# US military WikiLeaks video release **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 5, 2010, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047 "2010-04-05T17:37:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2010, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/81 "2010-04-05T23:58:46Z")
> [@Mekhazzio](#): > > But I can’t imagine what rules of engagement would make that van a valid target. Nobody that came out of the van was carrying anything, or made any move to salvage anything from the area but the one wounded man. Why is it that they needed the wounded survivor to reach for a weapon, after they’d already gotten to all clear to take him out in the first place, but the van’s occupants don’t need to do anything overtly hostile at all? That part is strange. I’ve gathered that it is standard practice for us. I recall reading about how in our attack on Fallujah, we made a point of occupying the hospitals and of shooting anyone trying to rescue the wounded. Or flee, for that matter. ---
**Author:** ![thirdname](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@thirdname](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdname)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/82 "2010-04-06T00:01:06Z")
> [@EasyPhil](#): > > Why do the group of men not even react to the presence of the helicopters until they shoot at them? If they were insurgents, would they be walking in the open with the choppers clearly visible in the sky or maybe the choppers where using new stealth technology? > > Anybody have an opinion on why the men don’t react until shot at? As I mentioned in an earlier post, the choppers generally stay far away. There are videos of other Apaches, where the view looks the same until the gunner zooms out and then it looks like they’re a mile away. You can see a whole section of a city and you can’t even pick out where they had been zoomed in. They have really good optics that make it look like they’re closer than they are. (This is also why the guns don’t look all that accurate when they shoot in the zoomed-in views.) ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/83 "2010-04-06T00:02:26Z")
The results of this incident are very sad. However, I think many of you are missing the forest for the trees. 1. If we’re going to unleash our armed forces on someone, innocent civilians will be killed. It’s inevitable. So rather than criticizing these soldiers or the rules of engagement, we should be bemoaning the fact that we’re in Iraq in the first place. It’s naive to think we can operate with surgical precision. If we send our military to fight, we have to accept that this kind of thing will happen. 2. More troubling is the attempted cover-up and the worthlessness of our media, who largely parrots whatever the Pentagon tells them. I can accept that doing good reporting is tough to accomplish in a combat zone, but there’s no excuse for blindly accepting and disseminating the “official” explanation. And this type of cover-up isn’t an isolated thing. Note [this story](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/asia/06afghan.html?hp), where the Pentagon had to retract their original claim that 5 Afghan civilians who had been killed were insurgents and that 2 women found dead had been victims of an honor killing by their supposed captors, none of which was true. ---
**Author:** ![Tarwater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9de0a6/32.png) [@Tarwater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tarwater)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/84 "2010-04-06T00:03:53Z")
> [@EasyPhil](#): > > Why do the group of men not even react to the presence of the helicopters until they shoot at them? If they were insurgents, would they be walking in the open with the choppers clearly visible in the sky or maybe the choppers where using new stealth technology? > > Anybody have an opinion on why the men don’t react until shot at? Because the helicopter is so far away that it’s practically imperceptible. Even if the man in the video had an RPG and not a camera, there’s no way in hell they could’ve possibly hit the helicopter from that distance, too. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/85 "2010-04-06T00:04:28Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > You seem to be contradicting yourself here. However, let’s leave the smoke aside. No, let’s not. Was there smoke on the battlefield at some point? Yes. Was there smoke on the battlefield when the minivan pulled up? No. No contradiction. Perhaps this is another term you don’t fully understand. You can look it up at many dictionary sites. > [@](#): > > The guys were still BLEEDING and just starting to crawl around (those still alive), yes? Do you agree with part, at least? Nope. I saw only 1 person left alive after the initial engagement. Where did you see more than the one survivor that the minivan was trying to help? > [@xtisme](#): > > Assuming you have decided to be reasonable (:dubious:), then this is going to be sort of a clear indication to the driver of the van that something is amiss, right? And that it happened fairly recently (like, oh, say a minute or two before the van pulls up), yes? > > Given that, it’s not unreasonable to think that a van pulling up to start clearing off the wounded would be associated with them in some way…since, IMHO, no reasonable person who has no connection to or stake in the event is going to be foolish enough to drive into what is pretty obviously a war zone. So you’re now saying it’s a reasonable belief that IF the “insurgents” had called someone, help would arrive in less than 2 minutes? That “insurgents” have men standing by at every corner, waiting to aid in a firefight? Dude, our guys had a whole squad on the way, with people in the air giving them directions, but you think it’s reasonable to “believe” that these insurgents, in a minivan, could get there before our ground troops? The shooting is all over by 6:09 of the video. 3 minutes later, at 9:03, the chopper crew relays that they see a van approaching “and picking up bodies”. This cannot be the case, since the van has not stopped moving yet. Or do you think it’s “reasonable” to “believe” that the van was scooping the bodies up with some sort of street-sweeping device? In 3 minutes, traveling at just 20mph, you would cover over a third of a mile. So this van could have been far enough away to not have seen or heard anything from the initial engagement. It’s over a minute later that the chopper recieves permission to engage again, and opens fire on unarmed civilians. And it’s not “pretty obviously a war zone”; it’s the suburb of New Baghdad. A city where civilians live, and drive around, and run errands, and since it’s not just our troops who are human, but also the people of Iraq, it seems likely to me that these people would seek to help alleviate suffering when they see it, just like people in our country would. > [@](#): > > Well, that kind of shows you your level of judgment… It shows that I have some judgement. I’m not just blindly accepting that “everything our side does is ok”. > [@](#): > > No, I’m not conflating anything…you simply aren’t reading what I’m writing. Did I see any weapons in the film when the van pulls up? It’s impossible to tell, but, to be honest, no. You do keep going on about the weapons that the first group might have had, when all I’m asking you about is the 2nd engagement, the one with the minivan. And here’s another indication that you don’t understand what a contradiction is. It’s not impossible to tell. The answer, as you finally assert, is no, there were no weapons seen after the initial engagement. If it’s impossible to tell, then why do you finally admit that no, you don’t see any weapons? > [@](#): > > That’s because the the camera is in close up mode on the VAN, mainly (and the only people are either inside (driver) and the two guys outside (who are picking up a body, so wouldn’t be able to hold a weapon anyway, unless they were John Wayne), as they were obviously trying (and failing) to see what was inside. So, again, the film is ambiguous, IMHO…you can’t tell what all is happening. The film is not ambiguous. Please describe, from 9:03 to 10:09 what you see that might possibly be a weapon. There is nothing there to indicate that these men were insurgents. Nothing. > [@xtisme](#): > > I don’t believe that the van being armed or not armed really had much to do with the permission they were given to engage it, however, though clearly you seem to think this is of critical importance. Watching the video, the crew in the helicopter never said the van was armed…they reported that the van was attempting to remove the injured from the field. This is probably a gray area, since I don’t know what the rules are for engaging presumed insurgent vehicles that are merely attempting to remove wounded from the battlefield. I admit that I don’t know that either. But again, this wasn’t a battlefield. This was a suburban city street. > [@xtisme](#): > > Not knowing does not equal must NOT be destroyed, either. False equivalence. Not knowing = might not need to be destroyed. > [@xtisme](#): > > Again, the crew requested permission to engage, and watching the video (again), they clearly were not telling higher authority that the van was armed, only indicating that the van was picking up survivors. So, we’d really need to see just what the ROE were that they were flying under, but if anyone is at fault here it would be the officer that gave them permission to engage the van. I agree. > [@xtisme](#): > > I’ve said (many times in this thread) that it’s clear the crew did NOT think these guys were ‘unarmed civilians’, that, in fact, they believed these guys were armed insurgents…so, by putting this in these terms, you are attempting to alter my position to enhance your own. Strawman. Had you asked me ‘So, the crew felt that attacking presumed wounded insurgents are fair game for a military engagement’, then I would have responded to this argument. Instead, you chose the strawman route…and then questioned whether or not I understand the term. No, what I did was attempt to understand your position on this. So far, it seems that it amounts to “it’s ok because it was our guys doing it”. > [@xtisme](#): > > This may come as a shock to you, but that crew? They weren’t gods. They were…hold onto your hat…humans. And they didn’t have perfect knowledge! I know…it’s hard to grasp, but it’s true. > > I’m just going to ignore your question about terrorists and belief, since I don’t see either that I’ve commented on this one way or the other, or that it really has anything to do with the questions in this thread. We’ll just pretend you didn’t write that, ok? No, it’s not okay. I did write it, and you can ignore it all you want, but I’ll just view that as evidence that you cannot answer my question truthfully or honestly without yourself falling into a pit of contradictions and moral sludge. You want it to be okay for our military, our country to act on “beliefs”, but deny the validity of anyone else acting on their “beliefs”, IMO. If that isn’t the case, please explain. > [@xtisme](#): > > Should I equally suspect that your own answer boils down to ‘they have to be guilty because they are the US MILITARY! RAAWWRRR…and…and…it’s all Bush’s fault!’? But since it seems straw is on sale, feel free to suspect whatever you want, bo. My name is Bo. Capital “B”. And no, you shouldn’t suspect anything about my position re: the US military in general. I don’t believe I’ve mention Bush at all in this thread. In fact, nothing I’ve said here indicates either support for the US military or non-support. I’ve only talked about this incident, and the video. And what you can glean is that I don’t have knee-jerk support for anything; I am a skeptic, and prefer to convinced by evidence. And the evidence in this video, at best, shows an initial justified engagement and then a simple case of opening fire on unarmed civilians. It also shows, IMO, that the flight crew said the things they needed to say to be able to open fire. For instance: At the start of the video, we hear (2:48) “one of them has a weapon”. At 3:20 we hear “that’s a weapon”. At 3:36 this changes to “have individuals with weapons”, somehow. At 3:44 this changes to “have 5 to 6 individuals with AK-47s”, even tho at best we can see 2 men with what may be weapons. At 4:22 they claim “we had a guy shooting”, even tho it’s clear from the video that no shots have been fired. But it got them what they wanted, which was permission to open fire on a group of men standing in the street, doing nothing at all. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/86 "2010-04-06T00:05:29Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Couldn’t agree more. Don’t want this kind of fuckup to happen? Then we shouldn’t have ever gone there in the first place. This kind of thing is bound to happen when you go on foreign adventures into places where everyone is shooting at you or attempting to blow you up where ever you go. And this event happened in 2006, the height of the badness. > > I can’t wait for Obama to pull the last troop out of there. > > -XT Well, at least we can agree on this. ---
**Author:** ![Mekhazzio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b38774/32.png) [@Mekhazzio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mekhazzio)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/87 "2010-04-06T00:10:13Z")
> [@thirdname](#): > > As I mentioned in an earlier post, the choppers generally stay far away. There are videos of other Apaches, where the view looks the same until the gunner zooms out and then it looks like they’re a mile away. You can see a whole section of a city and you can’t even pick out where they had been zoomed in. They have really good optics that make it look like they’re closer than they are. (This is also why the guns don’t look all that accurate when they shoot in the zoomed-in views.) If I’m remembering the symbology right, as the video starts, the system is estimating the range at 1.7 kilometers. Not exactly breathing down their necks. ---
**Author:** ![Terraplane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/74df32/32.png) [@Terraplane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terraplane)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/88 "2010-04-06T00:14:10Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > I watched the video…and I can see how the crew thought they were armed. In fact, to me I CAN see both an RPG and several AK’s in the group…and no idea if there are anyone with additional weapons in the buildings. > > Again…whether you see it or not, or whether I see it or not is irrelevant. It’s obvious from the crews transmission that THEY think the group was armed. I know you aren’t grasping this, but it’s sort of key to the whole thing. If the crew THINKS the group is armed, then they are going to concerned that A) they need to engage them before they get away (thus the ‘begging’ for the officers back on the other end of the line to hurry up and decide what they should do, before the group was out of sight) and B) that once engaged, the group will shoot back and C) that other possible insurgents or hostiles might be in the surrounding buildings (with weapons), or that the van might have a guy with some kind of air to air weapon in it (see, the helicopter doesn’t have x-ray vision, nor magic pony tech that allows them to know what’s in there through hindsight by watching a video with notes and pointers and comments telling you what you should think about all this). I’m grasping that they thought a couple people in the group were armed. The majority was not, and that _is_ fairly easy to spot in the video. This is a city street in a residential area and you have a group of people standing around. Even the ‘armed’ ones are just sort of standing around. They aren’t firing at anything, they aren’t doing anything threatening. The helicopter crew had no way of knowing if these were all insurgents, a few insurgents and some civilians, or, as things turned out, a camera crew. The didn’t know, so they thought the best course of action was to unload into everybody there. The van comes in. The helicopter has no way of knowing if the driver is an insurgent or if he’s just some dude taking his kids to school that stopped to help a bleeding man on the street. As you so kindly informed me, they don’t have x-ray vision. In the face of an unanswered question, they choose to unload into everybody there. They think there are people in a building. They have no way of knowing who else is in the building. Again, no x-ray vision. A man, clearly unarmed, is walking on the sidewalk right in front of the building. Again they unload. No, I don’t expect them to land the damn helicopter and ask for ID. I don’t expect them to have super powers. I do expect them to err on the side of caution when they are fighting in the living heart of a city full of people going to work and taking their kids to school and just trying to live their lives as best they can. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/89 "2010-04-06T00:14:40Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > _sigh_ And you know that the pilot of the helicopter knew this? Do you have a cite that they knew that the van was just some guy taking his kid to school? That it was completely harmless? And that they fired on it knowing this? Is it not the responsibility of the man with the machine cannon, who knows the great majority of people below him are innocent civilians, to confirm his target is a military one? The Apache crews have a positive respsonsibility to take reasonable care that they’re firing at legitimate targets, not just anyone who has a van or a camera. That’s a tough job but it’s the one they signed up for. Don’t want to be held to those standards, don’t join the Army. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/90 "2010-04-06T00:16:53Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > …My name is Bo. Capital “B”… Hey, Crimea River! Regards, “Lucy” ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/91 "2010-04-06T00:20:26Z")
[QUOTE=hotflungwok] What information did the soldiers have going into this? Did they have reason to believe that that particular group of people were insurgents? [/QUOTE] It’s on one of the links on the cite from the OP. From memory, there was an engagement earlier, and several groups were taking small arms fire from insurgent groups in the area. The helicopter was looking for the group or groups that were firing. > [@](#): > > Is it standard policy to shoot large vehicle mounted weapons at anything carrying an AK-47? Are civilians in that area permitted to carry weapons? That is the armament of this type of helicopter. I don’t believe that in 2006, civilians were permitted to carry weapons in this particular part of Iraq, but I honestly don’t know. Considering what was happening in Iraq at that time, I’d say that anyone not in uniform carrying weapons out on the street would be taking their lives in their own hands, though. > [@](#): > > The soldiers in the video were chomping at the bit to fire before they had identified any threat. They were looking for any excuse. How did one or two AK-47s become 5 or 6? To me it sounds like they wanted to make sure that these guys didn’t get away. It’s a pretty natural reaction. Consider…if they let these guys go, and later they blew away some of their buddies, how do you suppose that would make them feel? I remember watching a documentary on the Military Channel about a sniper in Iraq. He saw a pretty distinctive insurgent (he had a really large black beard and a pretty big bear gut) and he called in to receive permission to engage the guy (as per his ROE). By the time he received permission, however, the guy had moved off. Later, this same guy blew away a Humvee with an RPG, killing several of the troops inside. The sniper was both bitter and he blamed himself for not taking the shot (despite the fact that he couldn’t, per his ROE orders). Try and put yourself in these guys place, and in the context of how things were in 2006. > [@](#): > > xtisme, why is what they believed so important? What they believed didn’t seem to be affected by what evidence was available. They went into the encounter with the belief that all of those people were insurgents, and then looked for any excuse to fire. Does what they believed excuse them from the responsibility of their actions? Should there be no consequences for making a mistake that involves the deaths of a dozen people? It’s important because in war, shit happens…and with modern weapons, when shit happens, people die. If you follow your companies rules and do your job, but things go tits up anyway, most likely you aren’t going to be blamed/fired/imprisoned. Of course, if you fuck up, people won’t die, even if it’s not your fault. However, we are talking a war zone here…when people fuck up, then other people die. And, frankly, there was fuckup-age on all sides. Why were these guys moping around with any guns at all in what was clearly a war zone (look at the buildings…a lot of them had combat damage, the streets had rubble in them, etc). Why in the name of the 7 gods would anyone in their right mind drive a van (with their kids) onto a battlefield that is pretty clearly still going on? Intent is the key in such a situation, IMHO (and I believe the military agrees). It’s like a bomber pilot. If his intent was to shoot at target A, but instead (and through no fault of his own) he hits school house B, you don’t court martial the guy and throw him in prison. Or, if he bombs target A but finds out that there were civilians there instead of the insurgents that he was told were there. Or if a tank is trying to engage an enemy vehicle but hits a store instead. Or engages and enemy vehicle, only to find out that it wasn’t an enemy vehicle at all, but an ally…or a civilian. How do you hold the people who pulled the trigger responsible for any of this? And if you do, how are you going to get anyone to do anything except CYA in the future? These guys believed that the people they were attacking were armed hostiles (and, frankly, I’ve still seen no evidence that they weren’t…just because reporters were with the group, doesn’t really mean anything. I know that there are embedded reporters in Afghanistan that are with insurgent groups from time to time, because I’ve seen reports from said reporters, and interviews with Afghan warlords or Taliban groups). They had seconds to assess, report and engage. Watch the video…or go to the link in the original cite and look at the time line. The entire engagement lasted maybe 5 minutes. Think about that. So…do I believe this excuses them? Yeah…I do. Just like I believe that a pilot trying to hit target A that hits the school instead is not to blame for carrying out his orders to the best of his ability. You can’t run a military in any other way, frankly. People are only human, and they can only do the best they can do. Put them in pressure situations with the fog of war, time constraints, stress, and ambiguity that is rife in something like Iraq, and mistakes are going to get made. If the soldiers think that they will be punished even when they are following their orders and doing what they are told to the best of their abilities, in the end none of them will do anything. That might sound good, but it would totally paralyze the military. The real folks to blame are the ones who sent those boys and girls over there. Bush. The Congress. Ultimately the American people, who voted those folks into office. THEY/We are to blame…not the crew of this helicopter who were just doing their best in a fucked up situation. THEY followed the rules and did what they were supposed to do. -XT ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/92 "2010-04-06T00:42:19Z")
[QUOTE=RickJay] Is it not the responsibility of the man with the machine cannon, who knows the great majority of people below him are innocent civilians, to confirm his target is a military one? [/QUOTE] Certainly…but as far as I can tell, they did that, to the best of their ability. It’s easy to second guess these guys, especially since we can go back and watch the film over and over again. But perhaps the film we are watching isn’t telling the whole story here, since the crew seemed (both the pilot and the gunner) seemed pretty confident these guys were armed and that they weren’t innocent civilians. I suppose they could have been wrong, that they could have jumped to conclusions, or based their analysis on faulty data…but I’ve seen no evidence that this was the case. We are merely seeing a video along with subtitles and text by a group who doesn’t seem completely unbiased about this case. Perhaps they are…but then, if this video is the extent of their evidence of wrong doing, then I’d have to say, again, that the evidence is completely ambiguous. > [@](#): > > The Apache crews have a positive respsonsibility to take reasonable care that they’re firing at legitimate targets, not just anyone who has a van or a camera. That’s a tough job but it’s the one they signed up for. Don’t want to be held to those standards, don’t join the Army. Do you have any evidence though that they didn’t follow their ROE on this mission (i.e. that they weren’t up to the standards that the Army expects of them)? [QUOTE=Mekhazzio] But I can’t imagine what rules of engagement would make that van a valid target. Nobody that came out of the van was carrying anything, or made any move to salvage anything from the area but the one wounded man. Why is it that they needed the wounded survivor to reach for a weapon, after they’d already gotten to all clear to take him out in the first place, but the van’s occupants don’t need to do anything overtly hostile at all? That part is strange. [/QUOTE] I confess that this also puzzles me. Even assuming (and I think this would be a fair assumption) that the van was an insurgent vehicle coming in to pick up the wounded, it’s hard to imagine the ROE that would allow these guys to engage it in the manner they engaged it here. I’d like to see what rules they were operating under on this day, but I’d have to say that the officer who authorized the attack probably fucked up. The only mitigating circumstance is probably the time constraint. From the time the van is reported to the helicopter crew to when they looked like they were going to be able to pull away was less than a minute. So, the officer on the other end of the horn had to digest the reported sighting, the report from the helicopter, and then make a split second decision whether to let the thing go or to engage. I’d say that it was a bad decision, unless they could clearly see whether the van was full of armed hostiles or weapons or whatever. For that matter, it puzzles me that they didn’t move in a ground team to the area quicker, though without knowing the full situation (according to the cite in the OP there were multiple battles in the area that day, and they had received fire from that block…which was why the helicopter was in the area), it’s hard to second guess what was going on. I presume that the military investigation would have determined if there was wrong doing…but I concede that these things can be whitewashed, so that could go either way as well. We simply don’t know enough, based just on this film and on the text on this web site. -XT ---
**Author:** ![HorseloverFat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@HorseloverFat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HorseloverFat)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/93 "2010-04-06T00:43:07Z")
Its been well established that people see things when expecting to see things. I forget the name of the concept, but it certainly happens in wartime. A camera stand looks to them exactly like a rifle and the boom mic an RPG. This is an unfortunate thing, but pretty predictable. Non-uniformed asymmetrical warfare is an ugly thing. I just wished all the people who were cheerleading for war in 2003 cared to understand this, instead of demanding Saddam’s head and the innocents who have to die to get it. ---
**Author:** ![EasyPhil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@EasyPhil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EasyPhil)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/94 "2010-04-06T00:51:36Z")
> [@thirdname](#): > > As I mentioned in an earlier post, the choppers generally stay far away. There are videos of other Apaches, where the view looks the same until the gunner zooms out and then it looks like they’re a mile away. You can see a whole section of a city and you can’t even pick out where they had been zoomed in. They have really good optics that make it look like they’re closer than they are. (This is also why the guns don’t look all that accurate when they shoot in the zoomed-in views.) I see, this explains a lot and also why someone in a van with their children would stop to try to help a guy bleeding on the street. They probably didn’t even realize it was helicopters that had fired on them because of how far away the helicopters were. How sneaky. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/95 "2010-04-06T00:59:41Z")
[QUOTE=EasyPhil] I see, this explains a lot and also why someone in a van with their children would stop to try to help a guy bleeding on the street. They probably didn’t even realize it was helicopters that had fired on them because of how far away the helicopters were. How sneaky. [/QUOTE] I still can’t see this. Assume they didn’t know there was a helicopter. Ok…then what DID happen? Something obviously did…and whatever had happened had JUST happened, since there were still bleeding and wounded people on the field, right? Whether it was from a helicopter, a jet fighter or a battle between \, I just can’t see how it would be wise to drive onto such a battlefield…and especially not with my kids in the car! Even now, it seems fishy to me, though presumably someone has checked out this part of the story and confirmed it. -XT ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/96 "2010-04-06T01:01:38Z")
> [@](#): > > …that had fired on them because of how far away the helicopters were. How sneaky. Freaky creepy. You see the images, here the gun go off, and nothing happens, maybe he missed, and then suddenly the people are lying around all tore up. “Do you have a picture of the pain?” - Richard Farina ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/97 "2010-04-06T01:04:48Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > I still can’t see this. Assume they didn’t know there was a helicopter. Ok…then what DID happen? Something obviously did…and whatever had happened had JUST happened, since there were still bleeding and wounded people on the field, right? Whether it was from a helicopter, a jet fighter or a battle between \, I just can’t see how it would be wise to drive onto such a battlefield…and especially not with my kids in the car! What makes you think it was all that unusual to run into wounded people there? What makes you think there was anywhere he could drive that wasn’t dangerous? His mistake was in being a better human being than the thugs in the helicopter and not just letting innocent people die. ---
**Author:** ![EasyPhil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@EasyPhil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EasyPhil)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/98 "2010-04-06T01:07:18Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > I still can’t see this. Assume they didn’t know there was a helicopter. Ok…then what DID happen? Something obviously did…and whatever had happened had JUST happened, since there were still bleeding and wounded people on the field, right? Whether it was from a helicopter, a jet fighter or a battle between \, I just can’t see how it would be wise to drive onto such a battlefield…and especially not with my kids in the car! > > Even now, it seems fishy to me, though presumably someone has checked out this part of the story and confirmed it. > > -XT If the helicopter is a mile away and for intents and purposes out of sight(makes you wonder what kind of weapon the guy could have picked up to make a difference?) it would make sense that a van could have very well have turned a corner on this road and seen the guy on the road and with no hostile people anywhere near would think that there was no danger, unfortunately for them they were wrong…as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/99 "2010-04-06T01:08:05Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] What makes you think it was all that unusual to run into wounded people there? What makes you think there was anywhere he could drive that wasn’t dangerous? [/QUOTE] Considering where they were, I suppose that’s a good point. I still can’t see taking my kids onto such a battlefield…though I have to admit, I don’t live in the middle of such a fucked up situation, so maybe that wasn’t all that unusual. > [@](#): > > His mistake was in being a better human being than the thugs in the helicopter and not just letting innocent people die. No real point responding to this part… -XT ---
**Author:** ![EasyPhil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@EasyPhil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EasyPhil)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047/100 "2010-04-06T01:12:21Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Considering where they were, I suppose that’s a good point. I still can’t see taking my kids onto such a battlefield…though I have to admit, I don’t live in the middle of such a fucked up situation, so maybe that wasn’t all that unusual. > -XT It’s a suburban neighorhood not a battlefield, this is the point that I think you are missing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-military-wikileaks-video-release/535047.md?page=6)