And that is why my opinion differs from yours. As witnessed by the Veterans Against War movement, not all combat veterans think alike either.
Collateral Murder
- Thread starter JBeee
- Start date
I saw this on another website (inhabited mostly by Americans whose politics range the spectrum but are mostly "liberal"). I didn't watch the 38 minute video, just the 17 minute version. I can't describe my emotions in watching it save to say they weren't pleasant: I don't know how to really be more specific right now. My take from the short video.
We can go back and rehash the same arguments that have gone on for 7 years, since Bush ordered the invasion, but I have a hard time faulting the soldiers involved in this.
I saw something suspiciously like rifle shapes in the hands of guys around the 3:40-4:00 of the shortened video. People can claim there were no RPGs, just cameras but there was way too much stuff on too many people, being carried like rifles, not mics/booms/extentions for me to buy the whole "they were all unarmed" line. I can't fault the pilots/crew/observers for coming to a conclusion that the men on the ground were hostile. They were in communication and relaying the data they had over the radio, and were acting according to orders (i.e. the whole asking permission to engage thing).
If reporters were with armed insurgents, well, thats the risk they took to try and get their big story and all the awards and accolades. They took a gamble and lost.
The van, who knows? They could have been completely innocent and being good samaritans or they could have been more insurgents. We can sit here and say "why weren't there warning shots?" and **** but the bottom line is soldiers are trained to kill the enemy in combat. Hesitation gets them dead (thus I don't fault them for messing around with image enhancing software for this very reason). Listening to them, you can tell their blood was up, they were excited, they were aggressive but they were doing their jobs, within their defined parameters. Soldiers aren't cops.
We can go back and rehash the same arguments that have gone on for 7 years, since Bush ordered the invasion, but I have a hard time faulting the soldiers involved in this.
I saw something suspiciously like rifle shapes in the hands of guys around the 3:40-4:00 of the shortened video. People can claim there were no RPGs, just cameras but there was way too much stuff on too many people, being carried like rifles, not mics/booms/extentions for me to buy the whole "they were all unarmed" line. I can't fault the pilots/crew/observers for coming to a conclusion that the men on the ground were hostile. They were in communication and relaying the data they had over the radio, and were acting according to orders (i.e. the whole asking permission to engage thing).
If reporters were with armed insurgents, well, thats the risk they took to try and get their big story and all the awards and accolades. They took a gamble and lost.
The van, who knows? They could have been completely innocent and being good samaritans or they could have been more insurgents. We can sit here and say "why weren't there warning shots?" and **** but the bottom line is soldiers are trained to kill the enemy in combat. Hesitation gets them dead (thus I don't fault them for messing around with image enhancing software for this very reason). Listening to them, you can tell their blood was up, they were excited, they were aggressive but they were doing their jobs, within their defined parameters. Soldiers aren't cops.
Tell me about it! If only reporters would use a little more commonsense, and morons didn't bring their kids to war zones eh?
As an informed observer, my life lesson is: Don't trust the US military. It's a completely backwards society where committing and covering up these kinds of things, as well as utterly lying about how your family member soldier died, are completely acceptable.
I never said it was. What I said was...
You once claimed to be a fighter pilot, yes or no?
If so....
How long does a fighter pilot have to analyze data?
And yes I am qualified to criticize what you do or do not know. As exampled by my correcting your erroneous assertion. You post it, it can and will be critiqued. Suck it up buttercup.
If you actually believe that, then you are uninformed. It is true, this is a sad lose of life, it is true, the US military should not have covered it up. But, your extremism, is over the top, and only highlights more pressing you issues you must face.
Personally, I don't think I'm the extreme one here. Rather I think it's a pretty extreme position to fly Apache helicopters into some city and fire at random people, just because you think those people may or may not be insurgantsan and thus a threat. Every fiber of my humanity is saying, "Yeah, that Apache helicopter stuff is the extremist stuff and you're doing the only sane thing my condemning it in the strongest possible terms."
Again you don't understand. The pilots and gunners in those helicopters obviously had time to loiter and talk about what they should or shouldn't do. In a jet fighter, a speck on the horizon can grow into an airplane and be past you in a few seconds. Jet fighters can and do close on each other in excess of twenty five miles a minute. There is little room to compare the two vehicles.
Well, there are quite easily visible weapons at 3:40, the reporter playing peekaboo around the corner with camera in hand, is suspicious at best. I can easily see how a pilot and gunner in a state of constant defense, would translate that into a threat. But then again, I don't filter what my mind takes in with any preconceived ideology. Your post, and subsequent posts clearly indicate you do.
Wow, this comment clearly shows a detachment from reality.
And every fibre of my being is saying this conversation will go nowhere. I'm heading to the fridge to get a tomato, I honestly feel it is more capable of objective observation then your post would indicate about you.
I understand completely. You won't answer all the questions and you wish to obfuscate the issue.
You can try and obfuscate all you want. I never compared the two vehicles. I compared the operation of them in a hostile area, and how that would determine how a pilot would be forced to analyze and process a plethora of data in mere seconds.
True, they were circling the hostiles, or loitering as you put it. They were also watching roof tops around them, they were also watching gauges, they were also flying a helo, they were also communicating.
All this adds up, and if fail to see the correlation, then your opinion lacks subsatnce.
Frankly, the helicopter pilots and the people who ordered them to do that are the ones with serious issues. Keep in mind, I'm just speaking words on some message board. They (the pilots and the commanders) got to point in their mental state where they said, "You know what? I'm going to fly this death machine into a city and shoot at things. There definatly will not be any negative consequences that will dissuade me from taking this course of action."
A person with a flying death machine is inherently crazier than the person commenting on their use of it.
A person with a flying death machine is inherently crazier than the person commenting on their use of it.
