Posts by David R
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I'm quite uncomfortable about the position (seemingly) being taken that we are there, or should stay in Afghanistan, to protect Afghani woman. By all means this is a worthy thing, however, lets be real about the motives for being there. The coalition went in to fuck shit up.
New Zealand went in as part of our commitments to the UN and to the US. We are on the one hand sending in the SAS to kill and on the other sending in reconstruction teams to heal. It's hypocritical ( and completely immora l) and it makes anything improvement of the plight of the oppressed in Afghanistan a mere side affect of being there, looking to fuck shit up.
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Slippery slope argument has been invoked. Goodbye thread...
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I also forgot to note that Wikileaks has 10 further videos for release showing civilian casualties from airstrikes.
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Simon, there may well have been hundreds of suspect incidents, where the US military's ROE were either bent or broken and deaths resulted, but that is out of how many missions? Probably an average of hundreds of missions per day over 7 years and longer in Afghanistan, a hell of a lot of missions. Several hundred suspect incidents is a bloody small % and proof that the US military as a whole has been very disciplined in the sandbox, as much as that might be difficult for far too many to accept.
You might as well just say that you wont change your preconceived notions in the face of evidence given by Simon and myself. If we post a thousand instances, you'll move the goal posts to hundreds of thousands before you see that it is a military wide disregard for Iraqi lives.
As far as whether or not they had enough justification to engage, having AK 47s is more than enough justification. Firedoglake again:
Regardless, no one is allowed to be armed except for Iraqi police and Coalition forces. There is no such thing as an armed Iraqi escort for journalists. My only guess is he underestimated how quickly and deadly the situation can become if he were to hang around with armed insurgents
Again, there is no independent verification of the group possessing arms. I can see in the relatively low quality video what could be either a tripod or a camera. I would reference the higher quality video the military has but uh oh
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_IRAQ_VIDEO?SITE=INLAF&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
War is horrible, no doubt about it, but Iraqi's has a shot at a future now. It didn't when Hussein was there. How many people would Hussein's regime have killed since 2003 if he was still in power? If he continued his average, probably tens of thousands at least as well as continuing to brutalize the entire population. And we would have Iran and Iraq both with nutcases in charge both racing to go nuclear. Nice. Leaving Hussein in place had a lot of drawbacks that never seem to get considered in discussions like these. It was hardly a picture perfect situation that 'ole Dubyah went over and stuffed up. It was already a mess.
I.......don't....know...where...to....begin.
That's pretty disingenuous double speak. You need to kill Iraqi's to give them a future?
Let's not also forget that the stated purpose of the invasion was never about helping the Iraqi people, it was about going after the fictional MWD's and also the oft repeated lie that it was about payback for 9/11.
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What did one of the crew say when he heard there were children in the van? "Their fault for bringing kids to a battle"?
Yup, that was the reaction to finding out children were in the van that they wasted.
Further on in the video ( the full length version ) they send a Hellfire down to a house. There is an innocent pedestrian walking by it who gets killed in the explosion.
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Hi James,
Thanks for sharing your opinion. I have to take exception to it though.
First off lets start with this....
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/55644/collateral%20damage.gif
Pretty clear and unadulterated murder of a civilian.
I read today that the 17 min video was taken from a 38 min video that made it clearer that the action in question was taken amid clashes in the neighborhood; it wasn’t just Bobby and Billy in a chopper wasting some people. Also the longer version made it clearer that one of the people was carrying RPG. An RPG is a sure sign someone is upto no good.
The video was shot on July 12, 2007, over Eastern Baghdad, a war zone, in the middle of the surge. If you are going to walk around in a war zone, during a much publicized “surge”, in a neighborhood during on going clashes, carrying an AK 47 and an RPG when the US is well known to be extensively using drones and attack helicopters, I am sorry, it probably isn’t going to end well very well for you. Ditto for walking close to someone with an AK47 or an RPG in that situation. The key bit is “with an AK 47 and an RPG during on going clashes”.
This is part of a bigger discussion but it's not a warzone, its their country, their neighborhood and their community. The US Govt. has brought a war to their neighborhood for completely made up reasons and yet we can just hand wave it all away as shouldn't have been in a warzone . If standing on a street corner holding a camera and tripod, while US forces are a considerable distance away after hearing gunfire is grounds for being minced, then I don't know what to say.
I'm reminded of this...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,138376,00.htmlAs to their possession of arms, I would refer to the official US military investigation regarding this but the scene photos showing the RPG are redacted so as to be useless.
I still contend there were no weapons on them at all and that i would err on the side of 'cover-up' if any weapons are found considering the intense amount of official lies regarding this incident.
After 7 years in Iraq and longer in Afghanistan, there must have been hundreds of thousands of individual combat actions on the ground and in the air. The number of incidents where soldiers or airmen have screwed up have been few in proportion. In order to show any kind of pattern of behavior or systemic issues in the US military, there would need to be thousands of such incidents and nothing like that has come out and that number of incidents could never, ever be kept under wraps. The US military and Govt. can’t keep secrets of any kind, especially not this kind of information in the resent political/media environment, so if wrongful identifications and shootings etc. were happening in significant numbers, we would know about it for sure.
You're not looking hard enough, but to be fair, its really is the US media's fault more than anything. Investigative journalism is dead.
Let me quote General Stanley McChrystal
“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat."
(apologies for the NYTIMES link, but I couldn't find any other decent source ) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/world/asia/27afghan.html
Please, I implore you to also read this link.
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So no-one's really addressing the casual Hellfire chucked down at the house and the poor pedestrian casually walking by and getting minced in the explosion?
(edit : amongst the whole wrongness of the entire rampage )
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I'm hoping the same amount of outrage can also be applied to chicken farming. It seems Free Range eggs have quite a high visibility now but I don't see the same thinking being applied to chicken meat.
Free range chicken meat is hard to find, unless you live in Ponsonby.It always struck me as odd that our Beef and Lamb are given a great life in the paddocks, but the same thing isn't applied to Pigs or Chickens.
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Or Cat.
Before we all get too soppy about how happy the pigs are on free range farms and how good they taste, remember that they do have to be killed to get from one place to the other: from the state of happiness to the state of tastyness. Might I suggest another idea, that we do not eat them at all?Baby steps my friend....
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The last report cover has been released.