Words Fail Me
I'll just let you judge for yourself how astoundingly heartless and inhumane this video is from July 12, 2007, the day one of our attack choppers killed two Reuters journalists and several other unarmed men. I'm sorry I ate before watching this.
(Video courtesy of Wikileaks and article courtesy of Michael Collins.)
posted by jurassicpork @ Tuesday, April 06, 2010
11 comments
11 Comments:
Proof of just one of the many, may war crimes committed daily by US Armed Forces.
Their commanding officers, the generals and the President, Bush and Obama are all war criminals of the highest degree.
Where was it, I read that there can not be any credible restraint on these egregious crimes until Cheney is tried and found guilty of his role as profit-generator for Halliburton.
Not many people remember this, but Cheney was receiving a salary from Halliburton for at least the first two years that he was vice-president. Only Republicans can get away with committing that kind of crime. Cheney even admitted that the American People were his enemies. He only ever did what was best for his employer: Halliburton.
While, of course, no one can actually, definitively PROVE it, can there really be any doubt that conduct comparable to that depicted in this video is all-too-commonplace in the U.S. military?
I can't watch. I'm horrified that we haven't ended our invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and still have too many soldiers in Iraq. The longer we stay, the more they'll hate us.
And this is far from an aberration- what we'd usually get to see are the "hero" soldiers carrying the child from harms way.
Right now there is another report coming to light of US special forces shooting two pregnant Afghan women, and then digging out the bullets in an attempted cover up...
This footage does not make me "Proud to be an American" !
The President should see that all
aboard this chopper and the Officers who approved this tragic
crime should be stripped of rank;
jailed for life without parole.
I heard a discussion of this video on "World have your say" on BBC
this noon but didn't know how to react having not seen the video yet.
Thanks to JP many more will say a
"Day in the life" of a US "gun"
team out for a day of killing.
War Crimes !
More War Crimes from the Head War Crime State ... Amurca.
Well this is a shame but I must say that these things do happen in war and to say this is a "war crime" is well just not correct. I suppose if the Cuban Navy shelled Key West (lol) then you guys would be more interested in not hurting anyone's feelings than taking care of business. You certainly are correct that this was a tragic event but Good Lord gentlemen this was in a combat zone.
And my ex wonders why I loathe right wingers so much.
Yes, it was a combat zone... in their town, their neighborhood, their home, not some far-flung field in the French or German countryside. Did you bother playing the entire 17+ minute video? They ran over a man's body with a tank and laughed about it.
They shot up a van with the children plainly visible in the front seat then blamed the men for "bringing their kids to a battle zone." Then we lied about it and tried to say, "We don't know how the kids got hurt."
Excuse me?! It's their fault for driving into the middle of a one-sided firefight that started 6 minutes earlier and shouldn't've been started in the first place??
Let's keep this in perspective, pal: These people live in Baghdad. This is their home. We invaded them under false pretenses and are still occupying their land under equally false pretenses. To blame these people for being in the wrong place at the wrong time when they're just trying to get on with their lives is pure sociopathy.
We murdered two Reuters photojouranlists just for doing their jobs even though it was abundantly obvious even from that helicopter's altitude that the only things they were carrying that they could shoot were their cameras. And when you occupy a foreign land, it only follows that the males in that country will be carrying weaponry for their personal protection. It doesn't mean they're allied with insurgents or terrorists any more than cowboys or merchants carrying guns in the Old West were outlaws and gunfighters.
We killed two innocent journalists and a good number of unarmed men, ran over their bodies with tanks, laughed about it, fired on two more men, wounding their children when all four of their hands were occupied trying to do a humanitarian thing such as picking up a wounded human being and getting him to safety.
And you're actually OK with this?
God, you're fucking pathetic.
Well JP I agree that this was a tragic event and of course no one (that is truly human) thinks war is fun but I must say that from the video voice transcript it is obvious that there was an American patrol in the area. The helicopter gunships job is to scout for and protect the ground forces. You know this. You were a SEAL were you not? (Perhaps I am wrong here, but as a regular reader I believe that you mentioned you were a SEAL in an earlier post). It is quite possible that the men carrying camera equipment were mistaken for men with weapons. The voice transcript seems to indicate this. For all the men in the helos knew these men were carrying weapons and attempting to set an ambush for the troops on the ground. It is also not obvious to me that the men in the helos could have recognized that there were children in the van. I did watch the entire video and came away with the impression that this was a tragic event thay maybe should not have happened but protecting our troops on the ground trumps all other considerations. Whether being in Iraq is the correct thing is a matter that will be judged by history. I myself have reservations about it, but when our troops are in harms way these things do not matter. I will say that laughing at a armored vehicle running over a dead person, foe or not, is perhaps a sign of, as you say, sociopathy.
On a personal note I am no right winger although I admit I do hold some views that are pretty far "right." I also hold some "leftist" views on some issues, at least according to some folks that I know.
I also do not think I am any more pathetic than the next guy.
Good Day.
Yeah, I was a SEAL and have a lot to atone for, believe me. And when I see abuses of power such as this in countries where we plainly do not belong, it's like history repeating itself.
You keep sidestepping the very core of the issue, Cabbie, which is that we never had the slightest legitimate reason for invading this country in the first place. It was based on a pack of lies that began to lose currency almost from the first moment we opened up on them during shock and awe.
There's a big difference between a 35 mm camera slung over one's shoulder and an AK 47. And today's military has surveillance technology that we just didn't have in the early 80's. If you can;t distinguish between that because your technology isn't good enough or because you're flying too high, then perhaps you shouldn't be going out on those missions (it's worth mentioning that virtually the only sniping missions that doesn't require a spotter is on helicopters and this wasn't obviously a sniping mission, as the mounted, full auto 30 mm guns proves).
To assume the worst of two guys randomly pulling up in a van, in their neighborhood, to try to be good samaritans to one of their own, and then to open up on them when all four of their hands were occupied, after having shown no evidence of any weaponry, is just plain, cold-blooded murder. They could have easily seen those children. We saw a grainy, filtered video. The guys in those choppers had a much clearer view and een in the grainy photo, the children were plainly visible. Yet we lied about their injuries and intimated to the press that their injuries were coincidental.
The only possible lingering shred of any noble aspirations that we had left to legitimize our occupation of Iraq in the slightest has long, long, long since been shot to hell: That we're liberating these people from a bloody, murderous tyranny.
We did. Then we not so gently placed them from the frying pan into the fire, reopened Abu Ghraib, Saddam's own torture palace, and then outdid him in pure sociopathy and cruelty. It was like Lord of the fucking Flies with guns and attack dogs.
And if you're going to barge your way into a country with the avowed intention of liberating them, then you immediately defeat your purpose when you start murdering these people either accidentally but especially deliberately by literally making up the ROE (rules of engagement) as you go along. If you want to be greeted as a liberator, the way to not go about it is to designate every single citizen of that country as a potential enemy and open up on people who aren't even armed.
In the SEALs, we never, ever went into an op w/o first knowing what exactly the ROE (rules of engagement) were whether it was flat out wet work or just a scout sniping mission.
Those yahoos in those gunships were literally flying by the seat of their pants and even laughed about running over the bodies with tanks, something else you never bothered to judge.
This is completely indefensible and one gets the queasy feeling that this is not a mere Gotcha moment or an isolated incident but just the very tip of the iceberg.
I meant to say "30 caliber", not 30 mm. The 30 mm is essentially an antitank/anti aircraft chaingun that's also mounted on gunships.
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