abc

Anyone seen this?

Helpfully, given the motive of wikileaks is to unveil the truth about so called war-crimes they released and point you to an editted "make the US military look as suspect as possible" version.

Thoughts?

There is no doubt that in an ideal world this should be absolutely inexcusable, a coalition Apache killing 5 unarmed apparantly civilians.

Mine? There are just too many factors

• Two confirmed sightings of AK47, one confirmed sighting of an RPG-7. Although astonishing quality the gun cam is not perfect and bearing in mind the RPG-7 and AKs it is easy to see why the gunner mistook a journalist' camera (long lense and a shoulder strap) as a weapon.
• One member (possibly RPG man) does take a very pro-active ready-to-engage looking stance behind a building on he final (?) pass
• That is an easy mistake to make anyway, let alone in a time when adrenaline is running high, friends & colleagues have been killed, you are in a warzone and years of training have lead up this moment.
• Maybe on this occasion emotion caused a tragic twist to this story, but thank god the crews showed some restraint: several passes, seeking authorisation to fire and solid communication with ground forces rather than an insurgency style gun-ho attitude.
• Nevertheless it is very apparant that unarmed, probabal civilians, were killed. It is later estabalished that two Rueters photographers were killed.
• It is also apparant that the suspected enemy are reffered to with bad/aggressive language. Whilst this may seem intolerable to us in our completely safe homelands I am positive this is normal in any combat situation.
• Also apparant is the gunner/pilot expressing the fact that he will engage if the wounded man reaches for a weapon. Without knowing that the "enemy" are in fact civilians this is perfectly understandable. Whether you interpret the gunner's language as "wishful" or simply commenting on the situation is up to you.
• Extremely pathetic is the fact that you have to find the very-difficult-to-find "full" version to see the Apaches allegedly firing on the make-shift ambulance wounding several children.
• Nor do you see the ground or air force's response on arrival at the scene. Is it a response sounding of guilt/admittence or remorse?

EDIT: To the unseen, this is footage of a US apache crew allegedly deliberately killing several unarmed Iraqis in Baghdad during the insurgency.

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This is getting repetitive.

TheHunter360

The whole incident itself was a mistake a terrible terrible mistake. Like ABC said it was probably very hard to distinguish whether or not the devices the victims were carrying were weapons or camera equipment. This I understand what I don't understand is why when it was reported in 2007 that the US Military's official statement was two journalists and nine insurgents died during the attack. Incidents like this greatly damage the reputation of the US military and it doesn't help that this incident was swept under the table in hopes that it would fade away.

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Alphabuster187

Is there footage of this? If so, I haven't seen it... but I have seen others, I posted one here somewhere where an Apache takes out three "insurgents" that were "armed" and acting in a suspicious manner.

One thing to keep in mind, a lot of these engagements happen at night or with low light and at distances of over 1.5 miles making it difficult to makes a 100% call as to whether the people on the ground have weapons or not.

Do you err and later apologize, while potentially saving more lives or do you not engage and potentially allowing for for troops to die? Hard choices.

EDIT:

Found it:

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TheHunter360

Wrong video alpha check WikiLeaks for the video.

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Alphabuster187

I know, this is one I was referring to that I saw, looked for it and posted it.

Thanks, I'll check it out in a bit.

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fenny

i am in no way saying it was ok what the heli crew did put this is how i see it.


Ur in a war zone and u "see" people with weapons below, now if uve had ur collegues/mates killed by iraqis in general then ur gonna be pissed and want revenge for ur friends, so i can understand why they want them dead and why they didnt care about killing them as they are seeing it as a eye for a eye

o and by the way the vids can be seen here http://www.collateralmurder.com/

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