I assume that either this is a typo and you meant to say ‘the one who’s claiming that this outrage is NOT recreational’, or you really need to share whatever drugs you are on, so we can all be on the same page of delusion.
As for my assertions, I have couched them all in purely speculative language for a reason…I THINK I see weapons, I THINK these guys followed the ROE they were flying under, and I THINK that this was simply a tragic accident, a consequence of the fact that these reporters were moving around in a war zone (with a group of possibly armed men), where there had been enemy contact, that they were (perhaps, depending on who they were with) mistakenly taken for armed insurgents and fired on.
So…there really isn’t anything for me to back up, nor any reason for me to do so. I don’t believe that, whether these guys were armed or not is relevant from a legal perspective (I’ll leave the moral one to someone else). However, many have asserted in this thread not their opinion, but as a statement of supposed fact that the group was ‘unarmed’, for instance, or that the gunner ‘lied’. Fine. If they assert such things then they need to back that shit up with something other than their subjective feelings based on this film. They need to present some fucking evidence, or they need to back the fuck off either the personal insults being hurled at me OR need to back the fuck off their high horse, and coach their replies in this thread in terms of that this is their out of the ass opinion, based purely on their subjective viewing of this film…which is all I’m asserting.
Thanks for playing the SD Great Debate game. Here is your ceramic dog…have a nice day.
Well…I can see 1.5 kilometers from a helicopter, but ok. What makes you think that the pilot or gunner didn’t have other electronic aids available to them? Or that both were watching the same thing the gun camera was watching?
Well, two things spring to mind. One…the recorder on the helicopter was only recording the gun camera and nothing else. Two, these guys were only able to ‘obtain’ this footage, for whatever reason (maybe the other footage wasn’t at hand to whoever liberated the video shown, or maybe it got erased). I don’t know enough about helicopter recording systems to really make even a good guess as to what all is recorded, how it’s recorded, whether it’s all accessible together, or, really anything else. Do YOU have any evidence that this was the sum total of either what the pilot and gunner were seeing/available to them visually or that was recorded?
So you’re saying you HAVEN’T been repeatedly claiming that people in this thread are participating in recreational outrage? I guess all those drugs I’m on must be causing hallucinations.
Exactly. I’m a pacifist, because this is exactly what I think goes on in a war. I don’t understand the responses from people in this thread at all; what did you think you were supporting, with your magnetic ribbons on your cars and your flag-waving? Soldiers rounding up enclaves of Iraqi insurgents who are all wearing “Al Quaida” gang jackets? For the record, I don’t think the soldiers did anything wrong by the terms of their engagement in Iraq, which I don’t agree with in the first place. What a bunch of hypocrites.
I’m not a pacifist, but I agree with you completely, including that the root cause of these kinds of tragedies are that were were there in the first place.
Cite? Cite that they had these things you claim AND that they used them?
Or are we just supposed to let you whine about other people needing to provide cites to “prove” things to you, while we just accept anything you assert as “proven”? :rolleyes:
I actually think that article reads pretty accurately, especially for a first read on the situation by the reporters. What’s your problem with it, exactly?
The gun camera is what you aim with. That’s why they put them in the aircraft. It has optics and night vision, of course you’d be looking through it. Honestly, I have to wonder why you think they are looking through anything else.
Also, you can’t see shit at 1.5 km. You certainly can’t identify targets with guns, unless you were rocketed from your doomed planet as an infant anyway. Here is a guy about a mile away from a reactor. Could you identify individual men and what they are carrying at that distance?
Did you forget what message board you’re posting to? How many people complaining in this thread do you think supported the war in Iraq or drive around with yellow ribbons on their cars?
To be hypocritical about this, wouldn’t someone have had to have been a supporter of the war in Iraq and then also be upset about this incident? Who exactly does your criticism apply to? Please be specific about which posters fall into this category and thus warrant your “bunch of hypocrites” accusation.
Having said that, couldn’t someone have been supportive of the war but upset by the judgment of the crew in this incident, and/or upset by the fact that these incidents are withheld from the American public?
Are you suggesting that the military NOT shoot people who are wandering around a war zone with weapons as long as they’re acting casually enough?
FTR, I’m in full agreement with Cat Whisperer. As I said earlier, the Army is not the police, and they’re not trained to only fire in self defense. The Army is primarily in the killing-bad-guys business, not in the not-killing-civilians business. This is why you don’t send them in to “wars” like this unless you have a damn good reason.
Our armies are meant primarily to be a defensive force. That means they should save weaponry until there is a direct threat, in my book. Or would you prefer them to shoot at anything that moves and can be interpreted by guys in a chopper 1.5 km away, as a threat, instead?
The video very clearly shows the helicopter shooting unarmed people. The .gif I posted on the first page shows that. Link.
Were there no weapons there at all? I don’t know, there might have been a couple armed people there, it’s possible. But if 10 people are standing around and two of them are armed, that doesn’t justify relentlessly hunting down each and every single person in the crowd. This is urban combat in a city with millions of people, reacting this way to a possible threat is, IMO, outrageous. If you want to label that as recreational go ahead, but I think it’s justified.
You might be right though. Maybe all of this fell within the ROE. That makes it even worse.
I’d prefer the Army to sit around fat and dumb and happy and never have to do anything. Barring that, I’d prefer that they only engage in wars with a clearly defined , uniformed enemy in an environment chock full of traditional military targets.
Waiting until there’s a direct threat is poppycock. If the Army in WWII saw a dozen uniformed Nazis walking around in open daylight, armed or not, I’d want them to kill them. That’s what the Army is trained to do. Fair fights and chivalry have no place in modern warfare.
Iraq is a bad place for the Army. They have two options – kill almost nobody because there are civilians everywhere who look just like the enemy, or make mistakes like this. I don’t believe that there’s a middle option where soldiers make nothing but good judgments and only the bad guys get killed. Does not exist. Not in the reality I’m living in, at least. Which is why I’ve been against this “war” for the last 7+ years.
So why have the Geneva Conventions then? How about just lining POW’s up against a ditch and mowing them down with machine gun fire? Why spend extra money holding them in prisons?
So you’re saying you HAVEN’T been repeatedly claiming that people in this thread are participating in recreational outrage? I guess all those drugs I’m on must be causing hallucinations.
