You do realize that these people were:
a. In a war zone with weapon-like objects slung over their shoulders.
b. A group of young men walking spread out over a road with one of them pointing around like he was the boss.
c. Being looked at from hundreds (if not thousands) of feet away.
I don’t have 20/20 vision, so maybe someone who does can enlighten me, but could you make out an RPG from hundreds of feet away?
That’s because:
Rewatch the video and try to put yourself in the boots of the guys in the chopper.
And where in all of this do property rights figure into according to you?
The US military is responsible for the accidental killings of innocents. Thus, it must do its best to compensate the families of the victims.
My point is that no one seems to have purposefully killed innocents in the video.
The same war zone, where the same soldiers have to be able to distinguish between insurgents, IP and civilians on a regular basis.
This doesn’t sound very tactically sound, to be honest. This should have been an indication that these men were civilian.
Through the lens of a camera with pretty good resolution, that is usually used to distinguish between targets.
Even giving the benefit of the doubt for the opening rounds, the act of shooting up the two men carrying the wounded man into a van is completely inexcusable and illegal according to U.S. TOE. You can tell that something illegal is going on when the U.S. Army actively covered up the event afterwards.
Let me re-emphasize: In a war zone with weapon-like objects slung over their shoulders.
What makes you think that the majority of insurgents in Iraq are well-trained soldiers?
Did you actually look at the video? Because I did and I understand why the soldiers mistook those civilians for weapon-carrying insurgents.
It’s still murder.
This sounds like one of those bad set-ups for a poor thriller movie. Someone tries to kill you, you injure them, and then you let them get away because the alternative is [possibly] killing them… then, they come back after their injuries have healed and hunt you down.
I doubt it’s illegal to kill someone who is escorting injured insurgents (not soldiers) out of a war zone. The guys in the chopper had to receive permission from some kind of CO before firing.
I know. I never said that it wasn’t. I even said that the US military should be held responsible and it should compensate the families of the victims.
Fine, as long as they don’t use taxpayer money. I’d say it’d be fair if Kyle, the guy who shot the innocent, were forced to pay the victims’ families.
Do property rights not exist in a war zone? If the USA military invades the neighborhood in which I live, do I no longer have the negative right to walk around with an AK-47?
I replied to your post, but apparently someone thought it was a good idea to delete your post before I posted my reply. Why, I do not know. Here is the text of my reply:
That is largely irrelevant. As someone who went through infantry training I can vouch for the fact that you are trained on what you expected to able to distinguish in Iraq and Afghanistan. First of all, AK-47s amongst the civilian population are very common and have to be taken into account during all operations, given that insurgents like to mix themselves amongst civilians for this very reason. Just because one of the subjects under surveillance had a “weapon-like” (a weapon that looks nothing like an AK-47 if you know what one looks like, by the way) object slung over his shoulder is not reason to open fire. Those soldiers are trained to distinguish, as it is a regular part of all combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You are not analyzing the situation within perspective.
Nothing, but they are not idiots. Despite common myth, non-professional insurgents are not tactically-ignorant rabble, which is why they are so difficult to find and kill. I invite you to actually research the subject before passing judgment.
Yes, that is the forward-looking gunnery camera the gunner looks through when targeting subjects. Those crosshairs are there for a reason. It is an Apache combat helicopter; the internet pretty much has the manual for it.
Looks like you didn’t watch the video. Nobody opened fire on that helicopter, which is why the helicopter had to ask for permission before opening fire. The gunner pretty much lied about what he was seeing, or did not take into consideration any of his training… which means he was a new gunner, and I’m not sure I’m willing to believe that.
And, yes, firing on that wounded man and the two unarmed civilians helping him is illegal under U.S TOE, insurgent or not.
Had you paid attention to the video you would have noticed that the gunner said that the wounded man had an RPG in the hand he was actually using to drag himself onto the side of the street. The gunner lied.
You mean ROE. Yes, that is a blatant ROE violation. It’s possible that shooter was lying when he identified the targets as carrying AK47’s just to get permission to fire.
AFAIK, they are used interchangeably.
If you watch the video, you’ll notice that you can’t really see what is slung over the men’s shoulders because of the camera angle, so really all that you can tell is that something is slung over their shoulders. And three of them have something slung over their shoulders.
Yes, I’m sure 20 year olds who maybe have had some experience in poorly-trained conscript armies are very tactically efficient. And I’m also positive that everyone expects those same 20 year olds to walk around in tactically-efficient formation when they do not believe they’re being watched.
I’m not one of those people who thinks that every other military in the world sucks. I’m sure the Republican Guard was a force to reckon with despite poor equipment and that many other countries we might soon be at war with (e.g. DPRK and Iran) have superior professional armies. That said, nobody can expect the conscript portions of their militaries to be tactically proficient, much less a bunch of young insurgents with little or no formal or even informal military training.
Also, assuming that I have not researched this subject now or before is not only wrong, but also extremely presumptuous on your part.
A good way to ignore what I was saying which was that it was difficult if not outright impossible to determine that they were carrying cameras.
I watched the whole 19 minutes twice, actually.
I never claimed that anyone did open fire on the helicopter. It looks like you misread what I said. Try again.
What he saw was men with things slung over their shoulders. I don’t know if you have some kind of 4D vision or something that you can see what people are carrying behind their backs, but clearly the gunner and I are just human beings. When the gunner said he saw people with weapons, the camera was pointed at people with things slung over their shoulders walking towards the camera POV. It really is impossible to tell.
The website is down now so I can’t double check, but from what I recall, the gunner was almost daring the “insurgent” to grab a weapon, since he wanted to end the ordeal and shoot him. But he ultimately did not shoot because he could not make out the insurgent going for any weapon. That’s why he ultimately asked for permission to “disable the vehicle” when the “insurgent” was being carried into the van.
My bad. I deleted because I had responded to the wrong post. It’s reposted though.
Really? If ROE is “rules of engagement” what is TOE?
Insurgents, you know, fire at enemy helicopters, or at least take cover when they spot enemy helicopters. Any moron could tell that they were not insurgents. So please, stop apologizing for them. They are murderers who wanted to kill something, and they did.