ISTM that your second phrase contradicts your first. If gun battles are routine, that would tend to suggest that the long skinny things Achmed and Hamid are toting about are AK-47s and not camera tripods.
Regards,
Shodan
How the hell are they markedly different? Both involved a heavy-handed military involved in largely urban fighting, the Paras claimed they were coming under sniper fire from the crowd despite no firm proof of this ever being produced, both decided merely standing together in a group constituted a mortal threat (c.f. the death of Fr. Edward Daly), both military forces were “sent in” against a backdrop of fighting in the area earlier that day. What precisely distinguishes the two?
I have a suspicion you guys are talking about two entirely different incidents, both with the unfortunate name “Bloody Sunday”.
Not necessarily 
Gun battles are spread throughout the city, not in a single neighbourhood.
I see. I didn’t realise there was more than one Bloody Sunday. The phrase always refers to the Bogside Massacre in the British Isles.
Just to clarify this.
Bloody Sunday 1920 IRA kill 14 British agents and informants. British then went into Croke Park (sporting fixture) and killed 14 civilains.
Bloody Sunday 1972 Brtish killed 14 people during a civil rights march.
The '72 event would be the closest to this incident but I don’t think either helps the debate in any way. It only adds to the hijack potential with Brits and Paddies arguing over the events. Best left out of this thread IMO.
Ah, yes. Yurpeens. 'Nuff sed.
I’m thinking of Bloody Sunday as the event in Ireland where paramilitaries opened fire on Irish protesters, killing 13 of them. So, other than the accusation of heavy-handedness by the militaries involved in both events, I think the similarities end there. There was no protest going on in Iraq, Iraq is a war zone and Ireland was not, in our helicopter event the “targets” were actually carrying some weapons, the attacks in Iraq were being done remotely by helicopter using gun cameras, Bloody Sunday didn’t have that element, the history of England v Ireland and the resultant oppression is a longer, more-storied and entirely different concept than the Iraq war, etc.
Paramilitaries? It was the Parachute Regiment of the British Army. Northern Ireland most definitely was a war zone at the time, too.
Not firmly established, unless you have some further information.
Look at the graphic here. You’ve got journalists running around the area taking pictures. You have an American combat patrol (on the ground) in the vicinity that is unaware of the presence of any journalists. At the point in the video where the guy is huddled against the corner of a building aiming his camera down the street (and the pilots mistake his camera for an RPG), apparently he was taking pictures of that ground patrol. The Apaches are circling above to provide recon and to identify threats before they can reach the ground patrol. An ambush with an RPG is such a threat.
Of course, the Rambos in this thread would prefer that the Apaches had flown right over top of them, or engaged in endless debate while the ground patrol stumbled upon them. And if they had been insurgents and if the ground patrol had been attack and several of our soldiers had been killed, what would have been your reaction then? “Eh, at least no precious, precious Iraqis were killed?” But then again, we are on Straightdope, where our military isn’t allowed to utilize its advantages in equipment and firepower because it isn’t fair, and our soldiers should take unreasonable risks to ensure that the rest of the world stops seeing Americans as selfish jerks.
Even if what you say is true (and it’s not), they guys were not just standing around…they were moving in the direction of the fighting. We know (or THINK we know, in retrospect) that it was a group of unknown guys providing directions to the two reporters so that they could get into the area where the fighting was.
Of course, your ‘null hypothesis’ doesn’t work in any case, since this wasn’t just a civilian neighborhood…it was a civilian neighborhood where combat operations were taking place. In such an environment, anyone outside is going to be look on with suspicion (probably by both sides), and is taking their lives into their own hands. Did you notice in the video that these guys were the ONLY people moving about on the streets?
Really? What do you base that on? Did you see anyone else moving around on the video when these guys were moving up the street? The only people who are not going to be hunkering down when there are gun battles going on in their area are either those who desperately need to go somewhere and are willing to risk their lives for whatever it is, those who are involved on one side or the other, or curious reporters (or, I suppose, someone who is insane or doesn’t care about the risks).
I’m unsure if you don’t believe whether or not there were fire fights going on in the area while all this was happening, or you aren’t tracking on that fact, or if you don’t think it makes a difference, regardless. It’s hard to tell. If it’s the later, I assure you, it makes a LOT of difference if there are gun fights going on between US and insurgent forces in the area…and if that’s happening, people, even Iraq’s (though why you think they are different from other people is beyond me) are going to find someplace to hide until the fighting moves on. After the gun fire stops and they are sure whatever the fuck it was is now over, THEN they might come out to stand blithely around and chat with their friends.
Well, there are certainly no Scott’s about, for sure. But by the same token, battles fought in the streets aren’t going to have a lot of civilians out and about…not unless they are caught suddenly in the open. The fighting, from what I’ve seen, was going on for hours before this incident…plenty of time for most civilians to get inside and hunker down until it’s over.
Can you show me a cite that demonstrates this? I realize you think that it’s a moral imperative or something along those lines, but militarily it doesn’t work this way, not in a combat zone. Show me in the GC or the US military ROE.
-XT
:smack:
I meant to type “para-militaries” to denote “parachuting military”…bad shorthand.
I don’t consider the ethnic and politically motivated sporadic violence of The Troubles to be a war, or Northern Ireland as a war zone during that time, but I suppose its a matter of perspective. I do think we’re derailing the thread a bit here.
Based on the conclusions of the investigation, the article I posted earlier upthread and the fact that this event occurred during the peak of insurgent/ethnic/surge violence, on a day where widespread fighting was reported in that area throughout the day, I find it highly unlikely that a group of Iraqi men were so casually strolling the streets like that unarmed. The cameras were cameras and not weapons, but there were other men there that appeared to be armed to me, and the article I posted said that weapons were indeed found at the scene.
Pretty much. Except I thought that those of us chiming in with support of the military were supposed to be the Rambos?
You tell me, 'luci. My rule of thumb would be ‘if you can hear the gun fire, then you are probably close or in the combat zone. Perhaps it’s a good time to hunker down and hope that neither side catches you in the cross fire’. Watching the film, you don’t see a lot of people just sitting around, walking the streets, talking to each other, driving their cars around, or generally being neighborhoodly. What you see are empty streets and closed houses. My GUESS is that, having heard the combat fire for perhaps several hours, the wiser neighbors in the neighborhood are hunkering down in their homes to wait out the storm.
Well, at a guess, because they don’t know that there is a helicopter up there, or think that there are any American or insurgent troops in the area. They can probably hear the fighting in the distance, and know approximately where they THINK the fighting is happening. It has nothing to do with being ‘remarkably stupid’, though. The US can’t be everywhere, after all, and in war (or in reporting) some risks have to be taken. If you don’t think there are any combatants in the area, then you might move cautiously, but you will probably not be moving from cover to cover the entire time.
That said, two things. First off, if everyone thinks it totally safe, were are the REST of the neighbors in the 'hood? Where are the cars, bikes, markets, people wandering about, etc etc? These guys have the place all to themselves. Why?
Second, if you watch the film, when they are going to cross to another block, a couple of the guys DO hunker down and look cautiously around corners and such. So, they are at least nominally aware that they could be in danger.
I got that from the transcript. From what I’ve been able to piece together, there were a series of small unit gun fights going on all day in the area. From one of the transmissions, this group was heading towards one of those fire fights that was currently happening. Makes sense, if you think about it, since the reporters probably wanted to report on the fighting. I don’t have a map of the area in question, so I can’t tell you where the fighting might have been, or even what direction these guys were moving in…just that the military was reporting fighting in the area and that one of the guys said that these guys were headed in that direction.
Well…I DID think that the fact that there was ongoing fighting was accepted, to be honest. Whether these guys were moving towards it is, admittedly, less sure, especially if you think the guys transmitting in the video were lying about everything. What else have I assumed? Well, I made a bad assumption about the video system on the helicopter, thinking that the pilot and gunner had independent systems, and I made a perhaps silly assumption about the distances involved between the helicopter and the group, thinking that they could see at least something by mark-one eyeball. Both of those assumptions were wrong.
How about you? What assumptions have you been making about all this, and how do you suppose they effect your overall stance on what happened there?
-XT
Setting aside your characterization as “Rambos”, the meaning of which eludes…
Its a pity the helicopter could not communicate their uncertainty and prevent such a hapless “stumbling upon”. Might we consider the installation of radios?
This remark is a poisonous insinuation about the motives of people who simply do not agree with you.
And another. Shame, sir.
Excuse me, but isn’t assuring that the indigenous personnel do not regard our troops as enemies a worthwhile objective? Wouldn’t a general impression that we are dangerously trigger-happy be directly contrary to our needs? How many enemies did we kill that day? And how many more did we create? Keeping in mind, of course, that I am an unpatriotic peacenik, who cackles gleefully over the deaths of our troops.
Oh, that’s all right, go ahead and say it, been hearing it for about forty years now, one more won’t matter. Not true, but don’t let that bother you…
Why, none, sir! That is why I am unanimously recognized hereabouts as the very paragon of unbiased reason. I thought you knew that…
:smack: I did know that. Sometimes all that bright, golden light projecting out from your body makes it hard to remember stuff…I go into ‘oooOOOooo! Shinny…’ mode. My apologies, 'luci…
-XT
You’re not even making any sense.
Are you really claiming that the problem here is that our military’s hands are tied? What alternative are you arguing for, because it would seem that pulling ground troops out and using only bunker busters against any potential insurgents among the civilians would be a reasonable alternative for you.
But I tell you what - if you can make the argument that somehow taking the gloves off and using even more overpowering force against any and all Reuters staff will somehow achieve a goal for us, I’ll have to concede.
I mean, I’ve read the tirades of more than my fair share of internet rough riders, guys who think html must stand for “hot metal”, but I’ve not yet read of someone whose interpretation of an incident in which a group of civilians are killed and some children are wounded is that we really ought to be allowed to take the gloves off.
In this type of conflict, generally yes, you do need to exercise discretion. But this happened during the surge, when we were trying to clear out as many rotten apples from Baghdad as possible to provide residents some measure of security and give our forces and the Iraqi government some breathing room to try and improve conditions and stabilize the city. Making that area of the city relatively safe for its residents does more to win hearts and minds mistakenly killing some civilians loses them.
To be strictly fair, that’s not the interpretation I got. Not that such constraints already exist, but that lily-livered sob-sisters like you and I might wish it so.
Really? What an extraordinary proposition! You can prove this?