On http://wikileaks.org/ , the video they just posted is just...really fluffed up, to put it lightly. I'm not one to post inflammatory things, but in this instance, I'll make an exception. I don't know what kind of sick SOB's want to shoot innocent, unarmed, and injured people, and it's AMAZING that the children in the van weren't killed. The video's pretty graphic, and the behavior of the soldiers is, to say the least, sadistic.

They're probably the kind of people that tortured small animals as kids, and would have been serial murderers in civilian life. (Not saying this for all soldiers, just these in the video, and any like them.)

So their non profit, they post a video on a website, and they say it costs $600,000 ?

This is just another money grab by someone with some real stuff.

I suppose a group of people who've spent the last 10 years killing civilians probably wouldn't have much sympathy :P

AoS: Some of those civilians are humanitarians, who keep me from accomplishing my goals, even if I'm a tyrant, fascist, or dictator... ;)

But, yeah, the fact they tried to cover it up, even if they were sloppy about it, is kinda appalling.

i will agree that this was a horrible tragedy. dut do you honestly think that the 2 helicopter pilots intended to kill 2 journalists and hurt 2 kids? you really think they went to work that day saying "hey joe, lets go out there and murder some civilians?"

i don't. a group of about 9-10 military aged males, in a combat zone, with what looks to be weapons, and what would you of done? i mean really.

especially at the end, when they zoomed in on the video and pointed out the 2 children? you are in a combat zone, you think that you just killed 9-10 insurgents, and not 5 min after you did, a van comes up to what you think is get the wounded and weapons. you are not going to be focused on whats in the front seat, you are going to be focused on the whole picture.

I'm in no way condoning what was done here, but you have to look at it from both sides. yes there have been some instances of deliberate brutality in this war, but that happens in ANY conflict, for the last 10,000 years, there just weren't live video feeds and 24/7 news services to cover the atrocities for the pact 10,000 years.

i believe that what happened in this limited viewpoint film, the American pilots acted within their rules of engagement, got authorization every time they were going to fire, and there wasn't much more that could of been done. just a really tragic case of wrong place at the wrong time

what MrFord said

I'm not even going to comment on this crap.

Yes, except the pilots deliberately lied about stuff so that they could kill more people. The guys from the van weren't gathering weapons, they were trying to help a wounded civilian. And just because it's happened "for the last 10,000 years" doesn't make it OK now.

If anyone wonders why the people in that, or any country, hate us, this video is a perfect example. Not to mention, the people who should be held responsible tried to cover it up. "Oh! They were all enemy combatants! We have no proof a civilian was killed, as far as I know." Bullfluff. There's no accountability anymore. People in this country don't care if anyone dies, as long as they can keep their cell phones, fast food, and easy lifestyles.

Its war, people die. When people rutiely use civillians as shields - tolerance thresholds increase and civillians get killed. To the best of my knowledge the US military never strapped explosive vests on a couple of young retarded girls, sent them into a crowded market, and blew up 70+ civillians.

Going into Iraq was a criminal act and GW ought to be prosecuted for it. A couple of whirlybird pilots splashing a van full of armed men who were unfortunately probably not combatants . . . its war, people die.

@ archaic

"To the best of my knowledge the US military never strapped explosive vests on a couple of young retarded girls, sent them into a crowded market, and blew up 70+ civillians. "

Instead, they strap bombs to airplanes and drop them on people where there is 0% chance there won't be "collateral damage" unless you drop it in the middle of an empty, lifeless desert. The "smart" bombs we use in Iraq make up some ridiculously low number like 20% of the ordnance. Most of the bombs we drop are "dumb".

---------
@mrford

"do you honestly think that the 2 helicopter pilots intended to kill 2 journalists and hurt 2 kids? you really think they went to work that day saying "hey joe, lets go out there and murder some civilians?""

Remember the 14 year old Iraqi girl who was raped then her carcass burned and her entire family shot? Do you think they accidentally came across her, gang raped her, shot her and her family then burn the house down?

Some people are just naturally assholes. If these guys covered up what they did instead of coming clean and being honest about it, then why the f*** are you defending them? That sort of trash needs to get prosecuted in a criminal court.

What creeps me out the most are the pilots. They seem to have little, if any, regard for human life. It's just a game to them. And don't feed my that "They watched their buddies die" crap. Someone invades your country, what are you going to do, sit back and let them kill you?

War brings out the best in us all - remember when the Al Quaeda in Iraq caught that British woman that was working for Dr.s without borders - treating injured Iraqi's - and they made a spectacle of her public execution? Yeah, your right some people are just assholes.

I never said I was defending anybody, I simply said that trying to paint all of the American soldiers as kill crazed animals (as portrayed by AoS) shows very little grasp of war. The decision making process for a soldier that is being shot at every day is not the same as the process used sitting at a monitor eating cheez-its. US soldiers wear uniforms, their enemy does not. Guerilla warfare entails a great deal of collateral damage, if they don't want their civillians killed - put on a fluffing uniform and buy some tanks. If they want to use suicide bombers as a main battle tactic, we will be forced to shoot first and ask questions later. That is the way it is.

As I clearly stated, the Bush administration (IM not so Humble Opinion) purpatrated a war crime. Soldiers just did their jobs, some did it well and some not so well. The US certainly does noy hold a monopoly on brutality.

I completely support our troops, just not the ones that ARE crazed animals. Some people should just not be given weapons. And the enemy in Iraq isn't a cohesive, singular group, they don't care if civilians die, like we would. Or at least, should.

My point is that doing things like this is what's going to get people to join militias and terrorist groups. Just try to say that people wouldn't do the same here, if our country was occupied by a large group of foreigners. "Just doing my job" doesn't work for ex-nazi's, and it shouldn't fly with us, either. If your commander tells you what to do, that's one thing. If they tell you something unreasonable, you can refuse to do it.

But when you lie to them, so that you can get all trigger-happy on innocent people, like the ones in the video, you deserve to be curb stomped, "serving your country" or not.

After more than half a decade living in post-war/post-conflict countries working to rebuild collapsed governments, I think blaming the people involved in this situation is rather petty and pointless, not to mention short sighted.

Collateral damage is a part of war, no matter how unfortunate, painful, tragic, or uncomfortable it is. This was obviously a horrible scenario, but it's also very clear that the pilots did not act on civilians with malicious intent; they acted on civilians presenting suspicious activity (obviously from a good distance away given the image quality) that represented a repeatedly presidented threat to their lives and the lives of others in the area.

They very clearly state in the audio they saw what appeared to be several weapons on individuals that shouldn't have been carrying them, and acted according to their training and orders - even if they were mistaken in what they saw. The ground controllers that gave authorization to fire could only trust the pilot's judgment in that situation, and also acted according to their training for the situation at hand. When the van arrived, it presented an additional threat to what was perceived to be a terminated threat -I don't believe anyone can honestly for one second tell me that you could actually tell from the video the gunner was looking at that there were children in the front seat of that van...even when they zoomed in on it and pointed them out with arrows, it still wasn't a clear image.

I don't take much offense to the disregard for the deaths they inflicted either, as at the time, they thought they had just killed people who were trying to kill them or their fellow soldiers. Had they KNOWN that they had just killed innocent civilians, children, and foreign journalists, I'm pretty sure you would have seen an entirely different attitude from all involved.



So far as the military covering it up - understandable, even if not ok. Firstly, I don't think it was so much a cover-up as it was the military making sure they got their official messages right. Instead of saying one thing right away and having to come back and say something different later, thereby opening themselves up to even more criticism (standard operating procedure for government programs/offices), they chose to withhold official announcements until they had all the facts. Secondly, this is a PR and diplomatic nightmare for them, as people will tend to do exactly what we're doing now by blowing it way the hell out of proportion because it makes us uncomfortable to think that our country did something like this. Not to mention the fallout to diplomatic relations in Iraq which are just now starting to progress at a decent speed - the loss of which would = further bloodshed and violence which would make 30 bodies pale in comparison.

I think this was a horrible tragedy, but at the end of the day it was a simple mistake made by people who are placed in extremely stressful situations where their lives depend on being able to act before their enemy. As bad as this was, it could have just as easily been the other way around and it actually WAS an RPG strapped over that guy's shoulder - then we'd be mourning the death of 2 pilots and 2 gunners instead of 12-15 (not 30 as you originally said) civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'm sorry, maybe I'm just over-empathetic, but I just don't think something like this should be written off as simply collateral damage. I know it's happened before, and will happen again, but like I said, it's exactly the kind of thing that gives our enemies fuel to recruit new soldiers.

This is the kind of thing that would probably go unnoticed- until a really big fluff up happened. I'm not saying those pilots went in there wanting to blow the crap out of innocent people, but that's what they did. And if the video quality for them isn't enough to be able to identify what the situation is, then they shouldn't do anything. Even 1 innocent life lost is too much. Anyone can say it's inevitable, until it happens to them.

Imagine being in one of those guys' family. "Well, y'see, your dad was standing there, and we THOUGHT his camera was an RPG, so we killed him. Well, actually, we only injured him, but then a van came and some guys got out to help him, and then we killed all of them. Because we THOUGHT they MIGHT have weapons. So, you can see our viewpoint."

I know when this happened several years ago in Bosnia, EUFOR used it as a catalyst to revamp their policies for engagement of potential hostiles. I would hope the same happens from situations like this in Iraq.

Just like with the US about Iraq (and sadly, most of the rest of the world too), there are enough misconceptions and people willing to believe whatever they're told about the other side, they don't really need things like this to fuel recruiting...although that's not to say it won't be used (completely out of context, of course) for those purposes.

The loss of innocent lives is terrible, but it is the price of war. War is messy, bloody, and unbiased - if you really want to blame someone, blame the insurgents that hide amongst civilians, show an utter disregard for human life (either the soldiers, or their own country men) and take pot shots at soldiers that are trying their best not to kill anyone who's not a combatant, forcing the military to engage them while they're surrounded by innocents. THAT is what led to this situation, NOT blood thirsty pilots or a big evil military.

I agree that we have to take precautions to avoid unnecessary loss of life wherever possible. However, as I said before, had that been a weapon, and had they waited to fire, it would have been 4 dead Americans. Since they had no way of knowing for sure until it was too late, they referred to their training - which in all honesty, just can't predict a situation like this. It is emotionless, standardized procedure made to ensure that everyone is following the same set of rules....because at the end of the day it's those policies that generally SAVE innocent lives in these situations. In this case, the victims were just extremely unfortunate to have presented a very suspicious profile that fit the standards for a hostile target.

I also feel bad for their families, but my hope is that some day they come to understand that as tragic as this was, it's just one of those situations where you can't directly blame anyone. Quite frankly, I feel just as bad for the pilots who will have to live with their mistake on their consciouses for the rest of their lives - for me, that would be a terrible prospect.

I saw a post from a journalist who was actually there, and he said one of the soldiers on the ground who was carrying one of the girls is haunted by it, so I know it's not exactly the soldiers fault. And while it is partly the insurgents' faults for hiding amongst civilians, it still doesn't justify it. Even if those guys had been armed to the teeth, who is to say we're right in sending in choppers to cut them down? Sure, we may be saving other people's lives, but again, who are we to say who should live and die?

We're not making things better over there. I mean, we *may* be right now, but what's gonna happen when we leave? Those aren't the kind of places that just magically turn into paradise over night. Every time the marines clear somewhere in Afghanistan, the taliban seem to just waltz back in and take over, if they feel like it. Sometimes we can get the locals to take up arms and keep them out, but unless we intend on baby sitting every godamned combat zone over there for the rest of time, this is all an exercise in futility.

Nothing turns to paradise overnight, that's a given. But the efforts ARE working, even if slowly. Until you've been involved in the process, it's very hard to comprehend just how time consuming/complex it really is to do some of this stuff. Heck, it's been nearly 20 years since the US first set foot in Bosnia, and they're STILL in the process of rebuilding things and routing out war criminals there and in the rest of the region. When I left, there was still at least another decade worth of work to do before Bosnia could even apply for EU membership due to all their internal problems.

The trick to making things "better" in Iraq isn't getting rid of the Taliban/Al Qaeda/Etc, you are right in your observation that that is impossible right now, it's convincing the Iraqi's that they're better off without them around and that they're able to do things on their own. When that happens, the Taliban/Al Qaeda/Etc won't have anywhere left to hide.

While it's all good that we're helping people and whatnot, we have enough problems at home. We can't help everyone. Honestly, our economy wouldn't be so fluffty right now if we didn't keep shoveling money into the middle east.

That's a little trickier topic. In general I agree with you, though. I think that a certain amount of foreign aid in today's global economy is necessary and benefits the US, but the Middle East is definitely disproportionately funded, even given that there's a war going on there. Anything to keep the Commies on their side of the world, I guess.... :-/

True that. I don't know where to begin with what's wrong in the US presently, but I do know fighting a multi-front war against an enemy that blends in with civilians and is religion based doesn't help.

In the very way you guys speak, you dehumanize them.

Why do you think I put "collateral damage" in quotes? Because it's a simple euphemism to describe "side-murder", to make it more palatable and easier to accept.

You can't "damage" a human. We are talking about human beings. No matter how many times you say it was "tragic" (tragic--as in an old Greek Comedy/Tragedy?), it won't bring those people back to life. Your platitudes and insincere declarations of sorrow are useless and if anything just go to show how little you actually care.

Does fluff like that happen in war? Sure, it does. But who went to war against whom? It was AMERICA that started the war, not Iraq. It was America that occupied them, not Iraq. It was America that sent people to Guantanamo Bay, not Iraq. It was America that routinely kills people and calls it "tragic".

Yes, these things happen in war, but war itself is repugnant. Deluding yourself by saying the soldiers are just doing their job is to absolve them of guilt and poor judgment.

The fact of the matter is, they should be *certain* that the people they are attacking are "combatants" (<---America doesn't recognize this in Iraq or Afghanistan, by the way, which made the helicopter pilot's decision rather easy since there is no defined enemy). How can you be certain when you're in a helicopter and you only *think* they are passing weapons and are guilty (guilty of defending their homeland against an occupying power)?

But then you will retort: "But TAN, how could we ever be certain of anything in war? If that was the case, then we would never kill anybody." And my answer to that is, don't start the f***ing wars in the first place!

War is for stupid children stuck in adult bodies who get a kick out of exercising absolute power over the lives of other human beings. Simply being in the military is sadistic.

You aren't doing America a favor, you are doing yourself a favor by murdering a stranger that had a family, friends. Kids.

Disgusting filth the justifications are.

As a side note, just so the douches who cough in bathroom stalls don't get their panties in a bunch I mean this for ALL militaries worldwide, not just the American one. War is silly and I get sick of hearing excuses from people about how "this happens" in war.

i dont have time for a lengthy post like id like to put up, but untill i have time, let me leave you with this


i completely understand where you are coming from AoS and TAN. im by no means condemning this act. but when you start prosecuting pilots and soldiers for acts like this which were clearly not malicious in initial intent, what example do you set for the rest of your forces?

if you prosecute a combatant every time a civilian is killed, ir run through the higher ranks like a steam roller, what kind of chain of command will you have left?

think if it from a logistical point of view as well. you two are thinking too narrow. if a pilot is too careful, and second guesses engaging plain dressed group of men, then later in the day that same group of men ambush a supply convoy or a medivac, should you blame the pilot for not killing them? which way do you lean on that fence?

its a tough call, and i can remember an example where early in the war, the 1st marine division was holed up on a main highway awating rolling orders, and there were refugees streaming down the road fleeing bagdad. all the sudden a white truck, with what looked like red daimonds that had been removed from the pahnels (for you that dont know thats the symbol for saddams henchmen that went around and carried out his deeds, kinda likr the SS of hitler)

they were 8 military aged men in the truck, but none of them were clearly armed, so they had to let them go. 4 hours later, those 78 men attacked a supply convoy killing 6-7 marines. whos to blame in that case?

when you start putting blame on the front line solider, and holding him accountable for EVERY mistake he makes, they start second guessing things, and thats when you get killed.

Well, I'll just say that I'm not sure the higher military command has any idea what they're doing. And while you could say the pilot didn't have "malicious intent" in the fact that he assumed he was shooting at enemy combatants, he lied to get around the ROE. And he definitely sounded malicious when he begged the injured man to pick up a gun, even if it wasn't initial. He should still be punished.

And like TAN said, it's not like Iraq invaded us. We're the ones terrorizing them. The insurgents are, too, but as has been pointed out, it's not like we're fighting a cohesive army that we can win against. We could be there for the next 1000 years, and they'll still find a way to keep going.

I'm not understanding how the pilot lied? He requested permission to fire on what he thought was an armed enemy combatant...how is that illegal/lying?

TAN - I think if you solely look at when the US occupied Iraq, you're missing several decades of history that led up to the current state of affairs, and using short sited history to prove your point. Saying it's X's fault or Y's fault at this point is just downright foolish, to be completely honest.

He claimed that the people from the van were gathering wounded AND weapons, which the ROE say is a hostile act. Those people didn't touch any weapons, they tried to help the injured reporter. The pilot simply wanted to fire his penis-compensator to get even with, in his delusional mind, people who were trying to kill the ground troops. He also exaggerates the number of people carrying AK-47's, which isn't illegal to do in Iraq.

Long story short, this guy wanted to kill somebody, bent the truth to do it, killed at least 2 innocent people, injured two children, and probably won't get in any trouble over it. Mission accomplished, America!

We're talking about Iraq *now*, not several decades of history. If you want to go back several decades of history, Saddam was our right-hand man. Either way, it's irrelevant.

Of course I'll say it's X's fault, because X in this case happens to have initiated the war on its own. You think Y is a guilty party by somehow inviting an occupation upon themselves?

Y has no blame in this issue, it is completely the fault of X. In most cases, there is no black and white, but in this case it is pretty clear who was the aggressor and who wasn't.

I honestly can't believe that there are people here defending the American soldiers in this video clip. It's disgusting really. It's blatantly ovious that they were trigger happy. Not once did I see any object that looked like an AK-47 or an RPG. Not 1 shot was fired from the group on the ground towards the helicopter or any other such object.

The van pulled up to help out a wounded human being, and save his life. Instead the people helping were shot along with their kids.

Sickening, absolutely sickening.

TAN - How can you ignore 4 decades of previous history between two countries that are currently at war and say they're not relevant? That's like saying that the US colonists were wrong for separating themselves from the British because the Brits hadn't done anything wrong to them THAT day.....

But yeah.....wrapping up the whole genocide, human rights abuse/violations stuff, development of illegal weapons and all that was really just a bonus when Bush woke up one morning and said "Golly, who should we invade today?". I mean, are you honestly that ignorant, or just trying way too hard to prove a point? War is never caused by just 1 party....ever.


AoS - if they were gathering bodies of people who were previously assumed to be carrying weapons, wouldn't they then in fact have also been assumed to be gathering weapons then? I mean, the weapons that the dead bodies were supposed to be carrying didn't just up and walk away once the firing started, did they? I see that as an awful huge stretch to place blame on someone....especially when this is a commonly known set of events to the US military where insurgents DO come out and gather up weapons before ground troops arrive so they can be used to fight another day.

If they were honestly as "trigger happy" as you guys like to say, why would they have bothered to wait for ROE approval and just claim that they were fired on instead?



Hellz X, I'm gonna assume you've never been in a situation where someone wanted to/was trying to kill you, and your post is based on a lack of understanding about not only how it is to be in that situation, and another lack of understanding about how soldiers are instructed to identify/classify targets. I'm also gonna go ahead and assume that you have not the foggiest idea what a RPG or AK-47 looks like on a video screen from several miles away, or what it would look like in a collapsed state. So the soldiers didn't wait for the folks they thought were insurgents to fire first....would you prefer that the pilots/gunners had waited until an RPG WAS fired and one of those helicopters was shot down???? I'm not sayin it's not horribly sad that these people died...but had the situation been a little different (as it all too commonly is in Iraq/Afghanistan), we could just as easily sitting here talking about how sad it is that 2 helicopters and their full compliment of crew was shot down because they were unable to engage hostile, armed combatants.

Saying "they had to know it wasn't a weapon" is just downright foolish....these guys were looking at a black and white image from what looks to be at least a couple of miles away....as I said before, if you can stand there and tell me you can distinguish children, weapons, cameras, etc....I'm gonna stand right here and tell you you're full of fluff...there's just no way those guys could have known if that was a camera or an RPG - it was a large black metal object strapped to an Iraqi's back in a group of people who looked like they were carrying weapons. Even in the blown up images that the editors of the video used to make it look like you could see these things, it was STILL grainy and indistinguishable.


To be fair, I'm not defending the soldiers - they made a grievous mistake, and one that I hope the whole US military learns from, and makes changes because of, as I think things like this could be avoided in the future. But I'm also not reactionary enough to say it was anything more than a mistake....a mistake that plenty of other people would have made had they been in those same shoes. You guys standing here bashing them for it is nothing more than high and mighty BS based on absolutely no understanding of the situation they were placed in, and what their training dictates they do with it.

I'll at least give AoS credit though, it's nice to find one person around here who's capable of having an intelligent conversation/debate without insulting anyone.

I should also say I agree wholeheartedly that the US is by no means innocent in this conflict, or in the way things are done in general. I think the US has done some terrible things in the past, including actions taken in Iraq and Afghanistan, and including the way goals were accomplished in Iraq or what some of the underlying goals were. That's not to say that I think the initial plan wasn't also based on good reasons for doing what was done....just that the ends don't justify the means, and that some of the alterior motives were less than honorable. I just don't happen to agree in this situation that this is one of those cases.

The US military loves making mistakes I guess. Just like the time a couple years ago they bombed a group of Canadian soldiers doing training exercises in Afghanistan. They seen gunfire and just started dropping bombs.

Could you not tell how trigger happy and exicted they were to shoot down those people? They were eager, ignorant and naive towards the entire situation. Not to mention telling their superiors false data over the radio to get the "OK" faster.

PS - No one was trying to kill the people in the helicopter, so where the hell does "I'm gonna assume you've never been in a situation where someone wanted to/was trying to kill you" come from?!

PPS - I know what an RPG and an AK-47 are.

You think there's not thousands of people in Iraq right now that wouldn't have loved to take a pot shot at a gunship w/ an RPG if given the chance hellz? If I'm in a helicopter flying over Baghdad on a security patrol and I see someone carrying what looks like a RPG to me, you better believe I'm gonna shoot them before they get the chance to shoot me once I get clearance....cuz anyone in Iraq wearing civilian clothes and carrying a RPG is more than likely someone who wants to kill me. How are the pilots from the video supposed to help the fact that from that distance a camera and some filming equipment look way too similar to weapons to risk their own lives? How could the pilots help that the intelligence ladder that is supposed to report friendlies in the area to aircraft in the air broke down and didn't inform them that those were potential friendlies?

In retrospect it may have been an over-reaction to the facts presented, but given the situation they were in, I can't say I would have done anything differently...and I most definitely do not have a hard-on for killing foreigners. Hindsight is 20/20, but try imagining yourself in their shoes without all the retrospect though....can you honestly say you wouldn't take the actions available to you to protect your own life if you saw a person that appeared to be preparing an offensive against you?

It's not like the guys woke up that morning and said to themselves, "Hey, let's go kill us some totally innocent towelies today!", it was a simple error in judgment by some people who wanted to make sure they got home to see their families instead of being blown out of the sky for giving someone the benefit of the doubt when they shouldn't....

Of course they were happy about the kills - they thought they just killed enemy combatants. How much you wanna bet their reactions changed more than slightly when they found out they killed innocent civilians? I'm not saying that's how I'd behave in the situation, but I can totally understand why they reacted the way they did...and I wouldn't fault them for it unless their macabre attitudes didn't change once they found out the mistake they had made.

I also didn't ask if you knew what an AK-47 and RPG ARE, I'm pretty sure that just about anyone w/ Google can figure out that much in about 10 seconds. What I asked was if you thought you could identify one accurately on a video screen from a couple of miles away...I know I sure as hell couldn't tell in the shot from above what was strapped over that guy's shoulder - nor could I tell that there were children in that van, even when they digitally zoomed in on the van in the post edit.

Sorry man, the military is human just like the rest of us....mistakes are going to get made. And when mistakes get made with live ammo/explosives, people die that shouldn't. That doesn't mean that the whole military is evil by any means....I'm sorry that doesn't fit into some idealistic model of how war can only involve the death of bad guys and heroes dying with honor to protect their countrymen, but that's how the real world works.

"How can you ignore 4 decades of previous history between two countries that are currently at war and say they're not relevant?"

Because the ROOT cause of the conflict has nothing to do with that history. It has to do with fabricated/false/faulty evidence against Iraq.

Don't forget that one of the original, main reasons for invading Iraq was because they allegedly had "ties" to Al Qaeda, which anyone with a brain knows is BS. Only idiot conservatives convince themselves that the reasons for invading Iraq weren't contrived lies.

40 years of history is meaningless because it is NOT relevant to the issue at hand. Explain to me how supporting Saddam against Iran is applicable to America's casus belli against Iraq? I would be VERY interested if you could elaborate on that, because if you can't, your entire point is moot. Good luck!


"That's like saying that the US colonists were wrong for separating themselves from the British because the Brits hadn't done anything wrong to them THAT day...."

No, because US colonists were continually under oppression day-to-day from the British. Are you trying to say that Iraq was oppressing America day-to-day for the past 40 years? LOL

What you are actually saying is thus:

Long ago, Melos was a colony of Athens, or used to be. Sparta went to war with Athens. Sparta went to attack Melos, and Melos basically said "We may have been an Athenian colony, but now we don't want to take sides, we just want to be neutral." And IRRESPECTIVE of that history, Sparta said, "fluff that, your very presence undermines our authority. The strong do what they want and the weak do what they must."

You see the relation now? Melos' history with Athens meant fluff-all. It was their very neutrality that was the problem. That was the ONLY issue.

Capice? Or do I still need to spell it out to you how past Iraqi-US relations have no bearing on the American casus belli for war (aside from maybe 10 years back into the past with George Bush Sr.--but that's only if you believe in the "revenge" theory).


"I mean, are you honestly that ignorant, or just trying way too hard to prove a point? War is never caused by just 1 party....ever."

Tell me how Iraq declared war against America or otherwise affected America AT ALL. And don't bring up the "past", because US-Iraqi relations were just rosy up until Desert Storm when Iraq tried to go for Kuwait. Or are you saying that Kuwait is suddenly the reason we went to war in 2003?

If you are going to try to prove that I am wrong, then prove it! Don't just use retardedly irrelevant metaphors and call me ignorant.

TAN you are essentially 100% right about Iraq (and I almost never disagree with NOW3), the US government was the entitiy that completely disregarded 40 years of history when they decided to invade Iraq. 8 years in, everybody in the US, even the hard core red-staters all pretty much agree that invading Iraq was one of the stupidest things the US has done since Vietnam. The only people that liked the Iraq war were the folks that put Bush into power in the first place - the oil companies. I once had access to how much 'Big Oil' profited from each dead US soldier in Iraq, I lost it but it was in the ballpark of $12M per dead GI.

You said (paraphrased):

"It was America that routinely kills people and alls it "tragic". . . The fact of the matter is, they should be *certain* that the people they are attacking are "combatants" (<---America doesn't recognize this in Iraq or Afghanistan, by the way, which made the helicopter pilot's decision rather easy since there is no defined enemy). How can you be certain when you're in a helicopter and you only *think* they are passing weapons and are guilty (guilty of defending their homeland against an occupying power)? . . . War is for stupid children stuck in adult bodies who get a kick out of exercising absolute power over the lives of other human beings. Simply being in the military is sadistic."

Are you saying that we were not justified entering Afghanistan?

So what should we do then after the African Embassies, after the USS Cole, after 9-11, after London, etc. (and there are a LOT of etc.). Should we send flowers? Should we pull out of the middle east completely and make Osama happy? Some day we will, but we cannot yet. In an unrelated thread you joked that "the Qataris here are spoon-fed affluence and actually believe they own the world". Guess where that affluence came from, us. For decades the gulf states have gladly taken our money and our F-15s and then turned a blind eye when their own disaffected population that doesn't get to share that affluence became rdicalized and started blowing fluff up. After decades everybody just smiling and cashing the checks, now suddenly, all of this rightous indignation when the US showed up with F-15s that were not for sale and started blowing fluff up after somebody decided to take the jihad to New York.

When the sleeping dog was poked enough, it finally woke up and started lashing out, sadly as is usually the case when something very large and very angry starts lashing out blindly, a lot more innocent hands got bitten then guilty. Permissive regimes in Tehran, Cairo, Riyadh, Islamabad, and Damascus all share as much of the blame for this war as Washington and London.

"Because the ROOT cause of the conflict has nothing to do with that history. It has to do with fabricated/false/faulty evidence against Iraq."

You sir, are living in la-la land. Have you looked at the definition of the word ROOT in the dictionary lately? This conflict has been building on itself for the last 40 years....and what is going on today is a direct result of actions taken 10, 20, 30, even 40 years ago. If you don't see that, you're obviously not bothering to look at the whole picture....although that wouldn't be anything new, I guess.

We're talking battles that have been going on since, and are rooted in, the Cold War here....not something that all of a sudden popped up 9 years ago. Or are we writing off the prior conflicts between the same groups in the region as utterly unrelated because they don't fit your viewpoint?

After reading archaic's post, I guess the biggest problem I have with the video and the pilots is that they act as judge, jury, and executioners, although that may be put more on the command, than them. I think the fact that that kind of power is available to a fallible human is just wrong. Not that we're the only ones that do that or anything, but it's a lot easier when you're far away with a big ass gun.

war is not good

oh btw i seem to have forgotten, why is the US in iraq again???

I actually agree w/ AoS. I blame the system that put the pilots in that situation more than the pilots themselves.

CrazySerb, take your pick... nuclear weapons, terrorism, oil, human rights abuses, genocide, evil dictators, homeland security, defensive buffer from Communist/Islamic countries, stabilizing the region....they've all been thrown out there as justifications.

My guess would be a backroom campaign promise . . .

http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm

except oil prices were more than stable when conflicts in that region of the world started, and there were plentiful oil reserves other than what was in Iraq?

Traders in the the patch have never really behaved in a rational manner, every year since Katrina, nat-gas prices spike 10-20% when hurricane season starts whether there are any storm brewing or not. Commodities traders make a lot more $$ off of speculative fear than they do from actual market conditions. This fact is one of the cards that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez like to play. They can make a few threats and spike prices in 24 hours. They then dump some stored product on the market at the higher price and - viola! Time to buy some more outdated Russian surplus rocket launchers.

Read some of Cheney's and Rumsfield's white papers on the region from the 70's and 80's....might throw a different spin on the whole mess for ya.

There was no 24 hour news cycle in the 70-80s. CNN et. al has changed everything about how foreign policy is done.

i poop on this thread pretty much as a whole.

we should just nuke all the sand filled countries and turn it all into glass.

And now we have the top political minds weighing in on the matter. :P

ha ha - don't underestimate Ziggy, he only plays dumb to get you to come closer.

Anyone who thinks that war was ever, or ever will be humane is an idiot. This is war as it's always been, there are just TV cameras everywhere now to show it to the world.
Please don't anybody fool yourselves into thinking that either side in any war ever hasn't had their fair share of atrocities.
I'm certainly not condoning it, and I wish just like anyone else that humanity could put war behind us. However, I'm also not going to sit here in my computer chair and critique a short video about soldiers in a war zone obviously put together by someone with an agenda. I don't have the facts and don't pretend to.

Also, for the record. I've spent more than a few nights at Rustamiyah. (Which is located right next to an overflowing fluff plant with a seemingly endless supply for fresh fluff running out of it and across the roads/ditches) Depending on my injuries, the Iraqi hospital might be more appealing :)

Ok, so you have two children and two journalists...what about everyone else?

Were their weapons or not?

this is the thread that never ends,
it just goes on and on and ooooooooon!