Wikileaks has really misled the public

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/39215

by nreece • 16 years ago

129 154 16 years ago

seminal.firedoglake.com

onewland• 16 years ago

I hadn't seen or heard about this video prior to this article.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001802-38.html seems to have it embedded and a description.

nreece• 16 years ago

Its been on HN for more than 12 hours: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1241879

count• 16 years ago

There is so much wrong with this article, I don't know where to start.

Rod• 16 years ago

You could start from the beginning...

lionhearted2• 16 years ago

After I saw the first video, I did some googling around and reading about the rules of engagement during an insurgency. Under the Geneva Convention, clearly identified medical personnel treating combatants removed from combat are protected. However, if an armed combatant is attempting to help another combatant get to cover, they're both fair game. There's a grey area when it's not clear if a person helping a combatant to cover is a civilian or a combatant.

That's the first part. The second part is that the Army and other forces have made it very clear that attempting to take any weapons from the battlefield counts as engagement, and they will fire at anyone attempting to do so. Apparently this was a big problem during the start of the war - if they took out insurgents, their guns would often be grabbed and ran away with, and presumably used again later. So that's a clear situation right now - attempting to remove weapons from a battlefield will get you fired upon.

It's unclear who was in the van, and if they were attempting to take weapons, though.

Qz• 16 years ago

Yeah, it's pretty clear to me that they didn't just decide to shoot people without cause.

indrax2• 16 years ago

Hmm, can you tell me where in the video that it's pretty clear anyone from the van was picking up weapons?

I can understand some fog-of-war "I thought the camera was a gun." excuses, but just because they say on the radio that they were "possibly" picking up weapon doesn't mean that they actually saw them do any such thing.

I've watched it twice and it looks to me exactly like they shot up a van that was trying to help a wounded man.

hga2• 16 years ago

Wouldn't a person helping a combatant get to cover be by definition a combatant (although perhaps just for the duration of the action)?

Also, if we're talking about the Conventions, were these illegal combatants? (I haven't watched the video.)

lionhearted2• 16 years ago

> Wouldn't a person helping a combatant get to cover be by definition a combatant (although perhaps just for the duration of the action)?

I think the key part is armed combatants in combat - you can't just open fire on any civilians who are helping an unarmed combatant after he's removed from combat. I'm not an expert though - I spent a bit of time reading on Geneva about a year ago, and just refreshed my memory today.

> Also, if we're talking about the Conventions, were these illegal combatants? (I haven't watched the video.)

There's still some limited protections granted to people fighting in "non-international conflicts" under Protocol II, a 1977 Amendment to the Geneva Convention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_II

They do have much less protections than soldiers fighting between two sovereign nations.

metamemetics4• 16 years ago

Everyone picking up the bodies and from the van was clearly UNARMED. Unarmed non-combatants were picking up the body of an unarmed non-combatant who never held a weapon.

otto• 16 years ago

But, the vehicle was already transporting suspects.

That's like using a medical vehicle to transport combatants and then come back and pick up the wounded from the same vehicle.

tsally• 16 years ago

If I was running an insurgency in Iraq, I would keep a guy in the back of an unmarked van with an RPG and I would drive around pretending to pick up bodies. I think I'd probably get a lot of kills that way. I don't think it's fair to say the van was clearly unarmed, especially when you consider the fact that the van could have been called in to make a pickup by a group of people confirmed to have at least one RPG and at least one AK-47.

In the moment of the firefight it was unclear whether the van was armed or not. Was was clear to the soldiers was that the van responded very quickly to a group of wounded people who had several confirmed weapons among them. Also, as others have mentioned, the soldiers knew the insurgency has used similar tactics in the past to salvage weapons and ammo.

dailo10• 16 years ago

The reality is that there were kids in the van and they were trying to help a wounded journalist.

cellis• 16 years ago

The reality be damned. Hindsight is 20/20.

Imagine you're there, in the arena, adrenaline practically oozing out of your pores. You're 500 feet above the one of the most dangerous cities in the world [1], a warzone that's claimed the lives of thousands of young men, just like you, and you've just taken out the armed enemy. That was the enemy. And that guy laying there still is the enemy. And so is anyone helping him. And now a van has pulled up, unidentified. You don't know who or what is in that van and whether it is armed or not. You know the reality,the statistics, and they're not in your favor. So you do as anyone in that situation would do, with limited information and a hell of a lot of empirical data. You neutralize the threat. You destroy them and live to see another day.

[1] 2007 was the bloodiest year to date in Iraq - http://icasualties.org/

kingkawn• 16 years ago

Once you've murdered journalists in the field, the rules of engagement stop being as important in the war for public opinion. Modern war is as much about information as territory. You simply can't do this, regardless of if you can explain it away til next Tuesday.

SamAtt• 16 years ago

There's clearly something fishy about the video if only because we're obviously coming in half way through whatever happened. But the real problem isn't the behavior of the soldiers as much as it's the military not making it's case before this video broke. The author here is raising some valid points but they're all speculation because the military hasn't released anything officially.

Military tribunals should be public record (like civilian trials) and the public that funds the military should be allowed to see what's going on over there and why certain things happened. ESPECIALLY when there were possible non-combatant casualties (I'm talking about the alleged camera men)

Clearly the names of the soldiers would have to be withheld to avoid retribution but there should be some public record when something like this happens

aheilbut• 16 years ago

The military has now released the records on their investigations:

http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%2...

I suppose that this information wouldn't have been released, at least for a long time, without their hand being forced by wikileaks. However it is also not reasonable to expect everything to be immediately public; there is going to be a ton of sensitive information, and it's not practical to redact and release everything by default. Obviously, it's in the US interest for this kind of thing not to be front page news, but that doesn't mean that by not publicizing it there is a coverup or something illegal going on either. Everybody, including Wikileaks, has an agenda.

plinkplonk2• 16 years ago

"he military has now released the records on their investigations: [url]

The site seems to be down.

"Unknown Error

Troubleshoot issues with Windows SharePoint Services. "

SharePoint? :-P

aresant• 16 years ago

Hammers home the point that the integrity of any journalism is contingent on editing, and context.

Yet still I’m glad for the leak - for the first time in months I heard more discussion and awareness that a war we’re bankrolling is still raging instead of celebrity infididelity.

izendejas• 16 years ago

Re: your second point, here's a good example of what you mean: http://i.imgur.com/NVih0.jpg

(via @chrisloos)

Maktab7• 16 years ago

Though just to clarify something, this footage was taken in 2007 at the height of the Iraq War. It's not recent and the war is not still raging, at least not at anything close to the 2007 level.

But I agree with your main point. Context is everything, Wikileaks could have handled this better.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

Blame the victim. They shouldn't have been in Iraq. They shouldn't have been near someone bad. They should have marked the van.

You shouldn't have murdered them. Killing should be the last resort, even in the heat of battle.

zaphar• 16 years ago

ummmm no. The whole point of the heat of battle is death. What you mean I think is that getting into the heat of battle should be the last resort.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

We have non-lethal ways of taking down an opponent. We should be doing that instead, even if it's more costly.

david9272• 16 years ago

Battle? America wasn't invited into Iraq. It came there because it said there were WMD's there. There weren't. Now it won't leave.

America is committing a crime every second it stays there. The word battle doesn't even make sense here.

daleharvey2• 16 years ago

I am usually the last to complain about "the state of hacker news" and such, but the fact that this article has managed to amass such a large number of points so quickly does indicate that there is a need for moderation.

this has nothing to do with hacker news, it is replying to conjecture with conjecture, even though the wikileaks story had a very relevant back story (power of the internet, freedom of press, etc) this ignores it all and just gives someones opinion on their interpretation of a highly controversial video.

bilbo0s• 16 years ago

Agreed.

There was just a front page story about the video with over 2 or 3 hundred votes. Everyone can't have their say in that story, so that we can move on?

Everyone who wants to have a say, can have a say there. Let's not fill the stream with all wikileaks. It reminds me of the ipad mania.

noodle• 16 years ago

if you don't like an article, flag it. if enough people flag it, it'll go away.

jpwagner3• 16 years ago

actually you've mentioned the state of HN more than most:

  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1223767
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171670
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1148739
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086310

First of all, the flagging handles things, so why complain?

And for what it's worth, the discussions on here involve many intelligent, well-informed people whose opinions are worth high value. Certainly there are technical things discussed, but I think most people here are interested in all sorts of other "hacks," including sociology hacks, a category, I would argue, to which this article relates.

daleharvey2• 16 years ago

only one of those mentions the state of hacker news

and the complaining is because the flagging does not handle things, there are always going to be popular articles that will be inevitably posted that have absolutely nothing to do with hacker news.

but yeh, the crowd has spoken.

nl2• 16 years ago

"Regardless, no one is allowed to be armed except for Iraqi police and Coalition forces. There is no such thing as an armed Iraqi escort for journalists"

Err.. no. Under Iraqi law, everyone was allowed to keep one gun at home. These guns were mostly AK-47s (because that was what was issued to the army). See http://johnrlott.tripod.com/armediraqis.html for example discussion of this.

I believe there was an attempt to change this law during 2007, but confiscation was not widely enforced and the law has since been changed back.

Maktab7• 16 years ago

But as I understand it, by 2007 they were not permitted to take those guns out from their houses. This is why the US's rules of engagement pretty much stated that anybody in the street with a weapon who was not part of the Iraqi security services was fair game.

So the quoted comment may not have been entirely accurate with regards to Iraqis as a whole, but it was in fact accurate with regards to Iraqis carrying weapons in the street and the fact that there was no such thing as an armed Iraqi escort for journalists.

staunch• 16 years ago

Presumably he meant "armed [in public]". Keeping a gun at home and being able to walk around in groups with them are entirely different things.

sunchild• 16 years ago

I watched this video from end to end. It is entirely possible that this was a team setting up an ambush and filming it.

The fact that a Reuters photojourno was involved only fortifies the plausibility of this theory, since wire photojournos are well-known for "embedding" with insurgents.

I'm not saying one way or the other (unlike many others). I'm proposing an alternative theory that I believe is just as likely as the "collateral murder" storyline.

nl2• 16 years ago

It's a good theory. Unfortunately no other weapons (apart from a single AK-47 - which was commonly carried in 2007 Baghdad) or bombs were found, so I can just as easily say that they might have been aliens from Xenu.

I do think that there are more extenuating circumstances than some may think (it was 2007 in Baghdad - people forget how bad things were there). But claims that those people were anything other than a random group of people will require some evidence.

prawn• 16 years ago

To me, it didn't seem like the other guys were moving with purpose, just out wandering around. One seems to gesture to a street that the photographer should look at.

The chopper guys talk about 5-6 guys having AK-47s but there are only two who appear to be carrying anything at all. The rest don't have bags or anything.

fbuilesv• 16 years ago

The author like many other posters is making the mistake of thinking that some of us put fault on the individual soldiers. In their own shoes I would've done the same thing, with the things hanging on the shoulders I couldn't tell if it was an AK-47 or a camera so I would've opened fire.

What most people is complaining about is the military secrecy and handling of this business, not the "mass murder of civilians" (like some of WL editors try to make it look) but the lack of reaction and respect by the army. If they had released the same video explaining the circumstances instead of hiding the details the situation would be different now.

Short: The blame's on the high command, not on the individual soldiers.

analyst743• 16 years ago

That's probably the same reason why the commanders want to keep it secret. Because most people will just have a jerk reaction and blame the soldiers, which in turn put pressure on the soldiers in the field.

While I think the higher ups are to be blamed for even going to war, it's the people who elected them. So I don't really know who to blame.

GiraffeNecktie• 16 years ago

Wow, the apologists are springing into action. Watch the video again. At the exact moment the correspondent is in the crosshairs of the camera and you see that he is carrying a small black bag you hear the crew saying "Yeah that's a weapon." and "Fucking prick". For God's sake, it's a guy sauntering down the middle of the road carrying a little bag and the crew is making out that they're tracking a dangerous insurgent. Then they start talking about another guy with a weapon and I would swear that the person they're looking at in the crosshairs is actually hobbing along with a crutch. Then the FireDogLake guy makes out that because the black van appears twice it is somehow ominous. He defends firing on the van because one crew member says that the person is the van is picking up weapons. Listen to the video. What he actually said is that there's a van in the area "possibly picking up weapons". Yeah, possibly doing anything. I agree that a video doesn't tell the whole story but so far the people defending the actions of the crew haven't come up with much.

btipling• 16 years ago

Do you think the gunner had a chance to "watch it again" when he was making his decision?

Hacker News is becoming reddit, except reddit has a hide button.

Maktab7• 16 years ago

There are weapons visible at various points in the video and an RPG was found at the scene, these people were not all unarmed. That the journalists were killed is tragic and may very well be due to mistakes or incompetence or even malice, but none of that is clear from this video.

What is clear is that the journalist and his driver were in the presence of armed Iraqis carrying AK-47s and RPGs at the wrong time and in the wrong place. It was common practice for Iraqi stringers for news agencies like Reuters to embed themselves with insurgents in the hope of being extremely close to the story and getting pictures they would not otherwise have been able to obtain, but it was a very risky thing to do. If soldiers have already seen the people around you carrying guns and RPGs, they're a whole lot more likely to misinterpret your camera lens as an RPG when it peeks around a corner.

There were also two Apaches at the scene, but it's not entirely clear which crew is making each comment on the radio and what they can see as we only have one viewport into this event, which comes from the gunner's sight of only one of the Apaches. It is entirely plausible that the other Apache crew did clearly see weapons and that, outside the field of view of the camera we're looking at, they saw the black van picking up weapons. Further, each helicopter also has a separate sight for the pilot which can be slewed on its own axis and which we cannot see.

In short, the video lacks context and it's difficult to make a conclusive judgement without that context. We are given only one limited viewport into this event and expected to pronounce judgement on four guys who at once had a much broader and more detailed view of the situation but who also, unlike us, had to process that information in real-time, not from a video which could be rewound and played back. Whatever happened here, I'm not as ready to call it murder as WikiLeaks and some of the commenters here have been.

Alex39172• 16 years ago

"There are weapons visible at various points in the video and an RPG was found at the scene, these people were not all unarmed."

The official military statement about the incident was as follows:

"The Apache crew fired because militants 'were endangering the stability of Iraq' and because they had positive identification that the militants 'had weapons and were using them against coalition and Iraqi security forces.'"

There aren't any coalition or Iraqi security forces in the area, and none are ever mentioned in the video. So while it's possible that an RPG was found at the scene, it's just as possible that the military was lying about both.

illumin82• 16 years ago

Your argument seems to basically be "we can't know what the other helicopter saw, so we have to assume they saw weapons."

Leaving aside your argument, don't you find the voice track coming from the gunner shocking? The man actually had glee in his voice as he was gunning down people that obviously had no possible chance to defend themselves or harm him. An AK-47 vs. an Apache helicopter is no threat.

As others have stated, at the range from the gunner's PoV, an RPG, even if he had one, cannot hit the helicopter.

The fact that there are cold-blooded killers in the cockpit of a helicopter, that take joy in killing innocent civilians should shock each and every one of us.

Aren't you sick of being an apologist for an unjustified killing in an unjustified war?

jcnnghm10• 16 years ago

I watched the video multiple times. At 3:38 of the 17:47 video, you can clearly see an AK-47 in one of the mens hands. At 3:48 you can see another AK-47. Also at 3:48, it looks like a third man has either a handgun or a small submachine gun. At 4:12, it definitely looks like there's an RPG. Even more so at 4:19. The helicopter was called in by ground troops who were taking small arms fire from a small group of men in this area. I don't think it would be possible to be called in to look for a group of armed men setting up an ambush with small arms in this area, and not come to the conclusion that these are the guys. They are armed.

stse2• 16 years ago

I think 3:38 looks more like a camera strap. An AK is quite heavy and not something you wave around like that. The quality is quite bad so it might be a weapon, but I don't think you can "clearly see an AK-47".

I would be very very surprised if the device at 4:12 is an RPG. It looks and behaves like a long lens camera. At 4:15 you can see a space between the device and the body of the person. An RPG is also quite heavy and has a distinct shape and you wouldn't generally turn it around a corner.

As there also according to wikileaks were photographers on the scene. It's just far more likely that it's one of the front two guys who carries something that picks up his camera and take some pictures. If that is the case, then I would have to question the chopper crews ability to recognize weapons on the ground.

lolcraft2• 16 years ago

At 3:38 of the 17:47 video, you can clearly see an AK-47 in one of the mens hands.

So, no one in Baghdad uses bodyguards? All Iraqi policemen must be at all the time in uniform, even for covert entry? I don't think an AK is any convincing ground for believing them to be insurgents. Americans aren't the only ones with rights to carry guns, specially in the most dangerous city on Earth.

At 4:12, it definitely looks like there's an RPG. Even more so at 4:19.

It's a pity you couldn't be bothered to watch thirty seconds more of the video. At 4:49, when the helicopter goes around the house, we see the full group, one second or so before the fire starts. No one is holding an RPG.

What you say that looks like one is actually a glimpse of some sort of tube. I guess construction workers must have a hard time on Baghdad, if that's grounds for use of deadly force.

The helicopter was called in by ground troops who were taking small arms fire from a small group of men in this area.

They seem very relaxed, for insurgents in the middle of a fire fight. They are walking, move in a close group, are calm and walk exposed in the middle of the street. Not exactly standard military procedure.

steve193• 16 years ago

The following comment was posted by Deviltry on Reddit.

"That's the problem with the war in Iraq... It's insurgency based. They use vans to come up and pick up the bodies, but truth be told they don't care about the bodies, they come to get the weapons/rpg's.

I know it's popular to hate America and our military action on reddit, but this particular engagement is necessary. Anyone who's ever spent time on the ground in country will tell you the same. If you are going to fight an insurgency war, you have to engage these individuals. We have made it VERY well known throughout the country that they cannot even make it look like they are going for weapons. The problem with this situation is one i've seen personally on multiple occasions... The Van pulls up, takes the bodies of the men, leaves any children/women, and takes all the weapons. Then they take pictures, and blast them across the airwaves saying Americans murdered unarmed women/children.

Queue the downvotes, but i speak from experience. If you sent us over there to operate under the absolute "good guy" mantra that you all expect, we'd end up with 100x more losses than we already have... And the insurgents would know they could get away with doing virtually anything. Honestly, the only way to end this is to get the government to get us out of that country."

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/bmooi/wikileaks_video_j...

andreyf• 16 years ago

I watched both the short and long versions a couple of times, and there I see no justification for the claim that the truck or those in it were doing anything but trying to move the wounded man to safety. Considering (1) there were children in the front seat visible about as clearly as the weapons the men were supposedly carrying and (2) the dialogue on the radio, it seems clear that the gunman was a little too eager to engage without really considering the lethal gravity of his actions.

While on one hand, it may very well be that troops are more effective (by some simple measure) when they fire first and ask questions later, on the other, if those apache gunmen were in the shoes of the marines on the ground who have to carry wounded kids out of the rubble, or worry about those same orphans throwing grenades into their humvee windows a week later, maybe they'd be as careful looking for children as they are for RPG's.

steve193• 16 years ago

I would guess that what made the van suspect was that it drove into the middle of a battle. Everyone within a couple of miles must have heard the 30mm High Explosive shells detonating.

greendestiny• 16 years ago

Insurgents might do all those things, but the people in van made no moves to go for any weapons. Considering they are happy to watch the injured guy to see if he goes for a weapon, there is no reason they couldn't have waited to see if the van people went for weapons. They misreported the situation on the radio, making it seem like the people in van were picking up bodies and weapons - but they are just surmising that's what the people in van's intentions were. I think that ought to incur some kind of disciplinary response.

jcnnghm10• 16 years ago

I don't think you understood why the gunner was watching the injured guy. At 8:29 of the 17:47 video he says "Come on, buddy. All you gotta do is pick up a weapon." From his tone and inflection it seems pretty clear to me he wants to engage the guy because he's severely hurt, certainly going to die, and probably suffering. He can't engage him because he's unarmed, so he wants him to go for some kind of a weapon because he wants to put the guy out of his misery.

metamemetics4• 16 years ago

After viewing the video, it clearly is an unprovoked massacre.

LINK:This is clear considering they approached the hot zone at the beginning of the video with intel, either from ground troops, or from the another Apache, that there were armed combatants in the area.

The video indicates there was ONE combatant, and that the group of people was NOT him. @2:49: air: “we had a guy shooting, now he’s behind the building” @2:52: ground: “Uh, negative, he was uh, right in front of the Brad. Uh, ’bout there one ‘o clock. Haven’t seen anything since then”

LINK:As for the possible observation of an RPG, which some suggest could be a tripod,

The “RPG” @2:32 was clearly a telephoto lens pointed at the ground. I’ve never heard anyone claim it was a tripod, it is clearly a photo camera with a telephoto lens. I don’t see how you can refute this if you examine the frame between 2:40 and 2:41, it is CLEARLY the camera with a telephoto lens that he is holding completely in front of him pointed at the ground.

When the van comes to pickup the target, NO ONE IS ARMED. The CO should never have given them permission to engage unarmed people “for picking up the bodies”, PERIOD. According to the Huffingon Post the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session.

byrneseyeview• 16 years ago

if you examine the frame between 2:40 and 2:41

I don't think people do that in combat. If you're ever in combat, or in a situation with armed people who think you may want to kill them, I highly recommend that you make it very obvious you're not armed. If they look at the footage of how you died and say "Oh! If we examine the frame, it looks like he wasn't going to kill us, after all!" I guess you'll be vindicated.

metamemetics4• 16 years ago

The response was directed to the blogger and his writing, who was not the same person as apache pilot to my knowledge, and therefore had the luxury of examining the video.

omouse• 16 years ago

Uh, wtf. The helo is just circling about casually and they're taking their time fixing the targets before firing. How is that combat and an adrenaline rush moment? And that RPG...clearly a telephoto lens. Those supposed AKs look nothing like actual AKs.

I expect a well-trained pilot or soldier to be able to take a second to make sure they're firing on an actual target. If you look at the length of the damned video, you see that the helo pilots had enough time to examine the targets carefully (meaning at least a 10sec glance).

waterlesscloud• 16 years ago

In the military investigation, it is revealed that the man crouching around the corner with the camera was taking a picture of US troops 100 meters away. The timestamped photo was found on the camera later.

So he's in an area where combat has occurred, crouching around a corner, pointing a long tube at US troops. No press is suspected to be in the area. Other men in his group are undeniably armed with weapons. He's a threat by any reasonable standard.

Two RPGs are, in fact, found at the site by ground forces, as is an automatic rifle. There were combatants in this group.

vaksel• 16 years ago

people are focusing on the wrong area of this story...yes killing that first group of people was a dick move, but it might get justified by ROE....killing the people in the van who tried to help was also a dick move...but it can still be justified by calling it a gray area.

The actual story here is that the army decided to cover up this whole issue in the first place(i.e. them saying they had no idea how the kids got wounded)

r0s2• 16 years ago

This is the real story, and has been from the beginning. All this discussion is very good, but it's disappointing more people don't care about censorship. On that note... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html

r0s2• 16 years ago

italics

noahlt• 16 years ago

What is the video in question? There's a video on the front page of wikileaks, but it's not a "39 minute video".

gxs• 16 years ago

I hate to sound cold, but without context that video says absolutely nothing.

All that video, in its present form, with the present information available says is: investigate further.

jeswin2• 16 years ago

I am not American; though I usually side with democratic countries as much as I can.

However, if you made a really big mistake and went to war with a country which posed no credible threat to you (at least in hindsight when this shooting took place) I'd imagine people would err on the side of caution when shooting somebody's family and loved ones.

At least in this part of the world, what is coming across is that your army does not care much about killing people - if they are not American or Western.

And to add some rhetoric, what gives America the moral right to talk about human rights when the Iraqi death toll exceeds well over one hundred thousand? -- What happened in Tiananmen is a mere _hundredth_ of what is happening in Iraq.

Killing ten Iraqis to save an American soldier is not justifiable, any which way you look at it.

coffeemug• 16 years ago

what gives America the moral right to talk about human rights when the Iraqi death toll exceeds well over one hundred thousand?

Well, the counter argument is that by this logic nobody can talk about human rights. Until very recently in human history the Europeans brutally conquered half the world and effectively turned the "savage people" that were unlucky enough to survive the raping and the pillaging into slaves. Listening to anyone who points out legitimate human rights violations is better than listening to no one who points out legitimate human rights violations. It's just more constructive this way.

Killing ten Iraqis to save an American soldier is not justifiable, any which way you look at it.

This is rhetoric, and isn't an interesting statement about what happened in this video, how it was handled by the military, or how it was marketed and leaked by wikileaks. What possible constructive purpose could this statement serve?

Nwallins• 16 years ago

> Until very recently in human history the Europeans brutally conquered half the world and effectively turned the "savage people" that were unlucky enough to survive the raping and the pillaging into slaves.

It wasn't just the Europeans. This is the story of conquerors.

jeswin2• 16 years ago

ok, I'll bite.

Well, the counter argument is that by this logic nobody can talk about human rights... All I was saying was that when you don't practice what you preach, your credibility suffers.

This is rhetoric, and isn't an interesting statement about what happened in this video... Isn't this exactly what is happening on the ground, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan? Do you read any local news (easily available on the internet) from those countries?

I don't think many people understand the magnitude of suffering in those countries. Do the math, Iraq is a tenth of the size of the US. Work out the per-capita "suffering".

__bjoernd• 16 years ago

Yep, but it seems at least the Europeans have evolved from that point.

steve193• 16 years ago

It is sad such rhetoric gets up voted.

How many of the Iraqi causalities were Iraqi or foreign insurgents killing Iraqi civilians?

Nobody seems to care less about those numbers. The biggest threat to an Iraqi citizens life (back then) were insurgents and criminals. That is who the gunner thought he was firing on.

"Killing ten Iraqis to save an American soldier is not justifiable, any which way you look at it."

No, but surely any solider in the world would kill 100 enemy combatants to save his friend.

This incident and this war do not make any other tragedy, such as Tiananmen, any more or less terrible.

alexgartrell3• 16 years ago

Killing ten Iraqis to save an American soldier is not justifiable, any which way you look at it.

As messed up as it may sound to you, I'd rather my friends make it home. As far as I'm concerned, the blood is on the hands of the people who started and continued the war; not the ones who have to actually fight it.

WalkingDead3• 16 years ago

> the blood is on the hands of the people who started and continued the war

> not the ones who have to actually fight it.

The nazis probably said the same.

analyst743• 16 years ago

If my friend went to Iraq, I'd rather him coming back in one piece too.

Good thing that none of my friends went, your friends do not have to go either.

rms2• 16 years ago

Incidentally, the people who started the war have a think tank. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Ce... Bill Kristol periodically goes on the Daily Show and has smug exchanges with Jon Stewart instead of facing charges before the Hague.

jacquesm5• 16 years ago

The reason that 'D-Day' (Normandy invasion) was called a liberation was that the invading forces were willing to take on an entrenched enemy and were willing to suffer fairly massive losses in doing so, and the immediate improvement in conditions following it.

The reason why the rest of the world refuses to accept the situation in Iraq as a liberation and in stead perceives it as a cynical battle for control over resources is that:

  1) the invaders are not prepared to suffer losses on par
     with their 'enemies'

  2) more people have died under the 'liberators' than 
     would have died in many years of previous occupation

  3) the situation in Iraq is still viewed through the 
     terms of lives lost by the invaders instead of lives
     lost by those 'liberated'

  4) there would not be as much or more accent on 
     protecting Iraqs oil resources as there has been 
     on saving Iraqi lives

Whether or not people get killed by 'insurgents' (one mans insurgent is another mans freedom fighter), 'enemy combatants', 'friendlies' or whether they're collateral damage, it doesn't change anything in the fact that those deaths could have for the most part be avoided if the invaders were willing to take the losses themselves.

If you liberate someone you place yourself in a position of sacrifice, you're willing to go the distance in order to protect those you liberate. A hostage rescue team goes in knowing full well they're going to try to protect the lives of the hostages at all cost. A hostage team that would go in to protect their own lives at significant extra risk to the lives of the hostages would not get much recognition, even if they would save the occasional hostage.

chrischen• 16 years ago

> And to add some rhetoric, what gives America the moral right to talk about human rights when the Iraqi death toll exceeds well over one hundred thousand?

Because you're making a generalization and treating "America" as a single entity. It's not. It's government allows its individual citizens to pick and choose what they support.

It's very likely the "human rights" people also oppose the war in Iraq.

As far as the government goes, it then amplifies the voices of its individual citizens so that it may seem like "America" is contradicting itself, but it's not.

It's ideas you should be targeting, not the concept of "America" or "westerners."

So what you should ask is "What gives human rights activist warhawks the moral right to talk about human rights when the Iraqi death toll exceeds well over one hundred thousand?" When you find such a person, you should ask him/her.

jcnnghm10• 16 years ago

What was your solution, pull out immediately? Did we really want another Afghanistan. You can't go into a country that unstable, knock out most of the infrastructure and kill the majority of the high command, then just leave. The country would have just descended into civil war. Things aren't that simple, thinking otherwise is short sighted.

It'll be much better if the strategy continues to play out as it has been. The country is largely stabilized. More people were murdered in Baltimore last year, than US troops were killed in Iraq. In Iraq in 2009 there were 150 total military fatalities, 149 of which were US troops. In Baltimore, there were 238 homicides. Of those military fatalities, I count 75 combat deaths.

Further, Iraq has become richer and more free. Their bonds are on par with California's. If in the end, we come in get rid of the assholes that were running the place, rebuild and modernize their infrastructure, stabilize their country, make them rich, and withdraw, the Great Satan probably won't seem too bad. If this can be done in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the people in the surrounding scum-hole countries should start to wonder if they wouldn't be better off a little more like the guy next door.

jacquesm5• 16 years ago

>What was your solution, pull out immediately?

How about "Not going there in the first place" ?

cia_plant• 16 years ago

I can't even begin to follow some of the moral reasoning on this page.

The soldiers have to be there to keep the peace, as part of their humanitarian mission towards the Iraqi people. Because the soldiers are there, they have to protect themselves against the violent insurgents among the Iraqi people, by killing anyone who presents any kind of threat. Don't you see, they had to kill the Iraqis in order to save them.

If we didn't massacre Iraqis, we wouldn't be able to safely patrol their cities, and then where would that leave the Iraqis? Completely unprotected.

analyst743• 16 years ago

Please don't protect my country, we'll do what you say!

blhack• 16 years ago

:(. A lot of people seem to be completely missing the point of this video. It isn't that some journalists were killed, it's that they were killed in sport. The people speaking while they're shooting them are acting as though they want them dead, not as though they're taking their lives in an effort to protect themselves.

Did you see the part where the dying journalist is bleeding out on the curb and trying to crawl for cover? The helicopter gunner is saying something to the effect of "just pick up a weapon just pick up a weapon"; he's looking for an excuse to pull the trigger. Howabout the part before they shoot of the van that was trying to help people get out of the area? The gunner kept changing the subject back to whether or not he could open fire on it. Again, he wanted to kill the people inside, wanted to see a big explosion.

Yes, there are bad things that happen in war, this video is meant to illuminate the manner in which some of these bad things are happening.

Again, it isn't that people were killed, it was how they were killed and why they were killed.

gruseom3• 16 years ago

I find this outrage prissy. I don't know anything about war, but even I know that it's utterly naive to expect that soldiers wouldn't get off on killing people. It is completely to be expected. The fantasy that war would somehow be more acceptable or even possible without it is not serious; it's a head-in-the-sand refusal to consider the ugliness of the thing. Next up: they aren't faithful to their wives while on tour, either.

Edit: this comment comes across a little more harshly than I intended. The reason isn't you; it's that I just finished watching the Wikileaks founder in an interview, and his self-righteousness in making the same point really turned me off. The guy could barely contain his glee. I think this kind of outrage is all about stroking one's own moral delicacies. Expecting anything at all about killing people to be decent is foolish.

Mainly I'm angry at him for ruining my faith in Wikileaks and turning my world into one in which now no one plays that vital role. Guess I was the naive one. I had thought they were something like the Red Cross of information. Now they seem like ideologues who want to get on TV.

One more edit: now that I think of it, I should have figured this out from the way they were hyping the video before they released it.

Ok one more: there's clearly controversy about whether the soldiers followed the rules or not. That question is serious. But I highly doubt any rules of engagement have anything to say about how much fun killing is not supposed to be. This is part of the don't-ask-don't-tell contract (the real one) that society has with the military: here are the conditions under which you can be a serial killer; we will call you a hero for it; just don't tell us about it.

foldr4• 16 years ago

> I don't know anything about war, but even I know that it's utterly naive to expect that soldiers wouldn't get off on killing people. It is completely to be expected.

How far are you willing to take this argument? Statistically speaking, it's to be expected that invading armies will rape a substantial portion of the female population. Would it therefore be "prissy" to be outraged if this happens?

>This is part of the don't-ask-don't-tell contract (the real one) that society has with the military: here are the conditions under which you can be a serial killer; we will call you a hero for it; just don't tell us about it.

I think it's still ok to be disturbed by that. It may be true that this incident is just one example of the generally terrible nature of war. But that doesn't make it any less terrible, or make people's reactions to it illegitimate.

I hope that this sort of reaction becomes more and more common, so that we eventually figure out that war is, you know, a bad thing.

defenestrator• 16 years ago

armchair generals and politicians make the worst conversations ever.

jcnnghm10• 16 years ago

He wasn't saying exactly that, he said "Come on, buddy. All you gotta do is pick up a weapon." Listen to his tone and inflection, the guy is clearly very injured and going to die, the gunner wants to put him out of his misery but can't engage.

moo• 16 years ago

As pilots and CO were not punished I've learned it is clear that assisting the wounded ( no weapons were picked up ) will get you full of DU bullets. Carrying anything in your hands may be the excuse for a gunship a mile away to open fire.

Given these GI Joe tactics the average Iraqi might as well be carrying an RPG, and might as well shoot down that Apache helicopter. 7+ years of murderous Yankee mayhem is enough already.

mos1• 16 years ago

The comments both here and on reddit contain many vivid examples of how people react to a marketing message.

Virtually nobody changed their mind (many simply got more strident in their position when confronted with opposing interpretations.) Many commenters overemphasized the portions of the video that agree with their existing beliefs, while downplaying or arguing portions that were not in line with those beliefs.

It makes me wonder if perhaps precision is overrated when it comes to writing. Perhaps an imprecise record of one's beliefs would be more popular, as it would allow room for this sort of selective interpretation.

teyc• 16 years ago

In one short clip, the war has been shown up for what it is: a morally corrupt act that has no hope of making the U.S. friends nor assure it of future security.

The bombings in Moscow reminds everybody that the price of security in the future for citizens of the US will be rule under totalitarian government. For the three hundred million people in the States, I hope you've learnt your lesson.

marcamillion• 16 years ago

I am not American. I did support the initial Iraq War because in some cases, I believe the ends justifies the means. Yes, we can argue that Bush went for oil - which he probably did, but that's besides the point.

At the end of the day, Iraq just had another relatively successful democratic election where there is even more accurate representation than the first one. It will likely continue to improve, with bumps as they go along, but that would have never happened had Saddam been there still. The new government will be a coalition government run by all major sects. Not one dominating and robbing everybody else.

Why Iraq? I know. Why go to Iraq and not more 'dire' situations like Rwanda, Darfur, Sierra Leone, etc.? I get it, yes those would be good too..but that doesn't take away from the fact that a few million people have some semblance of a democratic institution that works alongside their religion (despite what they had been taught for the last few decades).

I too support the escalation in Afghanistan for the same reason. When all is said and done and the Afghani people have more powerful institutions in place and it will be well worth it. Al-Qaeda will have less fertile ground to recruit from. Until then, it will be a difficult road to travel.

Like any war, there is collateral damage. I don't think the issue with this video is the fact that there is collateral damage in war. It's more the coverup.

While I tend to be pro-military, I think in a case like this, where I am SURE their post-operation analysis revealed that they messed up big time, they should have come clean. Yes, the politics might have made the war more difficult...but it would have been the right thing to do. At the very least, for the families of the reporters killed.

lurkerperpetual• 16 years ago

From the first paragraph it seems the author is angered he did not witness 'an unprovoked massacre of unarmed civilians'. I think that could have been rephrased much much better.

david9272• 16 years ago

Make no mistake: this footage is significant. This is America's Jallianwala Bagh. This is the wholesale firing on unarmed civilians as an everyday activity.

To say, "But they were in a war zone," is disingenuous. America made it a war zone. America came there under a false premise and won't leave.

And how can they ever leave? Iraq is above nothing less than an ocean of untapped oil at a time when the Saudi fields are declining. Iraq is an OPEC breaker. And it's that dedicated supply in a time when the world's biggest industry had the price skyrocket in a few years from $20 to around $90. America is one of the only countries that can't survive if oil hits about $120 for any extended period. This isn't about money; this is about survival.

But when you find yourself killing unarmed civilians because they have under their feet an untapped fortune, because they have under their feet what you need to keep your lifestyle, you have to stop and look at yourself in the mirror at what you've become.

Wikileaks didn't mislead us. The U.S. Government mislead us, and worse, we mislead ourselves.

motters• 16 years ago

For anyone who watched the video, attempts to support the actions of the helicopter gunner seem to be on very shaky grounds indeed. The victims are mostly, or entirely, unarmed and attacking people trying to rescue the injured is an act of questionable legality. This looks like a war crime similar to those committed in Vietnam.

jacquesm5• 16 years ago

The US has a very bad history in 'judging its own' when it comes to war crimes, only under intense media pressure has there ever been any legal action against the perpetrators, and usually it was limited to the lower ranks.

And then there is the 'invade the Hague act':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pro...

ilitirit• 16 years ago

No reason to invoke ROE or Geneva convention at all. "Brains are more important than process".

How on Earth can anyone feel that it's OK to take people's lives based on so little evidence? "Looks like two of the guys are carrying guns. Let's kill them all." We all know that this is the kind of thing happens in war, but that doesn't make it excusable. I can't interpret the actions of the soldiers in any other way than murder.

araneae• 16 years ago

It's clear that the author felt "let down" by the video. But I don't think he can make a case that wikileaks misrepresented the video. Rather, I think he had unrealistic expectations.

He got his expectations up because a) Reuters had been unsuccessfully trying to obtain this video via FOIA b) wikileaks employees had been detained by various gov'ts and c) the video had been heavily encrypted. All of these things are facts, and not a misrepresentation on the part of wikileaks.

However, these facts seemed to indicate that the gov't cared about this video not getting out quite a bit, and raised his expectations. Maybe he didn't know what a helicopter video looks like; maybe he expected it to look like Generation Kill, with dudes being like "muahahha let's kill babies and rape women!"

However, I didn't think the video would really be anything but boring. What's news is that the U.S. tried to bury this video, not that it makes for great TV.

uriel• 16 years ago

> b) wikileaks employees had been detained by various gov'ts and

This turned out to be false, the guy that was detained in Iceland was detained for breaking into somebody's business and there is little or no evidence it had anything to do with his relationship to wikileaks.

Wikileaks has really misled the public

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