That’s not even close to what I was saying. Froth less and read more.
As I’ve been saying throughout this entire thread, this is what combat looks like. It does no good to wag our fingers at what the soldiers did here because this is the kind of shit that happens when a heavily armed military force invades another country. This is part of the reason why we get into these messes in the first place, because our intelligent and engaged citizenry thinks our military is some kind of precision strike force like they’ve seen in movies, and when they make the inevitable mistake we all freak out because they didn’t perform flawlessly. We’re such goddamned children sometimes.
And this is why Wikileak’s editorializing on the video was a mistake. Of course you know they were journalists. How could the soldiers have known?
Are you an American? We get into blood rages because one city’s football team beats ours.
Do you really think that if the Russians invaded us, and a bunch of Red Dawn types took up arms against them, that we’d be grateful to the Russians if they only killed a handful of our citizens for each Red Dawner they took out? Really?
“I’m so thankful that you’ve killed the recalcitrant Americans! Thanks for letting me keep one of my children, too! I welcome our liberating Russians! Here’s some chocolates.”
I think you’d probably sound a little more like the guy in the second video at this link, who is the brother of the Reuters photographer:
Okay, you guys are right. Everyone lost a relative, and it was all for no reason because the American military could have performed perfectly but chose not to.
Since when do experienced insurgents stand around in clusters with no weapon preparedness, and dressed in what looks like the most unlikely camouflage I’ve ever seen? Did this group really look as if it was preparing an attack on ground troops? Oh, and with a couple of weapons between 20 of them.
The answer to that is another question: how in the hell would they have known that? They didn’t see the children from the chopper. They saw a van picking up a wounded man and assumed “dead bodies and weapons”, an assumption which must have been made by extensive previous experience in dealing with these situations.
The insurgents apparently regularly try to recover any wounded/dead compatriots as well as any weapons they can, presumably to re-integrate people and weapons back into their group.
They were moving. And I’m not sure anyone is actually calling them insurgents, rather, that the American helo pilots had good reason to believe that they were.
And they were armed. Not all of them, but some of them.
What uniform do you expect most insurgents in Iraq were wearing in 2007 (or today for that matter)? I remember seeing a video of a guy wearing a black tee shirt and jeans pop up and fire an RPG at a Humvee.
As to moving in groups…again, why do you think they they don’t do this? Why would they NOT do this? Do you have any EVIDENCE that insurgents don’t move in this manner, or dress in this manner?
I doubt most of them were insurgents because most of them were unarmed. I can’t see why 10 guys would run around assaulting US troops when they only have 2-3 weapons between them, it just doesn’t make much sense.
I agree with you on the clothes at least. If you’re an insurgent, the last thing you want is some kind of army style camo. In a city of millions of people the best camouflage you’re going to find is street clothes.
Well, my point earlier was we don’t know what these guys were. They could have simply been armed people who were living in the area. It’s a dangerous place, after all, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Iraqi men who aren’t involved in either side have AK-47’s in their closet (at one point Saddam et al were handing the things out like water, after all, shortly after the second invasion…plus, there has got to be boat loads of the things lying about from the various fights). They could have been some kind of body guards. Or, the reporters might have been embedded with a group of insurgents…or a group of AQ…or even a group of local militia. We just don’t know.
We also don’t know just how many of them were armed…or what all they were armed with. I don’t think the video sheds much light on this, and I still have never gone to that link from the GQ thread, so not really sure what all it says about what was found after US ground troops got to the area.
I don’t believe any of them were actually insurgents. And as for their clothing, it seemed more suitable for a trip to the market place than it did for going out and raising hell with the enemy, had they been insurgents.
Well, if I was one, I’d at least want something to cover my face if I was going into a battle-zone. Non tight-fitting clothing and maybe something to carry extra ammo and other equipment in, would be handy.
Who knows, but even if we do, invariably someone will claim that since they weren’t convinced of their existence in the video that any weapons found/photographed at the scene in the aftermath were planted by US forces.
You could also paint a target on your shirt with the phrase “I am an insurgent” under it in bright letters. Most street fighters value the anonymity of looking like everybody else. They’re not fighting pitched battles.