We all know that "Collateral Damage" happens in any armed conflict.

But this is irrefutable proof that "collateral Murder" also happens, and likely happens a lot more than I thought. Now everytime I hear of some "citizen casualties", or "Collateral Damage" I will think that it might just be "Murder" that is being comitted by sadists, and covered up by arseholes higher up the chain.

With thanks to the BBC for the original story (OK for the squeamish).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8603938.stm

If you want to watch a 15-minute long video of civilians being murdered by some Americans in an Apache helicopter who are obviously enjoying every minute of it go ahead, but you have been warned this is not to be watched by anyone who does not have both a strong stomach and a strong mind.

WARNING, Content highly traumatic, contains actual footage of innocent people being murdered.

http://wikileaks.org/

WARNING, Content highly traumatic, contains actual footage of innocent people being murdered.


Andy

I will say one thing only to this...

Screw you.

I heard about this story on NPR this morning:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/04/video_of_errant_us_shootings_o.html

Please listen to the audio of the radio report -- there is a very thorough discussion of many of the issues; including the context of the time and location in Iraq.

No-one doubts that warzones are totally unsafe, and journalists also know that, but as the video demonstrated people carrying "things" that might look like weapons are essentially targets. And worse than that, targetting everyone in an area because one or more people have weapons is far from good practice.

During that video, I saw one person carrying something that looked like an RPG, no other weapons at all, and the 2 journalists obviously had large shoulder bags. These bags could be IED's, they could be dirty washing, or they could have video cameras inside as there were.

As we have all seen on the news in places like Gaza children surround people with guns in the street, and people with guns surround people with cameras in the street. I suspect this is the likely start of this murderous affair.

This news story pretty much reminds me of this incident.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/460116.stm



I will listen to it later, time to go home now.



Only if your a disease free female human being of average or better physical appearance, above the legal age, not into any weird shit, and BTW I charge a lot for my services and you will have to pay for the flights yourself. PS: Try not to get shot by a man in an Apache because you might be carrying something that looks like a gun.


Andy

What the world needed was a blackhawk to take out the carrier of the biggest WMD since Hitler...

...GWB/Cheney


and maybe a quick flyover of the quitter governor from Alaska during a well armed moose hunt.

ya know, I was reading up on the curse of katyn,
a polish/russian wartime event, it left 22k officers dead...60 years ago.

one may assume that is a big pile of victims created by the russians...and justice must come about in a religious way eventually..so what happens? 96 more top officals from the same country as the 22k officers, crash and die in the same spot. I find this amazing. the spiriual strain on a wartime situation..it best be perfect, or else.

a war zone is a war zone. the battle has a greater judge than a ninny with nothing but a third point of view to complain about.
civilians have a means to get away, if they don't...they may die like an innocent pet...just as ignorant.

Two slight corrections: it was not just military officers who were massacred; it included political leaders and others as well. And second, it was 70 years ago.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125848428
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125829404&ps=rs

[quote]The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Russian: КатынÑ

And it's not torture.

Except that is is not murder.

It is collateral damage.

The reporters were engaging in extremely risky behavior by embedding with armed combatants.

And the van that pulled up to help them was not marked as an emergency vehicle - the armed forces had no way of ascertaining their capabilities or intent except to note that they seemed to be helping the people they were trying to kill.

This kind of distortion is what happens when people care more about a political agenda than understanding the rules and realities of armed conflict.

Explain that to Mr "Mission Accomplished."

Man if only USA stopped murdering people for oil....

Somebody has to justify all that spending on the military industrial complex.

Speaking of oil, why isn't the Army Corp of Engineers working on the leak?

we can't even do that right; china got the oil contracts in iraq, not america.

Ther has always been a very fine line between collateral damage and murder, and this case is far from clear.

One of the main issues is that when 2 sides are fighting, and one have an overwhelming force, and huge amount of technical superiority the other side simply cant compete, so it does not try to directly.

Guerilla warfare is the typical response, unfortunately Guerilla warfare often relies on using innocent people as human shields, this usually works to some degree. And nearly always works whenever cameras are around, this time we get to see the video, but not by a reporter, but by a helicopter gunship shooting at people who they "suspect" of being the enemy.

Now to some degree this method of "shoot first" has come under scrutiny, especially when many innocent people were killed.

One other point to add, this was not "fighting" in the traditional sense, this was quite simply assasination without all of the typical prescision and accurate descision making.

I was a case of, "that guy has a weapon" lets kill him, and anyone else around him, whether they have weapons or not, and then lets kill anyone who turns up to help.

The only people who dont seem to see the extreme wrongness of this entire incident so far are all American, and one was in the forces. You must recognise that although we generally like Americans, we cant, and never have been able to (so far) trust their armed forces (not to say that ours are or ever have been perfect), anyway back to the point. I suspect that some Americans think that I am somehow blaming "all" Americans for this incident, or them directly and personally - that is simply not the case, and is far from reality.

To expand my point, there are a lot of bad people in xxxxx place, why dont we just drop a nuke, sure there will be some "collateral damage" but at least we will get them. Obviously I have taken this point to the extreme, but some people simply cant see the difference between killing someone by accident, and this incident, where "everyone" in that area was a "target" they were marked for death by proximity, and it was deliberate, not an accident - this is why I found it sickening.


Andy

The reality is that in war and armed conflict, people die and not just soldiers and combatants.

If anything, modern warfare techniques have resulted in very large reductions in civilian casualties, but if you look at your history, it is the United States, and us along who pioneered the use of precision weaponry specifically to reduce civilian casualties.

We spend a great deal of money on weapon systems to ensure they are just lethal enough to get the job done.

We do this because we do not like to see civilians die. At the same time, we accept the fact that it happens, but no other nation takes the care we take.

That said, there was a convoy coming through the area and the aircraft was scouting ahead to insure they were not ambushed. They identified armed individuals and engaged them. It is not safe to be in these areas and it is exponentially more unsafe to embed with armed combatants who are actively running around with weaponry.

It was completely reasonable to assume that the people in the group were "together" and as soon as they were seen with an RPG, they became targets and were killed. Then their genius friends thought it would be a great idea to throw the kids in the car and try to help.

Yes, it's tragic when civilians are killed, but this is not Dresden or Hiroshima. (both of which were also justified) Those attacks did specifically target civilians and civil infrastructure and those attacks had the desired effect: to break the will of the people and force their country to surrender without additional attrition warfare.

War is the instrument one nation uses to exert their will over another after persuasion and coercion fail. All cultures have practiced it, but most of them are quite unhappy that we managed to perfect it.

True. And to make people understand this videos like this one must be showed to the public and not hidden away by the people that are responsible for the war.

War is really, really bad. The american public must realize that and make their leaders stop because otherwise it will just continue. It's much to easy to turn ones head. Depressing that the price of gas is much more important than human life.

I suspect that it is a fear of the media and public opinion that matters most to your politicians.

The US has achieved its dominance by spending far more than any other country on lots of high tech weaponry. In Iraq you call in close air support to blast a couple of bad guys armed with Kalashnikovs. If it came to a pound for pound comparison, the Israelis or us (the Brits) would kick your arse. Probably even the Taliban would win because they are prepared to take casualties and are fighting for their country.
You "win" your battles because of your countries wealth - at least you used to be a wealthy country, now you're just in debt to China for trillions of dollars.

But to truly win a war you have to take away the enemies will to resist - to do that you have to kill large numbers of civilians as in WW2 or bring them round to your way of thinking. That's why you can never win in Iraq or Afghanistan because the US government could not take the bad press that would result from civilian deaths; and you're unlikely to ever win them over to christian democracy. Only a totalitarian state could win that type of war these days.

We did truly win the war in Iraq, several times. The problem is that the metric for success kept being changed by our politicians.

In another politically charged thread here we were talking about fundamentalism and how dangerous it is to the worlds stability. America, as a political entity, is two things: Codependent and Fundamentalist Democratic.

If this is your definition of codependent, as well as the dictionaries definition -

"Codependency or Codependence is a tendency to behave in overly passive or excessively caretaking ways that negatively impact one's relationships and quality of life. It also often involves putting ones needs at a lower priority than others while being excessively preoccupied with the needs of others."

- then America is, in my opinion, the exact opposite.

All of Americas foreign policy is now and always has been, to put America first. Don't get me wrong, I think that's an entirely natural way to behave and I think that all countries put their own interests first - as they should. Just don't try to bullshit the rest of us!

America has got the military and economic might to achieve their aims in a relatively peaceful way - by economic blackmail, coercion and low key warfare. I believe that if the American nation thought that their way of life was seriously threatened, they would not hesitate for an instant to use whatever means to preserve it and fuck everyone else.

What got me about the incident was the cavalier attitude of the pilots, like they were playing a computer game, and the gunner was clearly annoyed with not being allowed to shoot and actually sort of happy when he could.

Yes, soldiers get indoctrinated into not hesitating about deadly violence and I myself have done military service, but this still felt wrong.

Have you ever known a truly co-dependent person? I take that definition with the same grain of salt that I take with other web sites who test the quietness of computers and related equipment. In other words, that definition is accurate in the same way that Extremesuperhardcoreoverclockersclub.com claims the latest 5000 RPM fan is "quiet".

Take out the "passive" and then look at it again though. The US frequently acts in overly caretaking ways, and those methods do negatively impact the US relations with the rest of the world. The US is quickly becoming a global pariah because it repeatedly throws itself into situations where it doesn't belong and is generally unwanted, in the name of establishing peace, stability and security for the rest of the world.

I am sorry, but I simply felt that I should mock this with some humour.

The US frequently acts in overly caretaking ways, and those methods do negatively impact the US relations with the rest of the world. The US is quickly becoming a global pariah because it repeatedly throws itself into situations where it doesn't belong and is generally unwanted, in the name of establishing flowing oil, stability in oil drilling nations, and security for the people drilling oil throughout the world.

Yes I know that the US has also helped (in the true sense of the word) in various situations and conflicts across the world, but as I am sure you will appreciate, people dont remember the good things, they only remember the bad things, like Vietnam, Iraq (the second time round), and to a certain degree Afganistan, the US also pisses of a huge amount of people in the middle east by protecting Israel far more than it deserves.


Andy

Let's call a spade a spade. The current state of affairs in the Middle East (including the Israeli-Palestinian problem) is largely the result of colonial occupations of the Middle East up until WWII by Britain, France, and to a lesser degree a few other European countries.

The basic problem facing the world now is that if Israel is attacked they will defend themselves, using nuclear weapons if necessary (which everyone agrees that they posses). Therefore, it seems in the best interest of most of the civilized world to prevent Israel from being attacked (either overtly or by terrorists).

It is not as simple as supporting Israel on the basis of whether they deserve it or not.

Are you saying that preventing Iran from attacking Israel is the right approach, as opposed to the opposite?

The issue is imho not to protect Israel from "the terrorists" but rather to somehow make US behave in accord with international consensus and international law.

The risk of Israel attacking someone is far greater than the risk of Iran doing something stupid. Israel knows that with US backing they can get away with anything. Should Iran try anything they will be vaporized by US and Israel, and they know that.

I don't think anyone knows the right approach for certain. But one thing I do know is that it is a lot more complicated than you think, and the world may hang in the balance. I don't think I would be willing to leave these matters in your hands.


The idea that the US is at fault is preposterous. The mess in the Middle East was created by France and Britain who colonized the area and left it in chaos after WWII.


I would totally disagree with you on that one. The current ruling regime in Iran is composed of psychopaths who have publicly and repeatedly sworn to drive Israel into the sea, and are embarking on an ambitious nuclear bomb production program to make that happen. If Israel does attack Iran, it would to take out their nuclear bomb capability.

I'm not saying that it was the US that started it, but the situation today is that Israel can do pretty much as it pleases with full US support.
Look closely at the most resent incident for example, the ships being attacked.

The Iran regime is not very nice, but most of what you're saying is just propaganda. Iran is not a very serious threat, really. Last time is was Iraq remember?

About Iran being a threat, Noam Chomsky describes it beautifully in this clip, go to 0:55:30.

Someone else seeing the world through stars and stripes tinted glasses!

Actually, the Americans were calling the shots behind the scenes on that, just as they do these days on pretty much everything.
Britain after the war was bankrupt and owed billions to the US - Britain had no other option but to support US policy. When Britain did try to go it alone over the Suez crisis, the US decided to teach Britain a lesson to show her once and for all that the US now ruled the world and the British empire was well and truly finished.
It is also worth remembering how powerful the Jewish lobby is in Washington.
Britain and France may have owned the Middle East before the war but the US wanted to own it(s oil) after the war.

Some funny things about the US - Israel - Palestine situation...

The US has been decidedly backing away from supporting Israel over the last 10 years. They had a blank check from us up through Bush 1, but since Clinton our international policy regarding these two nations has changed considerably.

What's funny is that I can recall a public comment by our then current Secretary of State, Condaleeza Rice, that the US would recognize any legitimately elected government in Palestine during the 2006 election. When Hamas won the election the response was to re-declare them as a terrorist organization.

About fighting wars for oil...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_h ... ted_States

Which of those were about oil? Which were about supporting our allies? Which were about defending a nations sovereignty?

Hint - there's no oil in Korea, Viet-Nam, Philippines, Grenada, Panama, Bosnia, Lebanon, or Afghanistan.

Is there oil in Iraq? Sure there is! Is it being imported to the US? Absolutely! Why? Because of our crazy corrupted politicians at the time (Cheney, Rumsfeld) steering our remarkably ignorant President into a decision he never should have made (and he admitted to this just a few years ago).

Once again I steer us back to a different thread, the one about profits, margins and the need to show a year over year growth in profits. KBR (Cheney) showed remarkable margin growth in 2004...

Haliburton wanted a new money pipeline..



And also needed to get back the 'poppies for black ops' funding the Taliban had put an end to...

Then how come the US still uses it's veto power on the UN security counsel time and time again to stop any resolution against Israel?
I don't think the US is backing away in any meaningful way.

Does it matter if it's oil or not? It's mostly domination and control over resources, oil or something else. Most of the time it's just protecting US corporate interests. I think that's wrong but I can see the logic behind it. The thing I have a real problem with is the deceit and hypocrisy. The idea that the US is acting out of some "messianic mission" or some crap like that. Say it like it is. It's about showing who's boss.