The commentary from Ed at Hotair and Rusty at Jawa report pretty much summarize this whole event neatly, I’d only like to add a few things. (Update: American Power puts together a pretty good compilation.)
I can see and understand some people’s comments on YouTube that the Soldiers (Pilots) were a bit blood thirsty, callous, and a little to casual with humor in killing the insurgents. I think their wrong! Frankly, I’d never hold it against anyone in taking enjoyment out of their job. You might find that callous as well. Tough. If your living this 24/7 I doubt you would spend a year without laughing and having a good time. This is war, the thing video games are based upon and billions of dollars are spent for enjoyment (video games, paintball, chess, D&D, movies, ect).
(Update: I’d like to add to the comments I made in the paragraph above in regard to the Pilots. My Marine housemate likes to remind me from time to time, “No one ever said Marines are Saints or Angels; They are the exact opposite; they are some brutal mother_____ers!” These men aren’t Saints, they are life-takers. Don’t confuse them with some ambivalent pansy politically correct Soldier in a movie who is highly benevolent. They are trained killers, and guess what; they have potty mouths to be coupled with their desire to eliminate threats. As the Bradleys came under fire nothing they went into action and became angered when they couldn’t perform their job. Soldiers feel intense emotions when they know their fellow Americans lives are on the line.
The one thing I can never remove from my head is the Spirit of the Bayonet. During my training our drill sergeants made us repeat it over and over again. I’ll repeat it for you; Drill Sergeant screams, “What is the Spirit of the Bayonet.” Answer. “To KILL. To KILL! To KILL without mercy. Make the grass grow green with blood. Huah!” If you enter the world of a Soldier you have to put away your Disney channel mindset.
To further push this. Here are some vulgar quotes from a Great Soldier George S. Patton,
“I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”
“Some goddamn fool once said that flanks have got to be secure. Since then son-of-a-bitches all over the globe have been guarding their flanks. I don’t agree with that. My flanks are something for the enemy to worry about, not me. Before he finds out where my flanks are, I’ll be cutting the bastard’s throat.”)
Once again, these pilots did their job. They probably even saved American lives that day.
Now that I think of it this reminds me of the Battle of Mogadishu. During the Battle of Mogadishu when the blackhawk went down and the horde of angry skinnies and enemy Soldiers were on their way, it was said that US Troops fired indiscriminately into the crowd on unarmed civilians. Once again law of war has to be explained to naive college idiots. If you are walking with and it would seem to be in cohorts with the enemy, no matter if armed or not during a battle; that makes you a valid target. Especially during the Battle of Mogadishu, you don’t need an AK-47 or RPG to smash in the head of a pilot laying on the ground. People can kill with their bare hands and feet.
Update:
Little Green Footballs says, “Quite a few people are calling this clear evidence of a war crime. I’m not so sure it is, because at least in the initial group of men, some of them were evidently armed. The shooting of the rescuers, however, is highly disturbing.”
While I claim to be an expert on the military, I don’t claim to be an expert on Law of War. However, I’m going to open my keyboard to my thoughts anyway. Is the shooting of the rescuers really that disturbing? While at first I thought the same thing, they didn’t seem to pose any kind of threat and were acting in the manner of medics. But the bullet is, they aren’t identifying themselves as such. Here is a good example, in Saving Private Ryan Vin Diesels’ character gets shot by a sniper. His buddies try to save him, which is a reoccurring scene in war movies, and the sniper takes shots at them. If your trying to perform the actions of a medic, but are either armed or/and not displaying the red cross your thus an enemy combatant. While it didn’t appear they were carrying weapons in the video, they did have a van which we all know has to be considered in the hands of insurgents to be a possible vehicle borne IED. While this is a stretch, this is war. Tough.
Oh. Also. The US never ratified the 4th Geneva Convention and hopefully will never be part of the International Court. So suck it!
Update 2:
While a little unrelated. I’d like to add a thing about my military training. I was always told you should never make all your shots, kill shots. Sometimes it’s a good idea to wound your enemy so his friends feel obligated to rescue him. Which means with one bullet you’ve now taken at least three people out of the fight.
Update 3:
Sorry, thinking like a cop again. In wartime you don’t need a reason to kill the enemy. Just seeing the enemy is good enough. They don’t have to pose a threat or be armed. That’s what we call an advantage! If you drop a bomb on a barracks full of Soldiers while they are sleeping, that’s a victory. The only way you cannot kill your enemy is when they are actively surrendering. When that van showed up and assisted the insurgents they made themselves a valid target. By assisting them they showed the Apache pilots whose side they were on and made themselves a target.
For those who comment saying it doesn’t look like an RPG or Ak47s. Bull! Your not in a combat zone, your not flying 120mph at 1,000 feet in the air worrying about possible RPGs, and if you wait any longer lives are on the line.
Other people are just ignoring that out of a crowd of 8 to 10 people only 2 were journalist. The others were Insurgents.
To the people that comment and say that these guys aren’t combatants because they aren’t seeking cover from the helicopter till after it shoots at them. Your an idiot! Watch the video again. Notice the time difference from the weapon firing to the time it hits the ground. The Apache was at least a mile away. The Insurgents probably had no clue the helicopter was in the area or if they did was observing them.
Update 4:
I’d just like to add that bloggers have the ability to see the google search you used that brought you to their site. I have an enormous amount of hits from people searching “Collateral Murder pilots names.” I know what that’s about and I just want to comment, that is completely screwed up and very unethical. What are you going to do? Find out who the pilots are and try to find their home address and send them a nasty letter, bomb, hate mail? Leave the troops alone, they don’t need to go to war and have to come home and be dejected to trolls like you.
For those who don’t know, I was stationed at Guantanamo Bay. Many times the families of military police officers stationed there would get death threats through phone calls and in the mail. It’s abhorrent, unethical, and un-American to treat America’s uniformed services with such disrespect (besides criminal).
For Fox News and John Stossel this is going to be a career changer. Especially for John, I mean is anyone watching anybody but Fox these days?
Most of my news comes from either Fox or the Internet. Once in awhile I like to flip to MSNBC and CNN too see how they are reporting on the same story. Sometimes they aren’t even covering it. Most of the time they are talking about it and it just seems like Fox has about 200% more information on the story.
The best example of this; does anyone remember that story of the teenage highschool girls who made a pact to all get pregnant. Well I started off watching it on CNN I believe (could have been MSNBC), and they were interviewing the teenagers. The whole feel of the interview was basically, ‘Wow, look how cute this story is. Aren’t these kids so mature and grown up to make cute decisions like these. Wowwie! How did you guys feel all about this?’
The story CNN was portraying was all positive; which as time went by I started thinking. WTF? These are a bunch of teenage girls who can’t vote, can’t smoke, can’t drink, and can’t get into a contract with anyone. But, they should all decide to get preggers? That’s not cute and smart, that’s naive and stupid!
So I switched to Fox News and they were talking about the same story. I ended up getting a lot more information about the story that even though CNN had a live interview didn’t get to the bottom of the whole thing.
Fox was discussing how one or several of the girls had older men, twenty-something impregnate them. Now most of the girls did it with their underage boyfriends, but CNN wasn’t even talking about this; which happens to then be a CRIME!
Now the thing I like about FOX is they are Fair and Balanced. So they brought up the fact that these adult men should have been responsible enough to known they were committing a crime. Then, added in an opposing view that maybe the adult guys shouldn’t be prosecuted because the girls who intended to get pregnant were almost predators in this situation.
Why bring this up? Well, it’s becoming quite clear that nobody watches any of the other networks anymore. They put out the statistics on how many people are watching each network, and I’d like to think that the actual numbers are even lower. I have to consider that military offices and government buildings have TVs on displaying the news all day. Somehow they are always on CNN or MSNBC. So if they are basing these numbers on how many people are actively getting signal from those stations, considering how many TVs the government owns their are very very few actual citizens watching ABC, MSNBC, and CNN.
Why don’t they have FOX on you might ask? I asked the same thing to my First Sergeant and at the time his response was, “Their is no point in watching those who support us, you gotta watch your enemies!”
The problem that arises from FOX becoming the only news channel watched on TV is apparent from anyone who believes in the free market. Nobody watches CNN or MSNBC, then all of their advertisers pull out and they go bankrupt. No matter how much I like FOX, I don’t want them to have a monopoly.
Monopolies are very evil, especially in the world of news. *Cough Venezuela cough*
So while John Stossel improves FOX NEWS, I hope it also smacks MSNBC, CNN and ABC in the face and say, ‘Hey you better change your ways or you’ll be like GM, God forbid!’
Video – Collateral Murder?
The commentary from Ed at Hotair and Rusty at Jawa report pretty much summarize this whole event neatly, I’d only like to add a few things. (Update: American Power puts together a pretty good compilation.)
I can see and understand some people’s comments on YouTube that the Soldiers (Pilots) were a bit blood thirsty, callous, and a little to casual with humor in killing the insurgents. I think their wrong! Frankly, I’d never hold it against anyone in taking enjoyment out of their job. You might find that callous as well. Tough. If your living this 24/7 I doubt you would spend a year without laughing and having a good time. This is war, the thing video games are based upon and billions of dollars are spent for enjoyment (video games, paintball, chess, D&D, movies, ect).
(Update: I’d like to add to the comments I made in the paragraph above in regard to the Pilots. My Marine housemate likes to remind me from time to time, “No one ever said Marines are Saints or Angels; They are the exact opposite; they are some brutal mother_____ers!” These men aren’t Saints, they are life-takers. Don’t confuse them with some ambivalent pansy politically correct Soldier in a movie who is highly benevolent. They are trained killers, and guess what; they have potty mouths to be coupled with their desire to eliminate threats. As the Bradleys came under fire nothing they went into action and became angered when they couldn’t perform their job. Soldiers feel intense emotions when they know their fellow Americans lives are on the line.
The one thing I can never remove from my head is the Spirit of the Bayonet. During my training our drill sergeants made us repeat it over and over again. I’ll repeat it for you; Drill Sergeant screams, “What is the Spirit of the Bayonet.” Answer. “To KILL. To KILL! To KILL without mercy. Make the grass grow green with blood. Huah!” If you enter the world of a Soldier you have to put away your Disney channel mindset.
To further push this. Here are some vulgar quotes from a Great Soldier George S. Patton,
“I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”
“Some goddamn fool once said that flanks have got to be secure. Since then son-of-a-bitches all over the globe have been guarding their flanks. I don’t agree with that. My flanks are something for the enemy to worry about, not me. Before he finds out where my flanks are, I’ll be cutting the bastard’s throat.”)
Once again, these pilots did their job. They probably even saved American lives that day.
Now that I think of it this reminds me of the Battle of Mogadishu. During the Battle of Mogadishu when the blackhawk went down and the horde of angry skinnies and enemy Soldiers were on their way, it was said that US Troops fired indiscriminately into the crowd on unarmed civilians. Once again law of war has to be explained to naive college idiots. If you are walking with and it would seem to be in cohorts with the enemy, no matter if armed or not during a battle; that makes you a valid target. Especially during the Battle of Mogadishu, you don’t need an AK-47 or RPG to smash in the head of a pilot laying on the ground. People can kill with their bare hands and feet.
Update:
Little Green Footballs says, “Quite a few people are calling this clear evidence of a war crime. I’m not so sure it is, because at least in the initial group of men, some of them were evidently armed. The shooting of the rescuers, however, is highly disturbing.”
While I claim to be an expert on the military, I don’t claim to be an expert on Law of War. However, I’m going to open my keyboard to my thoughts anyway. Is the shooting of the rescuers really that disturbing? While at first I thought the same thing, they didn’t seem to pose any kind of threat and were acting in the manner of medics. But the bullet is, they aren’t identifying themselves as such. Here is a good example, in Saving Private Ryan Vin Diesels’ character gets shot by a sniper. His buddies try to save him, which is a reoccurring scene in war movies, and the sniper takes shots at them. If your trying to perform the actions of a medic, but are either armed or/and not displaying the red cross your thus an enemy combatant. While it didn’t appear they were carrying weapons in the video, they did have a van which we all know has to be considered in the hands of insurgents to be a possible vehicle borne IED. While this is a stretch, this is war. Tough.
Oh. Also. The US never ratified the 4th Geneva Convention and hopefully will never be part of the International Court. So suck it!
Update 2:
While a little unrelated. I’d like to add a thing about my military training. I was always told you should never make all your shots, kill shots. Sometimes it’s a good idea to wound your enemy so his friends feel obligated to rescue him. Which means with one bullet you’ve now taken at least three people out of the fight.
Update 3:
Sorry, thinking like a cop again. In wartime you don’t need a reason to kill the enemy. Just seeing the enemy is good enough. They don’t have to pose a threat or be armed. That’s what we call an advantage! If you drop a bomb on a barracks full of Soldiers while they are sleeping, that’s a victory. The only way you cannot kill your enemy is when they are actively surrendering. When that van showed up and assisted the insurgents they made themselves a valid target. By assisting them they showed the Apache pilots whose side they were on and made themselves a target.
For those who comment saying it doesn’t look like an RPG or Ak47s. Bull! Your not in a combat zone, your not flying 120mph at 1,000 feet in the air worrying about possible RPGs, and if you wait any longer lives are on the line.
Other people are just ignoring that out of a crowd of 8 to 10 people only 2 were journalist. The others were Insurgents.
To the people that comment and say that these guys aren’t combatants because they aren’t seeking cover from the helicopter till after it shoots at them. Your an idiot! Watch the video again. Notice the time difference from the weapon firing to the time it hits the ground. The Apache was at least a mile away. The Insurgents probably had no clue the helicopter was in the area or if they did was observing them.
Update 4:
I’d just like to add that bloggers have the ability to see the google search you used that brought you to their site. I have an enormous amount of hits from people searching “Collateral Murder pilots names.” I know what that’s about and I just want to comment, that is completely screwed up and very unethical. What are you going to do? Find out who the pilots are and try to find their home address and send them a nasty letter, bomb, hate mail? Leave the troops alone, they don’t need to go to war and have to come home and be dejected to trolls like you.
For those who don’t know, I was stationed at Guantanamo Bay. Many times the families of military police officers stationed there would get death threats through phone calls and in the mail. It’s abhorrent, unethical, and un-American to treat America’s uniformed services with such disrespect (besides criminal).
Tags: 2007, apache, collateral, commentary, fox, gunship, iraq, jack valenteen, liberal, murder, naive, News Organizations, pilots, propaganda, propganda, soldiers
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