives of people on the ground depending on my judgment, and I'm not on stims. Sleep deprivation alone can cause people to do really stupid shit.

Was this a grotesque tragedy? Yes. Did the helicopter pilots clearly fuck up? Yes. Does this illustrate one of the reasons why helicopter gunships and urban counter guerrilla activity aren't necessarily a good mix? Yes. Was the cover up revolting and hopefully heads will roll over it? Yes. Was it deliberate murder of civilians? No, I don't think so.

[Comrade Tortoise]

These 'kids' did not have a hard-on for murdering. They're not the psychopaths and deranged assholes with lots of boom boom that you want to paint them as. Paint us as.

When on earth did I refer to them as deranged psychos?

Let us go over what I actually said for those who are on the defensive somewhat and have some reading comprehension issues as a result.

We have a bunch of kids who are probably sleep deprived and on stims to keep them operational for longer than they should be.

In other words, a problem with the orders given to them. IE. the fault lies in their mental states not them as human beings.

We have same kids given guns and trained to dehumanize their enemy. It makes for a good soldier (after all, if they agonize over killing, they get shot first), however when you have such individuals occupying a city...bad idea.

This is well documented in the social psych literature. It is necessary, but comes with the listed trade offs. Namely they dont value the lives of people in the occupied country as much as they perhaps should.

Either way, it is the fault of those who trained them, it does not reflect on the individuals. Why? Because you can pull college students off the street put a uniform on them and within three days they will be torturing people they are told are "prisoners". Naturally, no encouragement whatsoever. It is not a defect in the person, they are not insane, they are not evil. Unless everyone is.

Soldiers, particularly occupation troops are put into a similar, but more stressful situation. They are given power, they have a group of people who through training and experience they dont like/think are responsible for evil/think shot their friends/who try to kill them who hide among a civilian population. Then in this case they are given ROE that do not take into account the limitations of equipment (read: lack of oversight).

For example, the gun camera footage creates a grainy image. Training or no, they should not be making decisions to kill people based on this. They should not be certain of who it is they are killing. Not if they were behaving rationally.

What exactly do we expect is going to occur?

Targets get mis-IDed, people get too quick to pull the trigger.

And look here?

However rather than recognize the problem and deal with it, no one wants to admit to having systemic problems in our military(and our society in general). As a result these kids who were set up to be murderers will be hung out to dry (the military may have covered this up before, but they cant anymore... ) and those who are actually responsible (their superiors, those who oversee and train them) will continue to churn out kids who do this same shit over and over again.

Not once in that post did I refer to them as murdeous psychos. They are victims of the same stress that you yourself defended them with.

Huh, no, helicoptor pilots are officers and therefore college grads. They are usually in their mid-20s. Kids doesn't apply. If these were infantry grunts sure. Sleep Deprived and on stims, yes

Fair enough

What are you time psychic now? Never mind they believed they were shooting at people responsible for blowing up a damn large number of women and children! But no you have your fucking stereotype and you're going to jam us into it no matter what.

I dont need to be psychic. They very obviously displayed those traits. The question is why? Is it because they are horrible nightmarish people, or is because of confirmation bias combined with a healthy dose of paranoia that is good for a soldier but bad for an occupier?

I would and have said the later.

They went out looking for someone they thought murdered women and children and by god they would find them! They hit the wrong people because they were over-eager (objectively. Had they stopped to think that maybe they had the wrong target they would not have done this) to pull the trigger.

If these guys had been insurgents getting to ambush a military convoy (there was one inbound by the way) and we had found out they had brought their kids... Who exacltly would we have blamed for that?

If they were that I would agree. If you knew, for certain, that this was the case it is sad but there is collateral damage in war.

However the helo gunner obviously did not know. One should not be relying on fuzzy gun cam footage to make those calls in a city with people milling about all over the place.

The helicoptor was over a mile away, fuck most people wouldn't even see the damn Helo let alone open fire on it. And if you shot at something with an RPG from a mile away... Congrats you wasted that shot.

I am aware of this. Those on the helo obviously were not because if you watch the video again, they thought the guy with the "RPG" was about to open fire on them about 4 min and 18 seconds in. Unless he thought said guy with an "RPG" was going to fire on something else. Either way, that counter-indicates the others milling around casually.

There's at least 3 times in the video where I could make the mistake that they were armed and I knew better. Forget the pilot who has been told there has been a number of engagements in the area that day and insurgents are loose in the area. To be blunt, his mind filled in the details on that picture. He fucked up but it was an understandable fuck up.

And as I said, the fault does not lie with them. It lies in the situation, training, equipment, and rules of engagement.

Soldiers have to have a certain attitude toward their enemies or they die. That is fine. But we cannot place people trained like that into a situation where they need to discriminate between friend and foe at a mile away with grainy footage and expect shit like this not to happen. Of course it will. Unfortunately no one wants to admit systemic errors in the way we do business, so the individuals in that helicopter are going to be fed to the wolves.

Because you're a goddamn expert in military training aren't ya?

Fair enough. That was out of line.

There are thousands of helicopters in service. Let's buy thousands of super high res cameras that will function in blazing heat, freezing cold, survive impacts from debris, bad landings, gun shoots and be easy to remove, easy to install and readable in the field for quick review. Good luck with that!

I am aware of this. But given the costs of doing that, and the limitations in this equipment, perhaps they should not be relied upon to discriminate friend from foe at a mile away. That is obviously a limit of the technology and it is one that needs to be addressed.

[Stofsk]

All I can do is think 'what would I have done in their shoes?' And I would like to think I would have been a lot more careful and cautious with regards to opening fire.

So would all of us. But honestly? I truly don't know what I would have done if I were in a situation which I thought was life-and-death. Nor can anyone who hasn't been there.

Bear in mind that I'm not anti-war or anti-military or whatever. I understand that in war, fuck ups do happen. I also know that it is easy for those who weren't there to judge others that were, but that's incidentally what judges and juries do in trials every day of the year around the world. Even in a military courts-martial, the jury won't be made up of 'guys who were there on the day' but they would be fellow officers. (I am assuming US courts-martial have juries of their peers)

I think the act of covering up is damning by itself. A cover up is not something you do if things are working fine. Even a honest mistake isn't something you'd cover up.

That's not something I can agree with, not with the political situation over there being so explosive at the time. Besides, what possible motive could they have for randomly killing journalists? Despite this, the decision to cover up was morally wrong.

I'm not saying that they had the motive to kill journos. In fact, I don't think motive really plays a part in this - it wouldn't be an element that needed to be proved in a court I don't think, unless US law is different in that regard.

There is obviously a larger issue here about how to engage targets in an insurgency, how to identify them as targets, how to make sure you're not mistaking them or miscalculating or what-have-you.

The two soldiers in the video don't sound terribly sympathetic, I mean to me they do sound fairly gung ho and a little too keen to pull the trigger.

I agree with the first point, but as for the second? How do people normally act in combat where its all about split second decisions making the difference between life and death?

Ok let me put it like this, at hearing about how there were wounded kids in the van they shot up, one of them callously remarked how 'Well that's why you don't bring kids to a fight'. Before they shot the van up, one of the two were clamouring for permission to open fire - when all they were seeing were people rendering aid to the wounded.

That's hardly the thing I'd expect a professional soldier to say in those circumstances. And also, it's interesting how from a mile away they could see people carrying rifles and a RPG but can't notice a child in the front passenger seat of the van.

In almost every case, anyone that tries to do as you describe would be guilty of murder.

Maybe, but the decision to cover up was not made by the pilots, and this still doesn't prove they knowingly killed innocents.

It doesn't have to. Again, I have to point out the difference between intent and motive. What you are describing is motive - that their targets being innocent was part of their reasoning process to open fire. That's not what the video shows at all.

Intent is 'how' and 'what' where motive is 'why'. Intention is 'we circled the group, identified them as insurgents, opened fire as per our RoE doctrine'. You can't for example say they fired their weapons recklessly or accidentally, because that's not what the video shows.

The problem is that they were a mile off in an helicopter, and they circled the group several times, misidentified them as insurgents that were carrying AK47s and an RPG. There was no local battle taking place, the people in the video weren't running towards a battle, they were basically standing around doing fuck all and harming no-one. Yet they still identified them as hostile and opened fire.

Just because mistakes happen doesn't mean you shouldn't punish those who made the mistake in the first place. It may not be murder, and the site itself may be laying it on a bit thick by calling it that, but I'm generally one for accountability if someone fucks up. Perhaps the difficulty in identifying insurgents from a mile away in a helicopter using cameras that aren't super-high-definition could be considered a mitigating circumstance, on the other hand, maybe they should have circled the group again before opening fire, or got in closer. Maybe the bigger issue is that the RoE needs to be better managed to take these sort of situations into account - I remember back in the early years of the Iraq war when the Australian Air Force was performing combat sorties in Iraq in aid of our allies - one pilot veered off of an air strike because he wasn't sure he was attacking combatants.

As you said, whoever ordered the cover up should have his ass handed to him. But that'll almost certainly never happen. Chances are it was an order from on high.

EDIT- Look, before anyone jumps on me about this, I'd like to reiterate that the misidentification thing is terrible and tragic, but not necessarily the worst thing about this video. These sort of fuck ups can and do happen. What really shocks me is how quickly they reach their decision and don't take more than a few seconds to do so, nor do they leave any room for doubt or caution, when they are literally a mile away and have enough time to circle them several times and there is nothing going on that would warrant rash action (IMO). People have thrown out the term 'confirmation bias', which I guess makes this a little bit understandable - I'm only pointing out how these sort of incidents should be tackled and better policies and doctrines should be drawn up or at least considered so that mistakes of this sort do not occur in the future. And the last fucking thing anyone should do is cover something like this up, because by doing so you automatically poison your own well.

[B4UTRUST]

When on earth did I refer to them as deranged psychos?

Let us go over what I actually said for those who are on the defensive somewhat and have some reading comprehension issues as a result.

I believe you said something along the lines of...

Lets be blunt, these kids wanted to shoot someone, they took pleasure in shooting someone. They displayed a callous disregard for the lives of others including children caught in the line of fire.

You defined them as being callous and brutal, taking pleasure in killing innocents. You said they WANTED to kill someone.

Hmmm... that would be the part where I said you called them that. It was a paraphrase, but you saying someone derives some sort of personal gratification from killing innocents and children implies that they must be mentally unhinged and damaged. After all, I think we can all safely agree that by society's definition of normal and balanced, that mentality and those actions would not be defined as normal, right? Killing children and innocents for the sheer pleasure of it, WANTING to kill them for the hell of it, those are not normal and balanced, right? Perhaps 'deranged psychopath' was a bit strong. What would you prefer me to paraphrase you as? Mentally unbalanced murderers? Semi-sociopathic killers? Gun-toting nut-bunnies?

It comes down to the same thing.

Lets be blunt, these kids wanted to shoot someone, they took pleasure in shooting someone. They displayed a callous disregard for the lives of others including children caught in the line of fire.

They WANTED to shoot someone. They TOOK PLEASURE in shooting someone. They displayed a CALLOUS DISREGARD for the LIVES OF OTHERS including CHILDREN caught in the line of fire.

Tell me, where in that did you NOT call them mentally fucked up?


In regards to your comment on technology and not relying on it like we do, I will agree that it needs to be addressed. Higher definition video systems are being done up, however none of them are in the field for use yet because none of them have met standards yet. When I got to my first base they had been talking about replacing our FLIR systems for years before. I was there for 6. In a decade, we managed to get one plane fitted with the prototype replacement system and it was worse then the one it was replacing in a lot of peoples opinion. This is being worked on. However, in the meantime, we do not have a better way to do this that does not put us in greater amounts of danger than what we already have. And that is not an acceptable answer to the problem either.

We do the best we can with what we have. It's not perfect by any means, nor will it ever be that I can see. But without it, this type of video would be far more common than what it is. This war we've been as careful as we can be of civilians, trying to keep these type of things to an absolute minimum. Because no matter what we do, it will happen. Casualties and collateral damages do happen regardless of our best intentions.

[General Havoc]

Casualties and collateral damages do happen regardless of our best intentions.

I've intentionally avoided this discussion because I truly have nothing substantive to contribute to it, being neither an expert in military hardware, nor a psychologist, nor willing to condone even by omission what happened in that video. Yet I will say only this much:

Casualties and collateral damages do happen regardless of our best intentions. And it should be borne in mind that part of the reason they happen is because it is an active strategy on the part of our enemies to cause as many of them as possible. It should also be borne in mind that compared to previous wars, the numbers of these sorts of incidents are a bare fraction of what they otherwise would have been, thanks to technology and a greater sensitivity to the negative results thereof. Incidents on the scale of this one happened several times every day during the occupation of Germany at the end of WWII.

Nevertheless, once is too many, and it is neither facile nor ignorant to claim that. Assigning blame is simply, in my mind, a useless gesture. Nobody, not the victims, not the shooters, and not the officers and commanders who instituted the policies that they operated under, wished for this to happen. It happened anyway. To assign blame is to pretend that we would have acted differently in any of their shoes, which is unlikely to say the least.

I really don't see that anything we can say or claim changes that.

[Comrade Tortoise]

They WANTED to shoot someone. They TOOK PLEASURE in shooting someone. They displayed a CALLOUS DISREGARD for the LIVES OF OTHERS including CHILDREN caught in the line of fire.

Yes. Because that is what they are trained to do, and what their experiences make them HAVE to do. These are excellent qualities for someone on a set piece battlefield. However they are poor qualities for occupation troops who have to deal with a certain large amount of uncertainty. It does not make them bad people. It makes them ill-suited for a given set of tasks.

They took all of a few seconds to confirm their target, because they were looking for someone to kill. Someone they hated. They took pleasure not in killing innocent people, but in killing someone they falsely thought was someone trying to kill them. When seeing children, they did not stop to think that they had made a bad decision. They did not say "Oh shit there were kids. Are we sure those guys were armed?" They displayed a level of certainty that they should not have. Why? Because of a whole suit of factors external to them.

Higher definition video systems are being done up, however none of them are in the field for use yet because none of them have met standards yet.

Higher definition video systems are being done up, however none of them are in the field for use yet because none of them have met standards yet.

With that in mind, should we be using these video systems to make friend/foe determination in an urban environment with the level of uncertainty experienced? The answer is no.

[Hotfoot]

CT, insurgents are well known for hiding behind women and children. Should we never attack them for fear of killing their human shields?

I'm not advocating that we burn down villages or cities to get at a few guerrillas, but it's frankly naive to think that just because innocents were in the target zone that they should not have fired.

Now, were they possibly sleep deprived and on stims? Possibly. Did they make the wrong call? Almost certainly. Is it a horrible situation? Absolutely.

However, in a realtime situation, often times all you have is a few seconds to confirm a target or you lose them.

Moreover, the idea that we shouldn't use the technology we have to do a job that needs to be done is laughable. Does technology exist today that might be better? Sure. However, unlike video games, simply researching the technology does not automatically put it into play in military hardware. It takes years, sometimes decades for upgrades to make the rounds. What do you suggest in the meantime, CT? You can say that it's too low resolution to make a clear decision but unless you can tell me with absolute certainty that they had a better option you don't really have a point.

I don't like "collateral damage" in wars, it's one of the big reasons they should be avoided, but for crying out loud it's going to happen. You're not going to have in a million years a war that doesn't kill anyone but uniformed military. We can learn from past mistakes and we can move our technology forward to prevent what we can, but at the end of the day we will never hit zero nor come anywhere near it.

I mean hell, what next? Are you going to say we can't use smart missiles because some percent veer off course and might hit a hospital or school? Do you know what the alternative is? Shall we return to firebombing Dresden? It's a hell of a lot easier and cheaper, shit, I bet we could firebomb all of Iraq for the cost of a handful of Patriot missiles.

Refusing to use a technology because it's not perfect is the very height of insanity.

[Comrade Tortoise]

? You can say that it's too low resolution to make a clear decision but unless you can tell me with absolute certainty that they had a better option you don't really have a point.

Look at it like this. Say you are a commander in the field, or someone responsible for training soldiers. You know that the equipment (like gun cameras) was not designed for the role you are forcing it into. You also wish to maximize combat effectiveness and minimize collateral damage.

What do you do? Is it reasonable to train your soldiers to be a bit more deliberate than these guys were? Is it reasonable to make sure, for example, that they get adequate rest between missions and that they are not on stimulants?

The answer to these questions from my perspective is yes. It is reasonable to use what equipment you have available. However it is also reasonable to mitigate that equipments limitations. Maybe someone somewhere did an actuarial calculation and thought it would cost too much or something.

[Hotfoot]

? You can say that it's too low resolution to make a clear decision but unless you can tell me with absolute certainty that they had a better option you don't really have a point.

Look at it like this. Say you are a commander in the field, or someone responsible for training soldiers. You know that the equipment (like gun cameras) was not designed for the role you are forcing it into. You also wish to maximize combat effectiveness and minimize collateral damage.

What do you do? Is it reasonable to train your soldiers to be a bit more deliberate than these guys were? Is it reasonable to make sure, for example, that they get adequate rest between missions and that they are not on stimulants?

The answer to these questions from my perspective is yes. It is reasonable to use what equipment you have available. However it is also reasonable to mitigate that equipments limitations. Maybe someone somewhere did an actuarial calculation and thought it would cost too much or something.

Dude, do you understand how recent high-definition is to VISIBLE LIGHT technology? Might you grasp how long it might take for that stuff to make the transition over to the thermal infrared range, and moreover, be able to do so from a platform that can stand the rigors of being rattled around on a Helo?

The tech level on the NEW stuff is probably close to 5-10 years old by the standards of the commercial market, because it has to WORK, moreover, it has to work in really shitty conditions.

To the point, the equipment gives the operator the ability to see in total darkness. Where previous technology would say "go to target and saturate it with all the bombs of three heavy bomber groups, killing EVERYTHING in the zone", now directed fire can be put down. It is sufficient at locating enemy targets and laying down accurate fire.

The mistake here, most likely, was with the operators, not the equipment. If they're tired, stressed, and stimmed, they might have made the same mistake with high resolution thermal cameras anyway. Higher resolution still doesn't tell you much on a black and white image where the photons are being generated by mounds of flesh and bone.

Moreover, I dare you to ask anybody who's been over in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 3-5 years and question them if they've been able to get appropriate amounts of rest between missions.

The military is not some perfect machine. Supplies don't come through on time, orders fuck over everyone, and the difference between having a helo in the air can mean the difference between a squad of our boys coming home or not.

If the world were perfect I would see things perhaps a little closer to your way, but it's not, not even in the slightest, and the difference between us sitting in out comfy chairs out out there is massive.

Can we learn from this? Yes. Can we use this experience to make our armed forces better? Sure. Do we use this to condemn that which works? It's that damn head in the clouds mentality that leads us down the road to blue helmets man, and if that happens we are well and truly fucked.

[frigidmagi]

I've watched the unedited video twice now.

Stofsk:

(I am assuming US courts-martial have juries of their peers)

Yes and no. A court martial may have a jury or just a judge at the decision of the judge. Alot of times you face a tribunal for serious shit. You do have a defense lawyer but do not have the right to avoid self incrimination and alot of other changes from civilian law.

That's hardly the thing I'd expect a professional soldier to say in those circumstances.

I'm wondering Chris, what do you expect a professional soldier to say and what are you basing it on? Because when I was in, dead baby/black/gallows humor was huge. Helped me cope at least.

And also, it's interesting how from a mile away they could see people carrying rifles and a RPG but can't notice a child in the front passenger seat of the van.

Right because the guys in question were walking about in the open. Even then you have problems making out features or telling them apart. Yeah that camera should totally be able to see a 2 to 3 foot tall person sitting behind a window. By the way did you know most Iraqi cars have tinted widows... Because they live in a sunny hot region of the world?

The problem is that they were a mile off in an helicopter, and they circled the group several times, misidentified them as insurgents that were carrying AK47s and an RPG.

Yes. Yes they did. I can't avoid that and I'm not gonna. It would be dishonest. But let me point something out, there's a reason they did this from a mile away. If they got closer, they would be running the risk of getting shot down and then we have a whole new problem. So standard RoE is for helos not to get to close.

There was no local battle taking place,

Incorrect. The helo was called out because there were shots fire and a ground unit called them and specifically reported taking fire. From the general direction the journalist were in. This is mentioned several times after the shooting. As the ground commander asks who called in the helo and who told them to fire.

, the people in the video weren't running towards a battle, they were basically standing around doing fuck all and harming no-one.

No, they weren't. They were clustered behind a wall having walked there and one of them peeked around the corner, in the direction of the mentioned ground unit (who was dismounted with Hum Vees). They were harming anyone... Yet. But in battle if you wait for that, you just helped kill your fellow troops or maybe some civies. So you don't wait. And that helped make a horrible thing happen here.

Yet they still identified them as hostile and opened fire.

Yes. Yes, they did and you have no idea in the world how easy it is to make that mistake. Hell, I've come within seconds of doing it and I was only a dozen feet away.

CT:

With that in mind, should we be using these video systems to make friend/foe determination in an urban environment with the level of uncertainty experienced? The answer is no.

This happened in 2006?

Alright let's be blunt here. In order to have something better then these we would have had to start working before 2005. For those of you whose memory is blurry, at the time there was a mass screaming about a lack of armor for troops and personal vehicles. Imagine at that time the Army declares it wants to spends millions of dollars on cameras for helocoptors. Super spiffy high res cameras with night vision and anti-bouncing features. They would have been nailed to the damn wall and all of you know it. Fuck a number of us would have been swinging hammers.

As for the helos. The Apache Gunship was built to engage and kill Soviet tanks. You're damn right it's not meant for this mission. However... We don't have anything better. The next step down would be a battalion of howitzer's or motors. Which would be more inaccurate or a A-10 or an AC-130 gunship. The replacement being suggested is the modified predator drone. Does anyone wish to state with a straight face that it's record is clean?

Not using it means no fire support for American Troops. Which means bluntly more troops coming home in bodybags. Maybe some of you are okay with that. But be the one who made that decision and then has to look the dead troops family in the face and tell them that. See how long you last. Imagine if we decided no fire support, we're talking at least half again the amount of dead and wounded. Imagine the reaction of the American public when word gets out deaths were preventable but it was decided to not use the weapons that would have stopped those deaths.

You can sneer all you want at that paragraph but someone would have died over that decision. Not just the young men in the field but some of the politicians or generals would have been lynched.

The generals making these calls were and are in between the rock and the hard place.

[Stofsk]

(I am assuming US courts-martial have juries of their peers)

Yes and no. A court martial may have a jury or just a judge at the decision of the judge. Alot of times you face a tribunal for serious shit. You do have a defense lawyer but do not have the right to avoid self incrimination and alot of other changes from civilian law.

Ah ok.

That's hardly the thing I'd expect a professional soldier to say in those circumstances.

I'm wondering Chris, what do you expect a professional soldier to say and what are you basing it on? Because when I was in, dead baby/black/gallows humor was huge. Helped me cope at least.

Honestly I don't know what I was expecting. I'll freely admit I don't know many people in the military nor have I seen many 'over the shoulder' type videos or recordings. Aside from you and a handful of guys I've talked to on SDN, including Cpl Kendall who's a Canadian infantryman, I don't know anybody really.

And also, it's interesting how from a mile away they could see people carrying rifles and a RPG but can't notice a child in the front passenger seat of the van.

Right because the guys in question were walking about in the open. Even then you have problems making out features or telling them apart. Yeah that camera should totally be able to see a 2 to 3 foot tall person sitting behind a window. By the way did you know most Iraqi cars have tinted widows... Because they live in a sunny hot region of the world?

It took seconds for them to determine they're insurgents with weapons, but they spend minutes getting into a firing position. As far as seeing the kids, well, you can see there is an occupant of the van but perhaps it's difficult to tell they're children. But look, the decision to shoot up the van was a difficult one for me to watch more than anything, because all they appeared to be doing was tending to the wounded.

Yes. Yes they did. I can't avoid that and I'm not gonna. It would be dishonest. But let me point something out, there's a reason they did this from a mile away. If they got closer, they would be running the risk of getting shot down and then we have a whole new problem. So standard RoE is for helos not to get to close.

Ok.

There was no local battle taking place,

Incorrect. The helo was called out because there were shots fire and a ground unit called them and specifically reported taking fire. From the general direction the journalist were in. This is mentioned several times after the shooting. As the ground commander asks who called in the helo and who told them to fire.

When I said there was no local battle taking place, I meant in the context of what we see in the video. They're not in the thick of things, they're not rushing towards the battle taking place, they don't seem to pose a clear threat.

No, they weren't. They were clustered behind a wall having walked there and one of them peeked around the corner, in the direction of the mentioned ground unit (who was dismounted with Hum Vees). They were harming anyone... Yet. But in battle if you wait for that, you just helped kill your fellow troops or maybe some civies. So you don't wait. And that helped make a horrible thing happen here.

See above.

Yes. Yes, they did and you have no idea in the world how easy it is to make that mistake. Hell, I've come within seconds of doing it and I was only a dozen feet away.

I can't imagine how stressful and awful that would have been. I'm sorry.

[frigidmagi]

It took seconds for them to determine they're insurgents with weapons, but they spend minutes getting into a firing position. As far as seeing the kids, well, you can see there is an occupant of the van but perhaps it's difficult to tell they're children. But look, the decision to shoot up the van was a difficult one for me to watch more than anything, because all they appeared to be doing was tending to the wounded.

During alot of that time the people in question aren't in view. Still, yes they should have used that time to make closer observation but frankly I doubt they would have seen anything but what they expected to see. Also the fact that they circle around is a point in and of itself. They could have fired through the buildings but didn't. They instead attempted to make as clean a shot as possible. To be clear they were trying to take precautions.

As for the van one of the key thing is the transmission where the pilots say it looks like they're picking weapons. Also, you're suppose if possible take charge of the wounded and give them treatment, if you cannot however, you're not suppose to kill them. You can however fire on people coming to get the wounded. I hate to do it but let me pull out a movie example. In various movies a sniper will wound a man and kill whoever comes out to get him? Disgusting? Sure. Illegal? No.

When I said there was no local battle taking place, I meant in the context of what we see in the video. They're not in the thick of things, they're not rushing towards the battle taking place, they don't seem to pose a clear threat.

That's not a fair judgment to make. It's like declaring you're only gonna use 5ft of a 20ft fight space to make your judgment on who was right or wrong. The pilots are reacting to transmission from units we don't see in the video. The pilots are opening fire because the guys in the video are in an area where one of those units say they took fire from and they're peeking around a corner in the direction of a unit off the video. What's happening off the video is as important as what is going on in the video.

I can't imagine how stressful and awful that would have been. I'm sorry.

You didn't put me in that situation so don't feel like you have to apologize for anything.