Collateral Murder vid

I didn't see anything wrong with what happened in the vid. It was a mistake, yes, but not that "wrong" people from the wiki crap were trying to make it out to be.

It was VERY hard to tell whether or not those were shoulder fired rockets, or large cameras. That exact situation has occured more than once.

The pilot had to decide, quickly, because as soon as he started to raise the camera on his shoulder, looks absurdly like an RPG. If he didn't kill them, he would die as well as others in the helicopter. (I think he had one copilot.) What we really need to see is all the times they DID kill "the bad guys".

What would have solved this would be some MUCH better cameras. That would work until the "insurgents" disguise their RPGs as cameras. 😐

I think the people who did the edit to the vid were a bunch of hyperventilating idiots. There was no way to tell that those were kids. Retarded to think that the vid was clear enough to tell that there were children.

Even if they COULD tell that they were children...we seem to quickly forget how many evil people strapped bombs to their children and sent them to soliders. Wrong people, I know. Just sayin'.

The point is they laughed, and the point is the entire Iraq war is bollocks. This is just like what happened in Vietnam, the "liberators" aren't liberating anything, they're butchering the lives of innocents in the name of corporate power.

I agree, this is only the tip of the iceburg, I'm surprised there hasn't been an influx of video of other murders caused at the hands of the soldiers.

People need to realise how worthless these wars are, especially this one. Hopefully this will be a wakeup call for people to take action, the myth of the caring government will soon be shown to everyone as utter bullshit.

I'm waiting for more leaks. Things like this really can't be ignored. If this was one little "mistake" how many other "mistakes" have been made? How many more innocents have been butchered and slain and pushed aside due to "misunderstanding/misinformation." I'm sorry but that excuse doesn't work anymore with the technology fascist militaries have at their hands now.

This is utterly disgusting.

Originally posted by Liberator
The point is they laughed,

how is that a bad thing? what were they supposed to do? cry? sit there silently and let it all sink in so that they could come home with PTD?

Originally posted by dadudemon
I didn't see anything wrong with what happened in the vid. It was a mistake, yes, but not that "wrong" people from the wiki crap were trying to make it out to be.

It was VERY hard to tell whether or not those were shoulder fired rockets, or large cameras. That exact situation has occured more than once.

The pilot had to decide, quickly, because as soon as he started to raise the camera on his shoulder, looks absurdly like an RPG. If he didn't kill them, he would die as well as others in the helicopter. (I think he had one copilot.) What we really need to see is all the times they DID kill "the bad guys".

What would have solved this would be some MUCH better cameras. That would work until the "insurgents" disguise their RPGs as cameras. 😐

I think the people who did the edit to the vid were a bunch of hyperventilating idiots. There was no way to tell that those were kids. Retarded to think that the vid was clear enough to tell that there were children.

Even if they COULD tell that they were children...we seem to quickly forget how many evil people strapped bombs to their children and sent them to soliders. Wrong people, I know. Just sayin'.

Originally posted by Liberator
The point is they laughed,

how is that a bad thing? what were they supposed to do? cry? sit there silently and let it all sink in so that they could come home with PTD?

Originally posted by dadudemon
I didn't see anything wrong with what happened in the vid. It was a mistake, yes, but not that "wrong" people from the wiki crap were trying to make it out to be.

It was VERY hard to tell whether or not those were shoulder fired rockets, or large cameras. That exact situation has occured more than once.

The pilot had to decide, quickly, because as soon as he started to raise the camera on his shoulder, looks absurdly like an RPG. If he didn't kill them, he would die as well as others in the helicopter. (I think he had one copilot.) What we really need to see is all the times they DID kill "the bad guys".

What would have solved this would be some MUCH better cameras. That would work until the "insurgents" disguise their RPGs as cameras. 😐

I think the people who did the edit to the vid were a bunch of hyperventilating idiots. There was no way to tell that those were kids. Retarded to think that the vid was clear enough to tell that there were children.

Even if they COULD tell that they were children...we seem to quickly forget how many evil people strapped bombs to their children and sent them to soliders. Wrong people, I know. Just sayin'.

do you believe the American military takes sufficent and necessary precautions to prevent innocent people from being killed in this way?

Originally posted by inimalist
do you believe the American military takes sufficent and necessary precautions to prevent innocent people from being killed in this way?

NOPE! My post indicated that, too.

But with what they had, the rules they had, they didn't do anything wrong.

Originally posted by dadudemon
NOPE! My post indicated that, too.

sorry, must have skimmed that part

Originally posted by inimalist
sorry, must have skimmed that part

Clearly, they need to improve the camera resolution and stability. It's sad beacuse we've had mass commericialized hardware/software like that since the late 90s and we are still using late 80s technology in our heli-cams (sometimes). Scrap just one F-22 raptor and that would have paid for all of the camera and software upgrades for the deployed heli-units, and provide healthcare for hundreds (thousands, depending on the pool provided for) of Americans of those that don't have it. (lol)

It's like, we have the wrong priorities here.

That entire group could have been spared if they had a camera that could zoom in with a high res image, nice stability software to prevent shakiness, and then we could have clearly seen that it was a camera on his shoulder and at his side.

And most especially, those poor children could have been spared the trauma of watching everyone "smoked" right in front of them. To me, avoiding as many civilian casualties as possible should be our highest priroity, and military operations should come secondary to that. I'm fine with target bombing to a remote terrorist cell in the mountains, but not area bombing a village with insurgents that are probably there, but have civies occupying the same town. IMO, this just creates another generation of insurgents.

Edit - But, as it stands, they had a pretty d*mn good reason to suspect: gathering and items that appeared to be shoulder fired rockets/RPGs.

Originally posted by dadudemon
I didn't see anything wrong with what happened in the vid. It was a mistake, yes, but not that "wrong" people from the wiki crap were trying to make it out to be.

It was VERY hard to tell whether or not those were shoulder fired rockets, or large cameras. That exact situation has occured more than once.

The pilot had to decide, quickly, because as soon as he started to raise the camera on his shoulder, looks absurdly like an RPG. If he didn't kill them, he would die as well as others in the helicopter. (I think he had one copilot.) What we really need to see is all the times they DID kill "the bad guys".

What would have solved this would be some MUCH better cameras. That would work until the "insurgents" disguise their RPGs as cameras. 😐

I think the people who did the edit to the vid were a bunch of hyperventilating idiots. There was no way to tell that those were kids. Retarded to think that the vid was clear enough to tell that there were children.

Even if they COULD tell that they were children...we seem to quickly forget how many evil people strapped bombs to their children and sent them to soliders. Wrong people, I know. Just sayin'.

What the Apache units saw on their camera was much clearer, and Wikileaks said that. The footage that was released was compressed many times over to fit it on readable data. This blurred the images, but you can still make out in the video that the reporter had a camera not a RPG. You can also make out the kid's faces, albeit if you squint really hard.

The problem here is a few things.

# Its a war zone where the enemy wears no uniform.
# Pressing a button in a Helicopter is easier than if you see someone eye to eye and kill them.
# The stress situation brings about actions a person who has never been in conflict cannot understand.
# No respect for the civilian population, maybe even a superiority complex due to advanced weaponry.

And this will all lead to loosing the war in the end, because if you can´t win the trust of the population, and killing them willy nilly doesn´t help, then you will be seen as an enemy by all eventually.

I don't remember Sun Tzu saying anything about killing children. I do remember him saying you should capture enemy territory as intact as possible. Modern day urban fighting- heck, most of 20th century warfare- is alien to his principles in this regard.

In any case, hold back on the physical threats, wild shadow.

Originally posted by Moscow
What the Apache units saw on [B]their camera was much clearer, and Wikileaks said that. The footage that was released was compressed many times over to fit it on readable data. This blurred the images, but you can still make out in the video that the reporter had a camera not a RPG. You can also make out the kid's faces, albeit if you squint really hard. [/B]

1. You'd have to prove that. (I assure you, it's even worse than what you and I were seeing.)

2. Their image was no very clear: the "HADSS/HMS" they have is a far crappier screen than the 24inch, WUXGA, dual-screen monitor setup that I have at work. Not to mention the increased stress and "sensory" input of the situation removing a bit of the attention placed on the targets: they do train for these scenarios, but it isn't a cut and dry thing. (They are still using monocrhome HMS....that's just pitiful.)

3. The resolution was not much better than the vid. And, the "faces" you were seeing was an enhanced slow-mo section on the vid. In the mere seconds that that image took place in, the pilot is looking at far more than just the passenger seat on a blurry, distorted, shaky, image.

Originally posted by dadudemon
1. You'd have to prove that. (I assure you, it's even worse than what you and I were seeing.)

2. Their image was no very clear: the "HADSS/HMS" they have is a far crappier screen than the 24inch, WUXGA, dual-screen monitor setup that I have at work. Not to mention the increased stress and "sensory" input of the situation removing a bit of the attention placed on the targets: they do train for these scenarios, but it isn't a cut and dry thing.

3. The resolution was not much better than the vid. And, the "faces" you were seeing was an enhanced slow-mo section on the vid. In the mere seconds that that image took place in, the pilot is looking at far more than just the passenger seat on a blurry, distorted, shaky, image.

1. We cannot prove that, because the military will suppress that information. Yes, I'm sure it's worse in color.

2 and 3. The Apaches had been patrolling that area for a while because they got alerted to a possible firefight breaking out somewhere in the vicinity. They know full well what's on that ground there, and their responses to their superiors and their general responses throughout the vid are ones of relaxed composure (a feeling that this happens quite a bit in Iraq and Afghanistan). They saw the kids there, they saw the medics there. They saw it was a camera (when they bothered to look). They were given the orders to fire and they did. Then they poked fun at the people they shot and even laughed when a tank appeared to roll over a corpse.

Originally posted by Moscow
This blurred the images, but you can still make out in the video that the reporter had a camera not a RPG.

this might be true of models of the RPG and some other rocket launcher models, however, and I can't freaking remember the model, there are some that are nearly indistinguishable from large media cameras.

Additionally, I don't know about the iraqi insurgency, but Hamas has used the cover of media to make rocket attacks.

EDIT: ok, ya, its the 9k115 metis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT-7_Saxhorn

or many other tripod mounted launchers (which can, I assume, also be shoulder fired)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/accp/in0546/lsn2.htm

EDIT 2: I know there aren't any more active stingers being used by the Muj, but just check this baby out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIM-92_Stinger

Originally posted by Moscow
1. We cannot prove that, because the military will suppress that information. Yes, I'm sure it's worse in color.

No, the image is blown up and put on a larger screen. Making it slightly easier to discern what's going on, on the screen. It's much better on the monitors, I assure you.

And, no, it's no supressed. You can look up info on it. heck, the specs my be out there somewhere.

Originally posted by Moscow
2 and 3. The Apaches had been patrolling that area for a while because they got alerted to a possible firefight breaking out somewhere in the vicinity. They know full well what's on that ground there, and their responses to their superiors and their general responses throughout the vid are ones of relaxed composure (a feeling that this happens quite a bit in Iraq and Afghanistan). They saw the kids there, they saw the medics there. They saw it was a camera (when they bothered to look). They were given the orders to fire and they did. Then they poked fun at the people they shot and even laughed when a tank appeared to roll over a corpse.

No, they weren't relaxed and calm. The pilot was sharting bricks. He though they were about to be "smoked" with an RPG, right out of the sky. He was remaing as calm as he could be...he was trained to be.

They didn't know very much at all, actually. All they had to go by was that they were gathering, a major no-no in a war-zone as that is a profiled "behavior", and they had things that looked like shoulder fired rockets or RPGs. Not only should the Reuters press peeps known better, they should have been carrying their cameras a tad less suspiciously. You don't walk up to a police checkpoint with an open bottle in your car that looks just like a beer bottle, from a distance. If an idiot like me knows about the dangers of a video camera appearing like a shoulder fired rocket, the why wouldn't vetern cameramen, that had been shooting for quite some time, know better? They got complacent, too relaxed, and were too busy focusing on getting footage in a combat zone. It cost them their lives. Granted, both sides may have been able to prevent the problem.

Joking during a highly stressful situation is common among humans. They may have seen the kids there, but they could not discern that they were kids, by any stretch of the imagination. The ground units were the ones that discovered that.

Definitely the original mis-identifcation of a threat is just one of those things that happens in war, harsh as it is. Hesitate to engage when it is the real thing, and it is you that is killed. That being so, there are always, ALWAYS going to be people getting killed in such a fashion.

The rest raises some questions, but the opening fire was just a mistake. I exceptionally doubt whether any of us in the same situation would have said it was definitely a camera.

And yes, obviously they didn't see any kids. I am somewhat more fuzzy on what the pretext was for engaging the van though. There may well be a reason to fire on vehicles evacuating bodies; seemed a bit aggressive though. Clearly no threat was identified.

On that point, though, I think we should also note that the people involved always waited for permission before engaging, and were clearly following rules as they were waiting for the wounded person to pick up a gun (which he never would, of course) before firing. He sounded very keen to fire, which is disturbing, but that's the life of a soldier. He was still disciplined enough to wait. This isn't about some trigger happy murder squad- there was effort being made to follow rules.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Definitely the original mis-identifcation of a threat is just one of those things that happens in war, harsh as it is. Hesitate to engage when it is the real thing, and it is you that is killed. That being so, there are always, ALWAYS going to be people getting killed in such a fashion.

The rest raises some questions, but the opening fire was just a mistake. I exceptionally doubt whether any of us in the same situation would have said it was definitely a camera.

Exactly. Apache pilots are filtered out of a bunch of people until they arrive at the best people. There's still going to be eff-ups that may be avoided, but are inevitable.

Originally posted by dadudemon

No, the image is blown up and put on a larger screen. Making it slightly easier to discern what's going on, on the screen. It's much better on the monitors, I assure you.

And, no, it's no supressed. You can look up info on it. heck, the specs my be out there somewhere.

I was talking about the original feed, the military whistleblower who leaked the video out, and any other such information that the Pentagon would want to keep secret.

Originally posted by dadudemon

No, they weren't relaxed and calm. The pilot was sharting bricks. He though they were about to be "smoked" with an RPG, right out of the sky. He was remaing as calm as he could be...he was trained to be.

They didn't know very much at all, actually. All they had to go by was that they were gathering, a major no-no in a war-zone as that is a profiled "behavior", and they had things that looked like shoulder fired rockets or RPGs. Not only should the Reuters press peeps known better, they should have been carrying their cameras a tad less suspiciously. You don't walk up to a police checkpoint with an open bottle in your car that looks just like a beer bottle, from a distance. If an idiot like me knows about the dangers of a video camera appearing like a shoulder fired rocket, the why wouldn't vetern cameramen, that had been shooting for quite some time, know better? They got complacent, too relaxed, and were too busy focusing on getting footage in a combat zone. It cost them their lives. Granted, both sides may have been able to prevent the problem.

Joking during a highly stressful situation is common among humans. They may have seen the kids there, but they could not discern that they were kids, by any stretch of the imagination. The ground units were the ones that discovered that.

That whole response makes me sick to my stomach. Journalists and medics deserve the fullest support, and I an untrained person in anything technical or mechanical could discern that that was a camera the guy was holding. The pilots sharting bricks? Bologna. I watched the whole 20 minute video. They were doing standard operating procedure, it was just another day at work. This isn't some glorified decision-making like BS movies like Black Hawk Down show. This is real-life events here.

Have the journalists know better? Have the civilians know better? This is their homeland we're destroying. Look at the city they're living in. It's a bombed-out ghetto from decades of war, abuse and sanctions. I absolutely hate the excuses given to the military when this kind of s*it happens.

Sorry, Moscow. You do not come across as at all credible about the camera.

Originally posted by Moscow
and I an untrained person in anything technical or mechanical could discern that that was a camera the guy was holding.

unfortunatly, while you might know a camera when you see one, I think you are underestimating how similar personal surface-to-air-missile systems can look to a camera, especially from the proper angle. Many are, in fact, a camera with a tube coming out the back, if that tube is obscured, such as by pointing it at a target, it is inditinguishable from a camera. So, unfortunatly, weapons do exist and are used by muj groups which look like cameras, especially when pointed at something.