DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Michael Tee on April 05, 2010, 08:11:35 PM
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http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2010/04/05/wikileaks-releases-video-of-us-choppers-slaying-reporters-civilians/ (http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2010/04/05/wikileaks-releases-video-of-us-choppers-slaying-reporters-civilians/)
I have a gut feeling this video is not gonna be up for very long. It shows the view from a U.S. helicopter in the suburb of New Baghdad firing on a group of men and children just walking down a street. The Army suppressed the video for over two years and claimed all the people they murdered were shot in a "battle." This is some fucking "battle" - - it's like the chopper hovers over Times Square and starts killing people and then claiming the victims were killed in the Battle of Times Square.
You get audio and visual -- these fucking shitheads happened to kill two Reuters journalists in the group and the Reuters office sued to get the material. Till the video was released those fucking bastards claimed their victims were killed in battle.
At one point, the camera shows two children in the front of a van that was picking up the wounded, somebody in the chopper is asking for permission to shoot the guys who are picking up the wounded and putting them in the van, then they open up on the van and obviously hit the kids. They kill the guys who were picking up the wounded. This stuff is dynamite.
You hear so much bullshit from these lying fucking bastards how they are always trying to AVOID civilian casualties. YEAH! This shows ya how hard they try. Fuck this. See it while it's still up. I KNOW those lying sacks of shit will get this thing off the internet in a matter of MINUTES.
These guys aren't all bad though - - it also shows the ground troops arriving and one of them picking up a wounded girl and running with her, they want permission to take her to a U.S. hospital but then higher ups deny the request and tell them to take the girl to some dipshit Iraqi hospital instead. Don't really give a shit if she lives or dies even though they are the ones who shot her. More evidence of how hard they try to avoid civilian casualties. Fucking lying bastards. See this thing.
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Too bad terrorists where civilian cloths like civilians do. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. In this case who would know for sure whether they were friend or foe. Wars suck.
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this reminds me of japan when the army bases are starting to be a problem with the locals.
after a certain point it`s just getting costly being there .
but to our credit rape cases has been quite minimul.
that`s a big plus.
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but to our credit rape cases has been quite minimul.
I wonder how many rapes occurred when the Soviet forces converged on Berlin in 1945 or when German troops went into France, or in 1975 when the NVA overtook Saigon.?
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I don't think you guys get what's on that video. There was no battle, nobody was pointing a weapon, two of the guys were journalists, one had a camera or cameras on him. Nobody pointed a weapon at the chopper, nobody ran for cover from the chopper.
If the guys in the helicopter can't tell if they're friendly or not, there are obviously better ways to find out than just shooting the whole bunch of them and the guys who come to pick up the wounded.
Even the fucking Army knows this is a criminal act of murder, otherwise why not release the tapes immediately instead of fighting over two years to keep them? Why make up a bullshit story that the victims were killed in a battle?
Why this tape is dynamite is because it shows what a big fucking lie the military is engaged in when it craps all over the American people with its bullshit stories of how it tries so hard to avoid civilian casualties. Anybody see any evidence in that tape of hard trying to avoid civilian casualties? It is a fucking JOKE.
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I don't think you guys get what's on that video. There was no battle, nobody was pointing a weapon, two of the guys were journalists, one had a camera or cameras on him. Nobody pointed a weapon at the chopper, nobody ran for cover from the chopper.
If the guys in the helicopter can't tell if they're friendly or not, there are obviously better ways to find out than just shooting the whole bunch of them and the guys who come to pick up the wounded.
Even the fucking Army knows this is a criminal act of murder, otherwise why not release the tapes immediately instead of fighting over two years to keep them? Why make up a bullshit story that the victims were killed in a battle?
Why this tape is dynamite is because it shows what a big fucking lie the military is engaged in when it craps all over the American people with its bullshit stories of how it tries so hard to avoid civilian casualties. Anybody see any evidence in that tape of hard trying to avoid civilian casualties? It is a fucking JOKE.
Too bad Saddam brought this on Iraq. He should have kept his mouth shut and quit trying to make Bush & Blair think he had WMD's.
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<<Too bad Saddam brought this on Iraq. He should have kept his mouth shut and quit trying to make Bush & Blair think he had WMD's.>>
Saddam made those GI's fire on the civilians? Saddam told the Army to make up one big fucking lie to cover up the whole crime? Saddam told the Army not to give up the tape to Reuters without a court battle?
Do you guys (Americans) ever accept responsibility for ANYTHING that you do? Is EVERYTHING always somebody else's fault?
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<<Too bad Saddam brought this on Iraq. He should have kept his mouth shut and quit trying to make Bush & Blair think he had WMD's.>>
Saddam made those GI's fire on the civilians? Saddam told the Army to make up one big fucking lie to cover up the whole crime? Saddam told the Army not to give up the tape to Reuters without a court battle?
Do you guys (Americans) ever accept responsibility for ANYTHING that you do? Is EVERYTHING always somebody else's fault?
calm down
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Why would I want to calm down if I've just witnessed a live snuff film in which over a dozen innocent people are blown away in cold blood and nobody does fuck-all about it? YOU NEED to get excited over shit like this. It's fucking outrageous. I bet if this shit were shown in prime time on the MSM, there'd be such a fucking shitstorm that the Secretary of Defense AND the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs would be lucky not to get lynched. You CANNOT convince me that the majority of Americans are like the guys in this newsgroup, NBD, everybody does it, why don't you yell at al Qaeda, etc. etc. etc. Most people would be sick to their stomachs over this and DEMAND punishment of the guilty, that's WHY this shit is never shown on the MSM. There is a God-damn good reason for that.
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" Wow - Dynamite video "
I am not as happy to see this as you seem to be MT.
Also I am not really surprised at any of it.
I maintain wepon systems that can do this .
Of course we are a lot happyer when we catch the bad guys and shoot them up , tapes of that sort of thing arn't so upsetting.
But the best wepon we have ever made is still prone to human error , that seems like what we see here .
Incidents even worse than this have happened , it is worthwile to work hard to avoid mistakes , but sooner or later a war will produce some thing ugly, avoiding it entirely is impossible.
Our choice sometime is to risk tragic error or to be stimied by uncertainty into inaction.
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I never realized how much a camera looks like an RPG.
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Camera
http://tinyurl.com/ye59s3r (http://tinyurl.com/ye59s3r)
RPG
http://tinyurl.com/y8gf4jo (http://tinyurl.com/y8gf4jo)
That help?
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Camera
http://tinyurl.com/ye59s3r (http://tinyurl.com/ye59s3r)
RPG
http://tinyurl.com/y8gf4jo (http://tinyurl.com/y8gf4jo)
That help?
Takes me straight to Yahoo Canada , want to tell us your password?
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You don't need a password, if you look under the last box you'll see another link, which you need to click on.
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(http://base1.googlehosted.com/base_media?q=http://digitalcontent.cnetchannel.com/0e/63/0e63f523-7832-4902-995b-c77016d4be60.jpg&size=20&dhm=94929c08&hl=en)
Camera
(http://planetmedia.gamespy.com/images/00/07/702_FO3_Missile_Launcher.jpg)
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When you look at a cameraman and he is holding a camera does he look a bit like something elese?
Can be , if your life depends on spotting wepons pointing at you as early as possible and you are expecting the wepon something that suggests a wepon could be enough.
This would not be the first incident of cameramen being mistaken for wepon carrying warriors.
Look at these and think fast two cameras or two wepons?
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_60FEhz_4Bf0/Sw5JdXzjunI/AAAAAAAAAN4/BUz5UHpzgwY/s400/ATM+RPG.jpg)(http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/files/2008/04/fadel-1.jpg)
http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/2008/04/17/reuters-cameraman-fadel-shana-killed-in-gaza/ (http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/2008/04/17/reuters-cameraman-fadel-shana-killed-in-gaza/)
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reporters that go into war zones know the risks
maybe reporters should stay home and leave the waring to warriors, that way they remain safe & sound.
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reporters that go into war zones know the risks
maybe reporters should stay home and leave the waring to warriors, that way they remain safe & sound.
No , we really need them .
I don't trust the government enough to allow them to controll the flow of information utterly.
What we need is some better way to see the targets clearly and understand what we are seeing.
We have shot camels and British Jeeps in Iraq by mistake , fewer such mistakes woud be very good.
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reporters that go into war zones know the risks
maybe reporters should stay home and leave the waring to warriors, that way they remain safe & sound.
No , we really need them .
I don't trust the government enough to allow them to controll the flow of information utterly.
What we need is some better way to see the targets clearly and understand what we are seeing.
We have shot camels and British Jeeps in Iraq by mistake , fewer such mistakes woud be very good.
Poor Joe Camel got shot in the 90's.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100406/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1490 (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100406/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1490)
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Geeze I didn't read the first story very carefully. I thought the Army was forced by court order to give up the tape. This makes it even worse for them, it was posted by a whistleblower from inside their own ranks. Meaning that if it were up to them this tape would have been buried forever, probably destroyed like the waterboarding tapes if ever ordered to be produced by a court order.
What a sleazy bunch of lying bastards. Gunbattle my ass.
But you know, no matter how much they lie and how many times they are caught, Americans are still dumb enough to believe anything they say. For example, "I thought the camera was an RPG launcher." Why the fuck would ANYBODY believe that shit KNOWING what a bunch of fucking lying bastards it is coming from?
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Just so you'll sound more professional, and therefore be more effective while on your mission, Snowblower, you don't refer to it as an "RPG launcher". Just RPG is the usual identifying set of symbols.
BTW, I wonder how the Iraqi's are taking this? Concerned? Angry? Other things to think about?
BSB
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This makes it even worse for them, it was posted by a whistleblower from inside their own ranks.
How do we know the tape is legitimate?
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The story told at http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/16/pre-crime-policing/singlepage (http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/16/pre-crime-policing/singlepage) is, Michael Tee assures, perfectly legitimate police behavior. Showing up with SWAT teams to possibly shoot a man who, based on hearsay and speculation, might be just crazy enough to shoot someone himself is, Michael Tee assures, great police work and shows a commitment to protecting people. There was, Michael Tee assures, no reason and no time for the police to investigate and find out more about the situation.
Yet, now he presents us with footage that has audio which clearly indicates the people in the helicopter believed the people on the ground had AK-47s and RPGs, and so the people in the helicopter fire at those they believe intend deliberate, violent harm to stop the people on the ground from killing other and/or blowing other people up with explosives. And Michael Tee says the people in the helicopter should have waited to find out if the people on the ground were actually friendly nor not. I guess he thinks the the military should have done some investigation.
Don't get me wrong. I don't believe the U.S. military has anything to be proud of here. The men in the video are not doing anything but walking down the street in manner that seems to me to be not the least bit threatening. But then, I don't know what the men in the helicopter normally see every day. Even so, There seems to be something wrong with claiming this was some sort of firefight with insurgents or justifiable engagement of insurgents when clearly, even without knowing who was on the ground, this was not even remotely a firefight and was basically a slaughter of people who at no point fought back.
But Michael Tee's suggestion, that the men in the helicopter should have investigated rather than assume their lives and the lives of others were on the line, seems two-faced.
I do agree something should have been done to get a better idea of who was on the ground, but I have to confess I don't know how that would have happened.
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<<Just so you'll sound more professional, and therefore be more effective while on your mission, Snowblower, you don't refer to it as an "RPG launcher". Just RPG is the usual identifying set of symbols.>>
Sounds kind of dumb to me, BSB, because "RPG" also refers to the projectile. You'd think the military, with its love for precision, would have one word for the launcher and another for the projectile. But I appreciate the tip. Thank you.
Aside from my ignorant misuse of military terminology, what are your thoughts on the substantive points I was trying to make? Any comments on the military being caught once again in One Big Fucking Lie and Cover-up? Any comments about the willingness of the sheeple to continue to believe unquestioningly in anything the military says about the incident AFTER its Big Fucking Lie about it has been exposed?
<<BTW, I wonder how the Iraqi's are taking this? Concerned? Angry? Other things to think about?>>
IMHO, the US military has been there for a long, long time and the battle lines are already drawn. This isn't the first civilian massacre those fucking bastards have perpetrated and unfortunately it is far from the last. All Iraqis know this, regardless of where they are in the political spectrum. You can bet your ass that not a single one of them is exactly shocked by any of this. Those who already hate the Americans will continue to hate them, those who want or need their presence will continue to want or need it, and those who thus far have managed to stay out of the fray will continue to do so. The only exception that I can think of are the immediate families of the victims. If they didn't already hate the fucking guts of the invaders, they sure as bitchin hell do now; if they have any balls, they'll be looking for payback and I can't imagine them not knowing who to go to or how to get it. If there's a God in heaven, they'll get it, and fast. Unless they've already compromised themselves by working with Americans, in which case all they can do is suck it up.
BTW, "fucking bastards" was my considered judgment on the situation. More systemic than individual, in the circumstances. I was aware of the traces of humanity shown in the video - - the unseen designer of the system that obliged these guys to call in for permission before opening fire, the guy on the ground who actually RAN with one of the child victims to get help for her. Still it comes down to individual choices - - the entire invasion was illegal and criminal, yet every one of those fuckers FREELY CHOSE to participate, committed themselves in advance to killing on order, even in an unjust cause. My late neighbour gave me a complete education on the tendency of soldiers, especially after having been in combat awhile and survived a few nasty surprises, to shoot first in any doubtful situation and sort it out later, rather than take unnecessary risks with their own lives. They know from bitter experience what "unarmed civilians" can do to them. And they've seen enough death and killing that a human life just doesn't have the same value to them at the end of their road as it did at the beginning. Conversely, the value of their own survival, their own "human life," seems to loom larger in their value systems. (Not trying to teach you anything here, except that I don't need The Lecture.)
However, that said, I did not perceive any indication in that video that the soldiers felt in any danger of immediate attack. Their tones were matter of fact, and their impatience and eagerness to start shooting was palpable. At no time was any fire returned, which from a group of 15 "armed insurgents" about to die anyway seems just incredible. The attack on the guys in the van as they rescued the wounded was inexcusable. "Gun battle" my ass!!! Also remarkable was the lack of any pointed questions from the unseen controllers, like "What are those guys doing? Can they see you? Are they taking cover? Are they pointing weapons or taking combat positions? And BTW I don't see any barrier to a chopper camera's being able to transmit its images in real time to the controllers of the mission. IF anyone had been remotely interested in preventing atrocities like this.
It's simply IMPOSSIBLE to believe General Petraeus or any other lying fucking one of them who claims that the U.S. Army takes "every possible precaution" to avoid civilian casualties. That is absolute garbage, which should have been apparent from the time that Tommy Franks claimed "We don't do body counts." However anyone who still believes that shit after hearing Franks AND after watching this video has to be a total fucking moron. They take NO real precautions, but they sure as hell invest incredible amounts of their time and energy lying about it to the world and to the ever-gullible American sheeple AND to covering up their daily crimes and atrocities with their usual lies and bullshit.