Apache shoot Iraqian farmers with 30 mm

War is war, there is nothing you can do to change it.

50 years ago war was alot more brutal you simply didn't had mass media all over it like vulchers.

War won't change, mistakes/atrocities/muder happen in every war, and, unfortunately war is necessary due to the fact that there is always some crazy guy out there, be it bush, hussein, stalin, hitler, mao bla bla bla bla.

illo don't be so naive to think you will change anything just for posting about the war in this forum, and don't presume that just because I don't go watch every stupid gun cam movie that shows some civilians getting their head blown up that I don't understand the reality of war. There is absolutely nothing I can do to change the fact that ppl are going to die, the only thing I can do is vote to choose who rulers over here, and, if it ever happens, pick up a gun to defend something I believe.

I've never seen a war where "peacekeeping" was the actual reason, ONU isn't a peacekeaping force, it's a joke. America (like every country in the world) only goes to war when it's good for them, be it to stop comunism, get resources, get more land, whatever...

Insulting me won't change anything, and personally, besides insulting I bet most of you haven't done anything to change the course of things, like complaining to your gorvement or something, at least I don't pretend to be doing something.

Sickening (as I wrote in my post) isn't seeing someone's head being blown by "insert caliber here", that's unfortunately, all to common in todays media (more now with internet). They didn't show this video, but they've shown enougth to last for decades. Sickening is seeing how ppl go with the flow, since is fun to be "anti-american" now, let's all be! Bah, who gives a damn about oil, I'm more worried about the thousands of ppl that die every year in angola and most african countrys because of mines that I am about 2 unlucky iraqui farmers. So many human tragedies in this world that being outraged for 2 farmers getting killed in a war (be it a mistake or not) is to say the least... stupid...

 

Im in the middle of downloading so I dont know what I will see yet. I do know it will be pretty horrific tho...

Just one thing tho. How many incidents have there been of choppers being shot down by RPGs in Iraq recently? Quite a few I think. Is there any way it could have looked like an RPG? If there is even the slightest chance it could have been, then the pilot was faced with a decision that millions of soldiers/pilot/seamen have faced all through history. Kill or be killed.

We can only voice our opinions against killing, but it will go on. While it does, im only glad we are now at a time when killing of innocent people are kept to a minimum. It was only 50 years ago in the thousands of years of man that millions died because of the state of our technology at the time.

Im not advocating war. But I do at least have sense to realise that we will never stop it in my lifetime. And certainly not through an internet gaming forum.
Please give it a rest, it's tiresome (and is starting to convince me an OT forum is a great idea).

-glas-

 

Btw, I didnt see your second post before I posted Platy, but nice points and reflected mostly what I posted.

-glas-

 

Took an hour to download, and the picture froze after 1 second. I guess I was spared.

I listened to the 'commentary' tho and to be honest it seemed like a professional operation. None of the gung-ho 'let's kill the bastards!' that I expectedd. And from the state of the picture I could see, my question of whether it could have looked like an RPG is null and void. A broom handle would have looked like an RPG.

Taking it as an isolated incident, these guys were just doing their job and doing it professionally (from what I could make out anyway). If you want to start another mile long thread about the rights and wrongs of the war, might as well make it this one.

-glas-

 

Well I don't quite agree with you, Roman and Platy.

US war effort would be more succesfull without dweebs like these. I don't say war is nice, i never said it's nice. Still deliberately killing civilians without punishment just isn't way to if you want to keep your conquest. Each time it happens, the people of occupied area will turn more and more against you, and so will the international media aswell. Attitudes decide this kind of conflicts. And by attitudes i mean the (media)image of occupiers, to the locals as well as the world. That means if they are accepted or not. Will war last for generations or will it be over in few weeks.

I think there is nothing naive in understanding that war is a part of this reality. "War is war" is an empty phrase and means nothing. It's like saying dog is dog. Obivious maybe. But it still doesn't answer anything.

It's without any logical basis to accept things you don't accept because "it's war". In war shitty things happen often but it wont make it any more good, quite the contrary. Situation brings idiots toys to do their thing. To kill when it only does harm...and i mean harm for all involved in it.

But well, i see from your replies that you really cant understand me. You think so very differently it seems no use to discuss. I think from more invidual level, more indefferent to what it matters for anything else but me. You think these thoughts are naive since they don't have any global consequenses. For me the idea is much more important than. "You have to accept all shit cos you can't change it"

Ofourse it doesn't really matter.
Nothing really matters, unless one decides so.

 

Yes, just like KZ camp guards were machinegunning jews down professionally.
Shit happens. WAR is WAR TM. <sarcasm>

 

Come on folks. It's a war, and things like this happen during war. We weren't there, so we have no way of knowing if this was a justifiable action. How can you tell if these guys were, in fact, farmers? Because some caption says so? Do you remember that little clip from Vietnam, where a South Vietnamese officer draws his .38 and shoots a POW in the head at point-blank range? There were loads of protesting after that clip hit the airwaves, "shooting innocent civilians bla-bla-bla". Turned out later that this particular guy was an NVA regular caught planting a bomb near a US army base. He wasn't in uniform, which makes him a spy... According to the Geneva Convention, spies can be executed immediately when caught. So while tasteless, this SV-officer had all right to do as he did. Who can assure me this situation isn't something like that?

I was against US intervention in Iraq. I still think it wasn't a smart move by Bush to go in there. But he didn't listen to me and attacked. Well, I am against war, exactly because of things like what we just saw in this movie.

IN A WAR, PEOPLE DIE. SOME OF THESE PEOPLE ARE INNOCENT. It's a fact! And while(lemme stress this some more) I personally am AGAINST the USA intervening in Iraq, I must say that the US forces are just about the most professional, the most human and helpful military forces in the world (except for the Dutch Read below!). And even THEY make mistakes and commit atrocities sometimes.
In short: I don't feel good about what happened in Iraq, with the US invading, innocents dying and all that. But now that it happened, let's not get all worked up about things like this. It happened, ok? And if (for example) it were the Chinese "liberating" Iraq, loads of civilians more would've died, probably.

As for my remark about the Dutch, read this and weep:
- In 1992 (?) a batallion of Dutch soldiers were at Srebrenica, Bosnia. They were supposed to protect the Bosnian Muslims from the Bosnian Serb militias. When they were sent to Bosnia, a political decision was made to ONLY allow these soldiers to bring man-portable weapons, so as "not to provoke" the bosnian serbs. No .50-cals, no tanks, no crew-served weapons like artillery and mortars. The Bosnian Serb militia came with tanks and then told the Dutch to get out of the way or get killed. The Dutch commander (Mr. Karremans) requested air-support and reinforcements to keep the Serbs at bay, but our government denied him this. He then said: "Okay, we will fight the Bosnian Serbs with our rifles and die if you want us to do that!" but he was overruled. Dutchbat (the Dutch forces in Srebrenica) were ordered to move AWAY from the city and let the Bosnian Serbs in!!!!! 6000 BOSNIAN MEN WERE KILLED IN THE FOLLOWING DAYS! SIX-FUCKING-THOUSAND! Mr. Karremans was blamed for this and asked to resign.
- We learned from that (yeah, RIGHT!). Right now, a batallion of Dutch marines are based in Iraq. A few weeks ago, in one of the cities in the Dutch sector a riot broke out. Dutch marines opened up with their rifles, firing warning-shots. One Dutch marine was shot at and returned fire. He killed a man at 100 meters (presumably the wrong person, as he hit him in the back). What would happen if this were a US-trooper? They would've said: "You've been a bad boy! Please pay more attention the next time.". Well, that's not the way things go in Holland. The marine was arrested, flown to Holland and put in a military jail.
Goddamn, if you don't want innocents to die, don't send those soldiers to a fucking war-zone! These people are trained to solve problems by means of force. If you want to solve all problems with talking, send a battalion of fucking social workers!

So while I disagree with the USA's government on the need of a war in Iraq, at least I respect their "fairness". Compare it to the Dutch hypocrisy and tell me what you prefer!

 

Murder is Murder on a battle field or not .... i don't know what amreican rules of engagement are but most state that you can only fire if you are fired upon....This pre-emptive strike crap is a load of bullshit ...Its just a way of getting what you want on the pretext of they might have ago at you some time in the distant future....Should we kill all the dolphins because they MIGHT evolve into man killers????

 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5365.htm

Is this kind of behaviour part of an American culture? It's known fact that most of households in USA have some kind of gun for self defending ...but so is in Iraq too; they have Kalashnikov!

Pls go married USA and Iraq, u are perfect pair

 

Small note: USAF is not allowed to fly rotary wing aircrafts. This is a US Army job in Iraq.

If this is the same footage i saw on TV, it looks as likley fake as not. Why would USA release this type of video? This could be from any time in the last 15 years, with new audio tacked on.

Am i overly sceptical or am i paranoid? if anyone cares i will start a poll on it, but i have little reason to believe journalsts. They always have an angle & a point of view & they never just try to report unbiased facts, but always push their point of view on us, the whole time going to great lengths to convince us that truths & factuality is their main goal in life.
Bravo Sierra

 

If you want to avoid murder, avoid war. That's what I am saying. Things like this happen in a war. "Clean War" or "Surgical Strikes" or "Limiting of Collateral Damage" doesn't exist. If there's a war, innocent people die. It's like that.

And yes, I am against war and I am against "atrocities" like these. But I still think that the US armed forces have commited less atrocities then most other armies in history of the world.

 

Hmm, this thread is following an overal theme without anyone seeming to see one underlying problem.

We have the Dutch Marine being court martialled for "accidentally" killing a civilian.

We have family members of the 6 British MP's killed in a riot demanding an explanation.

We have this latest video showing an American helicopter defending itself against a possible armed Iraqi.



People do need to understand that these things do happen, you in a high pressure stressful enviroment where things are not laid out and accidents happen. You as an individual have to make split second decisions that involve your own life, and the consequences of making a mistake can involve the loss of life.

By us questioning and protesting about these things and if we do have an impact of them happening this impact will be negative (in terms of war) and will lead to a greater loss of life for our own armed forces.

WHAT I hear you scream!!

It's simple, if as a soldier or commander you are restricted in the decisions you make or have a fear of the consequences of your actions then it reduces your ability to think and react properly to a given situation.

For example the video on this thread. If the situation was that the pilot of the helicopter was not allowed to shoot in self defense or pre emptive defensive measures then the headline in the papers could have been about another helicopter shot down and the loss of more allied lives.


Likewise the commander who is to cautious because he is to afraid of the consequences of making a bad decision, will lose the battle/war at the cost of more allied lives.

Malin

 

Well spoken, Malino...

War IS evil, because of things like this. It is redundant to get angry over this, as it's a natural consequence of warfare.

 

Wrong Big difference and you know it Illo.

Guards in death camps knew the people they were killing were :

a) Unarmed

b) Not guilty of any crimes except to be a Jew

c) No immediate threat to the guards

I dont believe that can be compared to the situation in that video.

-glas-

 

@Malino and Glas
You're ignoring a very obvious detail of the video: the "targets" are not perceiving the presence of the chopper until it opens fire.
It's not possible to estimate the exact distance because it's not possible to read in the HUD the magnification factor of the scope, but i think it to be a kilometer or more.
Moreover it looks that - even after the first burst is fired - they can't identify the position of the attacker: you can clearly see that they get cover on the wrong side of the tractor, being completely exposed to the cannon fire.
Moreover the weapon - if it is a weapon, as it probably is - is closed in its cover: it would take some minutes for the guys to get it out, arm it and shoot at the chopper: far more than what is needed to take the approrpiate contra-meausres.
Moreover, the last guy is shot when he's already crawling (badly) wounded (Pilot: "He's wounded" - Tower "Hit him! hit him !"), which is really unnecessary for the Apache crew safety.
Therefore they can't be reasonably considered as an immediate threat for the Apache crew.
This is a very clear example of a summary execution of probable weapons dealers, rather than a combat action.

Can you assume it to be legal ? I don't really think so.
War is war, but we all know there are rules about how to fight it.
Of course it happens them to be violated in any conflict, but this is not enough to justify these violations because they actually belong to the pathological part of war, and it's an obbligation of any civil person to condemn them.

 

At Promet - It doesn't matter if this action by US-army personel was illegal or not. If it wasn't, no one cares anyway. And if it was, it's a war out there! Shit happens (harsh as it may sound).

Morally, war is wrong. Nobody sane can say anything differently. Unfortunately, ocasionally war is necessary. Whether the current conflict in Iraq is/was necessary is beside the point, the point being that because war is such a stressful situation, there's just nothing you can do about atrocities and tactical errors costing lives.

The irony is that these atrocities have their use, as well! If all wars were fought the way the Geneva convention states and the armies plan, there would be a lot more wars! No blue-on-blue, no civilian casualties, humane treating for captured soldiers, good medical help for wounded soldiers, no attacks on non-combattants.... The cost of war would drastically decrease.

 

Funnily enough this was the British way of fighting up until the War of Independence when someone introduced the concept of "Geurilla War".


Mal

 

I do. And it looks like I'm not the only one. Fortunately.

This point is pretty naive.

This is very evidently not the mistake resulting from a stressfull situation (which is a sadly acceptable consequence of war), but a deliberate execution. It's pretty different.

By pointing out what they dislike, people have been changing this world since the history has begun.
And this is even more true in a democratic country as USA is, where citizens (who pay traxes necessary for feeding the war machine) can punish a wrong war leading by voting and/or requesting the responsible of war crimes to be punished.
History of Vietnam war shows this point pretty clearly.

If all the people were thinking as you do, there would be no progress.



Best regards



Promet

 

interesting to hear it from someone that has following sentence in his signature :
"Aggressive spirit is everything
Manfred von Richthofen"

 

Richthofen means btw. that one should act according to situation and not be passive. That philosophy was used in finnish pilot training also.

It's meaning is actually very similar to "Seize the moment".
It's not about hastiness or spontaneus agression.
Those things are not good for any pilot.