I'll just take issue with a few points that Pooch addressed:
Hiding or suppression of evidence is accepted by every court in the English-speaking world as evidence of guilt. In the case of Conrad Black, the Canadian financier, in Chicago, the fact that Black and his associates were caught on videotape removing boxes of potentially incriminating documents surreptitiously was a major blow against them in their fraud trial. It's similar to flight, in that it shows consciousness of guilt. Technically, it might in fact be "assignment of motivation" as you claim, but the assignment (to consciousness of guilt) is so obvious and so logical that only that one assignment is realistically possible. It's like a drowning man grabbing a floating timber - - is it "assignment of motive" to say that he did it to save himself from drowning? Sure it is, but it is an assignment that is so likely to be the correct one that the conclusion is inevitably accepted. (Although it's always possible, albeit difficult, to contradict that assignment with contrary evidence, none of which exists in this case.)
<<I haven't watched the tape, but there is another thing that makes me wonder. MT claims that people were "not taking cover" during the attack and cites this as evidence that these are not soldiers. I would argue that this tends to lean in the other direction. The natural reaction to fire even from an untrained civilian is to try to get away and hide. There are only two situations in which this natural tendency might be overridden: a soldier in performance of his duties or a suicidal person. If these people were truly not seeking cover, they may have wished to be martyrs. This DOES happen in that culture. Otherwise, I am either misunderstanding his argument or these folks were just plain NUTS!>>
They may have wished to be martyrs? All twelve of them? And in their wish to become martyrs, they just stood in the open, not taking cover, not assuming firing positions, not firing back, and waited for the American helicopters to blow them away? That reminds me of the fascist explanation for the so-called "suicide" of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected President of Chile, martyred in a CIA coup, that "He shot himself 28 times in the chest, pausing only once to re-load." Come on, Pooch, surely you can do better than that.
Too bad that you didn't watch the tape, BTW. You would see no danger on the ground, no fear in the chopper. It's as obvious as the day is long. No "expert advice" can convince you otherwise. It's like the "experts" dissecting the beating of Rodney King - - the pigs are beating the living shit out of the guy, and the "experts" are discussing the action one frame at a time explaining how it's not really the vicious beating that it appears to be. "Who ya gonna believe, me or your own lyin' eyes?" As long as the Pentagon could keep the tape hidden from the eyes of the public, they could get away with their outrageous bullshit - - the pedestrians were killed in "a battle," the helicopter crews were in mortal danger. Once you see the tapes, you can tell instantly how outrageous those lies were. OF COURSE!!! That was the whole point of holding onto the tapes, of concealing them from public view.
It is impossible for any honest and reasonably intelligent person to see the tapes and believe the Pentagon's lying bullshit. End of story.
