The Alchemist on 7/4/2010 at 04:07

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It's really conflicting for me. I am really against war usually. I was/am against this war as well. But a lot of the videos that I've seen that criticize the soldiers themselves and their actions often seem to miss something to me. Granted, I didn't see the entire video (only up to the shooting and a bit after, I didn't see the aftermath), but honestly from far how can you tell if it's a gun or a fucking poster tube. And the guy at the corner when hes says RPG definitely looks sneaky/hostile, although when they came around the other end it didn't seem that way anymore. I think people forget so often that we are not fighting a structured military complex, we're fighting people that look just like the civilians. These guys were in a deadly craft far away, there should probably be better intelligence when it comes to taking lives of this scale, but it's even worse when you're infantry. You're in this place where everyone seems so hostile and foreign and the bad guys look just like the not-wanting-to-kill-you people, and basically anyone can be straddling an AK. And I dont pretend to be an armchair quarterback on this either, I am open to being dead fucking wrong, but two of my best friends are in the military, and have served extensively, and I've been recounted some hellish stories. These are good people I'm talking about, forced into terrible situations.

Again, I didn't watch the whole video, and I honestly did find the RPG/corner hugging guy suspicious. If the rest of the group seemed nonchalant to you, you haven't seen a lot of these aerial attack videos, because usually the helis/preds are so far that the targets never know what hit them. Unfortunately that also means it's very hard to distinguish between an insurgent and a civilian. And these guys aren't there just to take lives because they enjoy it. They are engaged in warfare, and trying to protect the men that have to walk through those crowds, the ones that will suffer if the guy they shrugged off as a cameraman was actually holding an rpg. It's a state of warfare against an enemy so transparent that sometimes I feel as though we might as well have declared war on the citizenry itself. A place where every other pile of rubble can blow you to bits. My friend told me what it's like to hear mortar rounds all night, slowly getting close to his base.

I don't know, I considered myself such a pacifist treehugging anti-war hippy. And little by little, vicariously, even I don't know right from wrong anymore. It's a quagmire, in every sense of the word. I hope people don't forget that. Don't get me wrong though, this was definitely a tragic mistake, I do not in any way want to downplay the loss of innocent life. And that includes the citizens of the nation as well as casualties that have sprung you all to action, press from other nations. It happens at a larger scale at all times. I fear for everyone involved, the citizens, the soldiers. It's all hell.

Muzman on 7/4/2010 at 07:38

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The thing about corner hugging guy is he's not even hugging the corner. His posture, his manner, the tilt of his head all suggest something else entirely. The corner of the building is just a coincidence.

But, from what I gather, they're on the lookout for insurgents preparing to fire on ground forces (which I don't think they actually could from there). So I'm hoping their visual skills are better than screwing up that idendification and thinking the guy is a threat to them would mean. But that's what people tend to assume is going on.

In any case they're in too much of a hurry to fire when they round that building. Just the manner of those guys should have caused re-evaluation. I dont think firing an RPG gives a huge exhaust like some things, but I seriously doubt it's normal to have five or six people crowding around when you let one off.

In the long video it's fairly plain there's two things going on and command seems at best hazy on where the Apaches are and who they're shooting at, assuming they working on the incident some distance away. The Apaches think they are too, but it seems they're all wrong. The official line is that they were reacting to being under fire which is probably correct about the genesis of whole thing, but reacting in the wrong place and against the wrong people. Even with all the fog of war latitude one can throw at the situation, the army don't seem to have the complete picture (or they aren't saying).

witherflower on 7/4/2010 at 08:44

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I don't blame the soldiers. What are they- eighteen? Stuck in the middle of a foreign land in
a totally meaningless war (other that financial gain for some, of course) just waiting for something
with a purpose to happen, and with weapons designed to distance its wielder from the reality of
the situation. It's a sure way to fuck people up. And those fucked up young minds are pretty much
on their own when they get back home. Things like that makes me furious- sorry.
:mad:

Swiss Mercenary on 7/4/2010 at 11:31

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Of course, twenty seconds earlier, when the helicopter was facing them, and not around the corner, it was obvious that the guy was not carrying an RPG. It's quite a stretch to mistake the camera for it, unless you assume that he managed to pull one out of his pants in that time.


What I think is far more disturbing, is what happens at 34:30 in the uncut video. After they've circled the building for a few minutes, they fire a missile right as an insurgent with an RPG, I mean, civilian's walking past the building. Nobody says a word, after twiddling their thumbs for a few minutes, nobody considers waiting 15 seconds for him to pass.