Classified U.S. Military video depicting slaying of Iraqis

[pikedt]

hahaha this video is great, awesome to see our troops doing what they have to do. unless you have spoken to troops first hand or have been to iraq dont go claiming you know more than the guy who watches the news. not to say everyone has to support everything this country does but if you truly hate it so much, and have so many issues why do you choose to live here? would you prefer to live in the middle east?

 

[mo matik]

Think about this for a second. The pentagon report has proven to be bias. This can be agreed upon, no?

So, if we know the report is bias, let's say the report concludes that there were zero weapons at the site. What happens? Well it's no longer covering up the actions of the apache pilots now is it? The actions by the pilots are entirely wrong with that one statement. They killed civilians, plain and simple.

If they DO find weapons however, then their actions are justified. They killed "the insurgency."

 

[shaunhillftw49]

Originally Posted by pikeDT

hahaha this video is great, awesome to see our troops doing what they have to do. unless you have spoken to troops first hand or have been to iraq dont go claiming you know more than the guy who watches the news. not to say everyone has to support everything this country does but if you truly hate it so much, and have so many issues why do you choose to live here? would you prefer to live in the middle east?

My uncles a cop. He has a license to kill.

Watch out kids in low income neighborhoods.
Unless you've lived in a ghetto and been a cop don't complain when you hear of unarmed civilians being killed.

 

[ray mulla]

Disturbing.

 

[gambit215]

790 Billions dollars pumped into your morons, state of the art technology, and these "hired assassins" still get the benefit of the doubt. It boggle my mind how certain people get over in life, even when they are clearly in the wrong,not to mention, WE ARE IN IRAQ FOR WMDS THAT WERE NEVER FOUND, so if you are in a country for the wrong reasons and this has been verified, arent we the terrorists? At this point we just invaded a country on false info and we continue to kill civilians, thats straight MURDER people......................and I love when people like to say, hey were killing these guys so our children can have a safe life, not realizing that Iraqis have CHILDREN TOO?!?!? We are just screwing over the next generation with predisposed hate towards each other for nothing more than money..........................God must be SO dissapointed.

 

[shaunhillftw49]

Originally Posted by CrunkJuicedUp

some of you niketalkers cant be serious..... saying good job and kill them?, don't you realize that's a person?, some ones son, some ones father, and something with a beating heart, how do you think these people are insurgents when it was listed that photographers went missing after this incident, those were innocent people. Its really crazy and it makes me sick how those people were just walking and talking and out of nowhere bullets rip though them and kill them with no regard that they are humans, animals in in the army

. id have no problem defending my country but this really was a slaughter of innocent people.

Exactly. It;s one thing to excuse it but to be happy

 

[pikedt]

Originally Posted by ShaunHillFTW49

Originally Posted by pikeDT

hahaha this video is great, awesome to see our troops doing what they have to do. unless you have spoken to troops first hand or have been to iraq dont go claiming you know more than the guy who watches the news. not to say everyone has to support everything this country does but if you truly hate it so much, and have so many issues why do you choose to live here? would you prefer to live in the middle east?

My uncles a cop. He has a license to kill.

Watch out kids in low income neighborhoods.
Unless you've lived in a ghetto and been a cop don't complain when you hear of unarmed civilians being killed.

Congrats on having a pig uncle, born and raised in Oakland, live in Berkeley now for college, but we had an unarmed civilian killed last year by OPD(rip Oscar Grant). These people in the middle east could give a rats %++ if an American is killed, and watch some videos of our dead soldiers bodies being dragged through the streets. Its a war(occupation, preeminent strikes, war on terror, whatever we want to call it), but people die and its going to to keep happening, including American troops(some from friendly fire, aka Pat Tillman. And in response to the one dude sure maybe its someones brother, probally someones brother who hates me as an American and would love to kill me.

 

[shaunhillftw49]

Originally Posted by CallHimAR

Originally Posted by mikykr20

It has everything to do with it... see libs are blind and will believe and say what ever in order to make the military look as bad as they possibly can... a non lib can see that this is an obvious attempt to spew out propaganda and hate rhetoric towards the US military

There really isn't anything else to say. I hope you don't actually believe all that though.

Those libs hate America so much they actually want their troops home

 

[vintage sole 737]

Originally Posted by SunDOOBIE

^ During this operation Ilaaj in which the entire town closed their shops, schools, and markets and while a battle was going on between Insurgents and the Iraqi/US joint forces, a group of men carrying AK-47s and RPGs were just casually walking on the streets?  Everyone and their mothers in that city had enough common sense to know if you didn't want to die or be in a cross fire, you stayed inside. 

This is my last post because it's just getting ridiculous how naive some of you people are.  I have said enough. You all want to believe this Anti-American propaganda... its on YOU!

some people care about life.  some people care about america corp.  what can you do?  calling people arm-chair quaterbacks...hahaha.. are you killing people in iraq with the murderers you praise?  join up man!  they need you out there!  kill! kill! kill!

 

[mo matik]

As if I needed more prove of the bias in the pentagon report:

The investigator states that on page 14 "The children are never seen."

Go to the image on page 21.

2 censor bars on the window of the van? Why? Because that's were you can see the 4 year old girl and the 8 year old boy.

Again, I feel like I'm hitting my head against a wall. A solid concrete wall.

 

[vintage sole 737]

Originally Posted by Mo Matik

As if I needed more prove of the bias in the pentagon report:

The investigator states that on page 14 "The children are never seen."

Go to the image on page 21.

2 censor bars on the window of the van? Why? Because that's were you can see the 4 year old girl and the 8 year old boy.

Again, I feel like I'm hitting my head against a wall. A solid concrete wall.

to some people life=military=america.  that's all they know, they are trapped in a tiny bubble and are scared of anything that differs from their own. 

 

[shaunhillftw49]

Originally Posted by pikeDT

Originally Posted by ShaunHillFTW49

Originally Posted by pikeDT

hahaha this video is great, awesome to see our troops doing what they have to do. unless you have spoken to troops first hand or have been to iraq dont go claiming you know more than the guy who watches the news. not to say everyone has to support everything this country does but if you truly hate it so much, and have so many issues why do you choose to live here? would you prefer to live in the middle east?

My uncles a cop. He has a license to kill.

Watch out kids in low income neighborhoods.
Unless you've lived in a ghetto and been a cop don't complain when you hear of unarmed civilians being killed.

Congrats on having a pig uncle, born and raised in Oakland, live in Berkeley now for college, but we had an unarmed civilian killed last year by OPD(rip Oscar Grant)

Pig? you're not a cop therefore your opinion is moot. And Bart police is NOT OPD. However four OPD cops were killed by a civilian last year.
And of course the militants don't give a damn about Americans. You're falsely assuming I am sympathetic to the Taliban. But it looks like these people are not the Taliban.

 

[pikedt]

Originally Posted by ShaunHillFTW49

Originally Posted by pikeDT

Originally Posted by ShaunHillFTW49

Originally Posted by pikeDT

hahaha this video is great, awesome to see our troops doing what they have to do. unless you have spoken to troops first hand or have been to iraq dont go claiming you know more than the guy who watches the news. not to say everyone has to support everything this country does but if you truly hate it so much, and have so many issues why do you choose to live here? would you prefer to live in the middle east?

My uncles a cop. He has a license to kill.

Watch out kids in low income neighborhoods.
Unless you've lived in a ghetto and been a cop don't complain when you hear of unarmed civilians being killed.

Congrats on having a pig uncle, born and raised in Oakland, live in Berkeley now for college, but we had an unarmed civilian killed last year by OPD(rip Oscar Grant)

Pig? you're not a cop therefore your opinion is moot. And Bart police is NOT OPD. However four OPD cops were killed by a civilian last year.
And of course the militants don't give a damn about Americans. You're falsely assuming I am sympathetic to the Taliban. But it looks like these people are not the Taliban.

I stand corrected, def was Bart police, should have reread what I wrote. It is too hard to tell what these people are, especially in the heat of battle. Who knows how I'd act, prolly be so scared I'd shoot anything walking.

 

[finnns2003]

Amazing... So a Pentagon report, trying to cover up this event, is to be taken as gospel... But actual footage is not.

C'mon

 

[bee easyy]

This reminded me of a chopper gunner from MW2. Despicable none the less.

 

[stoneyjax]

this is outrageous

 

[SneakerProSr.]

Originally Posted by CallHimAR

That is really upsetting.

The whole time I sat there watching trying to justify it. I mean, the cameras certainly did not look like an AK or an RPG, however one of the men who was with them did appear to have something that looked like a weapon. It must be impossible to tell from a helicopter. Its obvious that the men on the ground did not fire at the chopper, and if in fact they did have weapons and were insurgents I would think they would be trying to take cover at all costs, not walking around casually.

The clincher was when the van pulled up though. That was disgusting. They were taking a wounded man away, no one picked up anything that even remotely looked like a weapon and they were all killed. Absolutely disgusting and unjustifiable.

They were obviously wrong initially as well when they said there were around 20 people on the ground. There were nowhere near 20 of them.

And the only reason this stuff got ANY attention is because those 2 reuters reporters were killed.

Other than that this was just how it was done on a daily friggin' basis.

"Their fault for bringing kids into a war zone."

Predictable. The mind has only a few ways to justify murder of innocent lives.

That is what is most upsetting about this to me.

the point is, these soldiers are occupying a country that still holds alarge population of folks that want them dead. naturally, when they arefaced with a "them or me" situation (which they obviously thought theywere in with the "armed foot mobiles" and "rpg team") ... they arealways going to err on the side of caution.

Don't you understand that this is an example of why people want our soldiers dead?? It's the shoot first mentality that breeds hatred in the Iraqi and Afghan populations because so many innocent people are killed just like this. If I'm sleeping in my bed and Special Forces kicks down my door and shoots my wife, you're damn right I'm going to want someones head for it. We are breeding terrorism, not Islamic extremism. They just pick up the pieces of broken men and boys, put them back together and give them the tools to fight us.



This, I been saying this since we been over there.

 

[6dollaburger]

Okay - I am not saying what is right one way or the other. However, per the video at 3:39 approx, there are clearly at two individuals with rifles (not including the cameramen who have slings). The individual at the corner did also appear to be showing an RPG.

IF I were in the position of the US ground troops, I do agree with the US air support. Those individuals pose high threat. I would have wanted them down, as well.

As for the children, if what the gunner sees is as clear as what we saw - 1. Firearms can definitely be confirmed. 2. The individuals in the passenger side can not be clearly seen as children.

I don't think we should be there in the first place -- but, since we are already, I don't see anything wrong with the engagement, based on this video alone.

 

[dmbrhs]

Probably the best analysis of the situation:

I'm going to try not to get into a semantic debate about the realitiesof war versus civilian perception of war, but I do want to clarify alittle of what's happening in a technical sense so that the viewerunderstands what is and is not allowed in these situations. And I'msure that, despite my best abilities, my personal bias as an ActiveDuty US Soldier will ultimately show through in the end. I'm currentlydeployed to a region in southeast Baghdad, near where this incidenttook place, and the Rules of Engagement that dictate the use of lethalforce state 51% certainty that the individual represent a threat to youor another US Soldier. (To my knowledge, it always has been.)

First off, I would be interested in knowing whether or not Reutersreported the presence of journalists to the US Forces who wereresponsible for operating the battlespace they were located in.

That fact that the Bradley unit's ground commander clears theApaches to engage without further target description implies that thiswas not the case, and if so it means that these journalists wereoperating completely independent of any ability of the US to trackthem, or even know they were present somewhere. This is incrediblydangerous, even now in 2010. Back in 2007, that sort of thing wouldhave been damn near suicidal.

Despite the video's hesitancy in acknowledging that several of themen 'appear' to have weapons, it is clear to me that several of themare carrying AK-47s. If you look at graphics representing thepositioning of these journalists from a Bradley convoy only a fewblocks away, I think that it is entirely reasonable that the pilotswould consider them a threat - particularly after mistaking a massivezoom lens peaking out from behind cover on the very street that anAmerican patrol was taking place for an RPG. Complex ambushes with 8-12men with AK-47s and RPGs were very common back in early 2007. I can'tspeak as to why the two Reuters journalists were walking around withmen carrying AK-47s trying to sneak pictures of an unaware Americancombat patrol, and I certainly do not assume that the reason wasnefarious.

My real problem with this video, as media, is that it takesconclusions drawn after careful and repeated analysis and includesthose conclusions in the videos for others who are seeing it for thefirst time. Try to imagine watching the video WITHOUT the giant textuallabels stating who each of the men are, or without the prior knowledgethat two of the men are journalists and they're carrying massive cameraequipment, or without the selectively enlarged segments near the end ofthe video that the pilots never had access to.

It is by no means obvious, without those labels, that the giantcylindrical object that Namir Noor-Eldeen is peeking out from behindthe wall with is not an RPG, especially for an Apache gunner whose mindis immediately directed to the US troops down the street he believesthis man is probably preparing to fire at. Saeed Chmagh had themisfortune of being on his cellular phone on top of all of these othercircumstantial misfortunes, and the cell phone detonation is a classicelement of a complex attack involving small arms, RPGs andradio-controlled IEDs.

Keep in mind also that an Apache cockpit has two Soldiers - apilot and a gunner, and while you are seeing the gunner's IR footage,it is not necessarily conveying what the pilot saw on his monitors orwith his own eyes.

I won't speak as to why they fired on the van after the initialattack. They were cleared by the ground commander after accuratelyconveying what was going on over the radio, and I don't have acomprehensive enough understanding of the Law of Land Warfare. I mustsay that my stomach turned watching the video at the tragicmisunderstanding of it all, and the residual questions about what Iwould have done have kept me awake for hours now. If there is one actthat this video validates an investigation beyond what's already beenconducted, firing on the van would be it.

As far as the language of the pilots, the emotional status of theguys pulling the trigger... more than anything else, the outragesurrounding that is what I find the most absurd. Who are you to tellmen at war how to react to being in a position that demands they takehuman life? Do civilians truly believe that Soldiers would be capableof performing their duties in any capacity if they were forced toconfront the sheer wretched magnitude of their most prolific duty inthe very instances that people are depending on them to perform it? Isthe romanticized image of the reluctant warrior really so ingrained inthe psyche of the general public that they honestly think that shockand melodrama is the only way remorse can manifest itself? Just hearingthe pilot towards the end try and justify (to himself, more thananyone) why the children he had no idea were present were present ismore heartbreaking than all the "Oh God, no's" in the world to me.

If the previous commenter is somehow shocked by the words of thisincident, I would be willing to bet that his time in the military didnot include placement on a line unit. Or if it did, he must have had+%$* jammed in his ears the entire time. The comparison of al-Aminal-Thaniyah to My Lai, where hundreds of unarmed women and childrenwere systematically raped and executed point blank is a little bitridiculous, regardless. The fact that his comparison somehow elevatesthe latter as a sign that we have declined since then is insulting.

There is no script for how one is supposed to react tosystematically killing another person. Many laugh, many make macabrejokes during and after the fact and, in general, line troops revel inthe death an destruction of their enemy. It's how they deal with theenormity of what they're doing. And if you or any of your readersassume for even a moment that things like that mean that they or theother hundreds of thousands of Soldiers who embrace dark humor andexcess to cope with what they're doing are somehow depraved, then youneed to be re-introduced to the reality.

Better yet, you can just look at the rising suicide statistics ofSoldiers over the past few years. The number of PTSD cases. I'm here tolet you know that the dialogue that took place in that cockpit wasneither uncommon or, to me, even all that appalling. It was quiterestrained, compared to what usually comes out of the mouths ofSoldiers here when radio etiquette is not an issue. The video editorwho included the George Orwell quote at the beginning was laughablymisinformed. They were speaking in sterile terms for the purpose ofobserving radio protocols and clarity on their ASIPs; nothing more.Soldiers are intimately familiar with the unsanitary horrors of war,and are not for lack of a thousand unseemly two and three-syllable waysto described it. People needn't worry.

Instead of being outraged about the words or tone of the pilotwilling the man to pick up a weapon, to give him an excuse, why notthink about the discipline necessary to remember his Rules ofEngagement? To recognize, as much hate as he may feel towards theenemy, he was not allowed to fire on the enemy unless he picked up aweapon?

This entire incident is an unbelievably sickening tragedy, and Idon't mean for my tone to imply that the loss of Namir Noor-Eldeen andSaeed Chmagh was anything but. But it was also a tragedy when ithappened to Pat Tillman. When it happened to any of the dozens, if nothundreds of Soldiers killed by fratricide in this war so far. 90% ofwhat occurs in that video has been commonplace in Iraq for the last 7years, and the 10% that differs is entirely based on the fact that twoof the gentlemen killed were journalists.

War is a disgusting, horrible thing. As cliche as that excuse hasbecome, for people to look at the natural heartbreaking nature of itand say that they're somehow anomalous just shows how far people whohave not experienced war have to go to understanding it. That doesn'tjustify failing to take every reasonable precaution necessary to avoidincidents like these. However, a little humility, or a little desire tohave a broader contextual understanding of why these pilots did whatthey did before condemning them as war criminals would be appreciated.

 

[arhymingape12]

i mean c'mon son....the dude was running around with some other dudes that looked like assault rifles.....%@% were they supposed to do? wait for them to kill another US soldier?

 

[iiceman83]

And if yall are so saddened and outraged and disgusted about this...What are you gonna do about it? Make a post on NT? yea thats really gonna get your voice heard right? Yall are waisting f I_Icking time and energy sitting on your %%@es when you could actually get up and do something if you really feel that strongly about your opinion . Otherwise shut yall mouths. People die every damn day. Sad part about it is its never gonna stop. Yall get all pissy over a vid like America will never take an innocent life

...Its WAR. Only thing that matters is the objective and completion.

 

[je ne sais quoi]

Good read:
A former helicopter pilot and photographer named A.J. Martinez dissects the footage...

To start things off, I will come right out and say I support WikiLeaks in their endeavors to bring about transparency in government. The government promises to do such things and fails time and time again. That said, I have several problems with their presentation of “Collateral Murder

 

[mister friendly]

Originally Posted by UnderMedicated

Some of that stuff really did look like guns, and if that was a camera man one of them was leaning against a wall as if he was hiding.

They wouldn't have been allowed to fire if they're weren't shots fired in the area previously, why would they think an Iraqi news crew is in the area during a war?

Yep we can definitely see guns and what those guys were weairng didnt look like cameras it looked like an RPG.

Look its real easy to sit on our high horse over here on our computers, talking about smashing girls and trying to get doubles of some stupid Jordan shoe.

These dudes and their buddies are in harms way all the time. @#%$ is real over there. Y'all act like the insurgents have regimnets of soliders wearing uniforms and following the rules of war like World War II. Its guerilla warfare over there. Seriously try to put yourself in a US soliders position over there, After you have seen some of your buddies killed by insurgents or had close calls yourself wouldnt you turn a tad trigger happy and cold?

It kinda reminds me of the Jack Nicholson speech from a " A Few Good Men". Its sad but true

http://www.entertonement....--A-Few-Good-Man-You-Can't-Handle-the-Truth


  

 

[iansmk]

Originally Posted by WallyHopp

 then these dudes come back from war and are in everyday normal living conditions and still messed up in the head. they are almost a danger to society. then again we've grown up with that in our lives from the very first WWI. we all had that "crazy uncle".

nice generalization. my family has been involved somehow in every (edit: major) military conflict since the war of 1812. my dad was a special forces green beret in viet nam. you can go %@!@ yourself.

 

[mugsy bogues]

Hey I guess that war....Me or You.