Claimed US Military Wikileaks Source Arrested 698
svelemor writes "A 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst was ratted out by a fellow hacker, accused of providing the Collateral Murder video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to Wikileaks. He is currently imprisoned in Kuwait."
Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand this dude getting in trouble for leaking information and such, but kudos to him for getting the collateral murder video out there in the wild.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand this dude getting in trouble for leaking information and such, but kudos to him for getting the collateral murder video out there in the wild.
If there were any doubts as to the authenticity of these documents and videos, their veracity has now been affirmed.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Interesting)
There was never any doubt about the authenticity of the videos - the military admitted they were real. What they argued was that the videos didn't show the context in which there had been combat nearby.
Now, how nearby combat affects whether you can shoot at people retrieving the wounded without violating the Geneva Conventions is a different question. What is very clear, though, is that this is a small taste of what the Iraq War really looks like, and that some soldiers under the sort of combat pressure end up thinking along the lines of "Anyone who runs is an insurgent. Anyone who doesn't run is a well-disciplined insurgent."
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Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
On my way to the market where I setup a sniper gun and shot 12 random people including 3 children. I shot them 5 or 6 times each I wanted to make sure they died.
You have to understand though I rode a subway packed with people on the way and I didn't kill any of them. I even bought icecream for a random girl just outside the market. I'm such a nice guy. People just don't understand how nice I am.
Anyhow luckly after a trial kidgenius was on the jury and sent me home free as a result of my testimony of buying icecream for a girl and not killing a subway full of people.
Glad that's all over WEW.
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You did an excellent job of perfectly paralleling the situation in your hypothetical. No person could ever find any fault in your comparison. It is unassailable.
Re:Feh (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, except that same helicopter (same day, before the 17min Collateral Murder vid) crew DIDN'T fire when children and other noncombatants were present
And that makes firing on a van full of civilians ok exactly how?
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't need to 'make it okay', it needs to refute the accusation that these were cowboy soldiers willy-nilly shooting innocent civilians. Once we discard that notion, we can get down to the real business of discussing the actions in the context of combat.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the intelligence analyst who allegedly leaked the video chose to risk spending time in a military prison by leaking it, I'd guess that the video was not typical. If he'd seen any more damning video, he would have released that. I'd guess he thought it was unusual to kill that many unarmed civilians because there might have been an RPG in the vicinity. I'd also guess he's disappointed that no action has been taken since he released it.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
You've obviously never lived in a war zone. Where do you go? How do you support your family? You don't just "get the hell out." You don't just pack up and move that easily. This isn't just a one or two week conflict where you can temporarily move to another town or city until things blow over. This war has been going on for nearly eight years!!
The better question is, why doesn't the US get the hell out? They have no business being there. There are no WMDS there. Wasn't that the whole justification the government gave in attacking Iraq?
Re:Feh (Score:4, Insightful)
They're civilians in a war zone. Why are they sticking around in a war zone? They should be a) getting the hell out, or b) assisting in taking down the insurgents to reclaim their home, at their own risk.
That's actually false. This was during 'the surge'.
1) It wasn't in some kind of DMZ. This was a populated city.
2) It hadn't been evacuated. The military operation was counting on 'smoking out' insurgents, rather than tipping them off.
3) If the choice is 'refugee or death', is it then okay for military forces to fire indiscriminately? Is that all it takes, for it to be possible to become a refugee?
Re:War is not pretty (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think there has ever been a war where civilians didn't get killed, you are kidding only yourself. So if you say that no civilian deaths are every ok at all, then that is to say that no war is ever ok at all, including a war of defense. If you are ever ok with a war, well then civilian deaths WILL be a part of it. The military can and should (and does) work to minimize it but mistakes happen, collateral damage happens.
This is clearly true, but in the terms of the 'collateral murder' video, it is totally off-topic. Nothing in that video is collateral, it is direct and intentional. To stay on topic you'd need to say...
If you think there has ever been a war where civilians didn't get murdered, you are kidding only yourself.
If you were confused as to what all the controversy was up until now, that ought to clear it up.
Also remember the issue of the war being just and the actions of soldiers are separate matters. If you feel this unjust and the costs are not worth it, your beef is with the civilian government. They set the mission for the military, the military just carries it out.
This is almost completely true. However, citizen soldiers are expected to retain a shred of humanity at all times. Others in the past have claimed that they were 'just following orders' and it didn't work out so well for them either. And I'm not just talking about the obvious, but also the rape camps in Bosnia, Japanese internment, torture, abductions, and dozens of other examples of shameful behavior and even atrocities committed by sanctioned military personnel. The point here isn't that all soldiers are monsters. Clearly this is not the case. The point is that when monsters are discovered amongst the ranks they need to be removed before (more) senseless violence occurs. The men in the 'collateral murder' video are (or were) an example of this. They lost their ability to evaluate targets and gave in to the urge to get a higher score than the other helicopters in the unit.
This is never acceptable.
Now, you are correct in that it is and will always be a failure of command. And as members of a democracy, this discourse actually is a function of the civilian government. We're congregating and discussing our political views.
If you feel this unjust and the costs are not worth it, your beef is with the civilian government.
One final point, there is only ONE government, and it is entirely civilian. The military is not some sort of aristocracy that is immune to the will of the people. It answers to the executive branch, which answers to us. So telling civilians that they aren't in a position of authority to deal with issues like this is a symptom of the problem, rather than any actual fact.
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Re:War is not pretty (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think there has ever been a war where civilians didn't get murdered, you are kidding only yourself.
As an aside, I believe that the above is also literally true, unfortunately. One of the reasons that war should be avoided unless absolutely required is that murder, rape, and other terrible crimes will almost certainly occur on both sides, no matter how much you hope they wouldn't.
C//
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I wish that I could Mod you more than +5.
how about (+10 the goddamn truth)?
"Also remember the issue of the war being just and the actions of soldiers are separate matters. If you feel this unjust and the costs are not worth it, your beef is with the civilian government. They set the mission for the military, the military just carries it out."
Part of "setting the mission" is being a party to and bound by the terms of the geneva (and others) convention.
If the boy's in the helicopter or the brass higher up can
Re:War is not pretty (Score:4, Insightful)
I use murder to describe an illegal and/or immoral killing, period.
Then you fail to understand the situation. What they did was unfortunate but legit.
Again you are among the many hoping to extend the cloak of non-responsibility to any service person under deployment, anywhere. In your world the 9/11 killers are innocents, too, because they were fighting a war.
No. This simply proves your bias and/or ignorance. He was very specific about the circumstances in which killing is acceptable, especially regarding the Geneva Convention. You are going way overboard in your attack on him, putting words in his mouth that he clearly did not intend. Intentionally targeting civilians (9/11) is far different from accidentally targeting them (helo crew).
If you work for an entity, you cannot illegally kill, yes?
No. See above.
So without any convention protecting them, they're fair game? Because we didn't sign an agreement with terrorists to behave morally and ethically, we no longer have to? How far does this extend?
As the enemy, the Geneva Convention does not protect insurgents from helicopter attack. It means that by masquerading as civilians, the insurgents are in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Since the GC seems important to indignant, righteous folks such as yourself, you might want to spread the blame where it belongs, ie, on the insurgents.
The video at hand displays zero exigent threat to anyone ...
Listen to the audio, or at least read the captions. The helo was responding to units on the ground taking small arms fire from the direction of this group. In the video, some of the group are armed, one with what appears to be an AK-47, at least one other with an RPG. Note that the man with the RPG is clearly seen early in the film, and is different than the cameraman crouching in the alley. According to the audio, ground teams found a body with a live RPG round under it. These guys were not boy scouts on a hike.
Even if you surmised all the total destructive power of the weapons that were 'vaporized' in the attack, I'm still not detecting any WMD's.
What? Are you incoherently suggesting they were attacked because they were carrying WMD's? Or were you creating a pretext to inject the term "WMD's"? If you are implying that no weapons were found, see above re: weapons found. Also, see the GP's point about insurgents removing weapons from the battlefield to create the appearance of "civilian" casualties, specifically for propaganda that people like you eat up like it's gospel. No wonder an unmarked van was targeted.
I'm not even convinced there was ever any threat here to American personnel, or anyone except those killed.
Ground troops reported taking fire from that direction. It is possible that the fire they took was from a different group. There is no doubt in my mind, after viewing the film repeatedly, that at least one of the group had an RPG. It is apparent that he was spotted by the helo crew, and it seems that when the cameraman lined up a shot, the helo crew thought that it was the guy with the RPG lining up a shot of a very different kind. On that basis they requested permission to fire, and on that basis it was granted.
Did you see the range readouts on the weapon's camera? The people
(I assume you mean the people in the van)
taking fire weren't even aware they were in jeopardy. The bodies would have been spraying blood before the sound arrived. For Christ's sake, do a tiny bit of research before you use justifications like 'properly marked'.
Your hyperbole doesn't help your cause. It merely indicates that you are not thinking clearly. If you are in a van in a war zone, and you roll up near some wounded bodies, be aware t
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Re:War is not pretty (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to tell the difference between a tripod and an assault rifle from your desk when you can freeze the image and look at it closely.
Now do that in a moving helicopter when you are dealing with a dozen other things, lights flashing around you, noises, the ever present danger of being shot out of the sky.
"The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently—like the effect of a fog or moonshine—gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance."
Re:War is not pretty (Score:5, Insightful)
For extra credit, discuss the gunner's proven unwillingness to fire on targets which he could positively discern were civilians [gawker.com]. (credit for finding this goes to kidgenius)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Of course civilians have been killed in every war, but only recently have they been able to get the videos out on YouTube.
"Bringing the War Home" was something that started with the nightly news footage of the Viet Nam war, and news organizations routinely cleaned up the footage before showing it over the air. The ubiquitous video culture (what Bruce Sterling calls "everyware") is going to "bring the war
Re:War is not pretty (Score:5, Insightful)
It may not be enough to end wars unfortunately, but it's going to change the way the military does business.
It already has. Now the military routinely classifies things that would reduce the public's desire to go to war, such as the bodies of dead soldiers returning from Iraq. It also ensures that embedded reporters report only the stories they want (anything else would endanger operational security).
See, the lesson that a lot of military guys learned from Vietnam wasn't "Never get involved in a land war in Asia.", but instead learned "Never let the public know what's actually involved in fighting a war."
Re:War is not pretty (Score:5, Insightful)
Then don't sell it as a clean war. The whole "smart weapons make a war clean" drivel is bullshit. That's the beef I have with this whole crappot that's cooking down in the middle east now. We get told that our boys are there to make the place safer, we go there to protect and bring them peace and justice, we don't shoot civilians and we only defend ourselves when those bad, bad terr'ists want to keep us from bringing those poor people freedom and democracy.
Right? Ain't that what we're being told time and again? And that these people are so incredibly happy that we're there, that we kicked that madman Saddam out and that we're now protecting them from becoming the next terrorist slaves?
Take a moment to ponder this: You're living in a country with a loonie as the dictator. He's far from a benevolent dictator and you're kinda suffering from his quirks and whims, but you adjust to it, somehow. Then suddenly people come from some sort of promised land, where everything is wonderful. You don't know really a lot about this country, but everyone who talks about it (hushed, of course, since, well, they once were your buddies back when you had that war with your neighbor, but since they became some sort of enemy for your dictator... but most people still consider them pretty cool guys and they know that they're insanely strong and well armed) knows that these people know what they do. They have gone to other places too and usually it went well for them. And somehow also for the places they went to, so they gotta be really cool. Somehow. Ok, they invaded your country, but, be honest, the people from the promised land just kicked the loonie from his seat, what side would you root for.
But somehow these guys ain't what you expected. You know, you kinda expected them to come, put a cool government like their own in charge and go again. Just like they did before. But they don't go. And you're far from having that sort of 'free' government they enjoy. Instead, their awsome firepower circles above you and drives through your streets, they stop you for no appearant reason and search you, treat you like some sort of criminal. Ok, there are some people who still fight them, so it's kinda understandable... but you never did anything against them! Hey, you really liked the idea that they come and kick out that dictator. But now, everything took a turn for the worse. Instead of knowing that you can't do or say this or that, you could now suddenly get shot! Suddenly one of their awsome firepower machines opens fire at you and you're dead. It happened to your uncle Franky. Your cousin Bill is missing now, they said those guys took him 'cause he happened to hang with the wrong people. He was just there to smoke some pot, but they didn't believe him.
How long 'til you stop thinking these people are really cool?
How long 'til you start fighting them?
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It doesn't even help a bit if the human firing it is the same scared shitless guy who sees in every tube of more than two feet length an RPG. He only hits the guy carrying home his new toilet pipes far more exactly.
Besides, there are no "intended targets" in an asymmetric war. There are no fixed installations, no enemy factories, no enemy gas refineries, not even fixed enemy SAM sites in a war where your enemy is fighting with low tech equipment and has no identifyable "own" infrastructure. What do you want
Re:War is not pretty (Score:5, Insightful)
That's really the problem. See, a lot of people in the USA were against going to war in Iraq. Not only is it NOT a defensive war (something I would be okay with in any circumstance except where my own govt. was as psychotic as North Korea, say) but it was sold on a total lie (WMDs). Well, when that didn't pan out, the justification for the war morphed into, "well, he was a really bad guy. Plus we'll be welcomed as liberators!" And when that didn't pan out, because surprisingly enough not everyone welcomes having their country decimated and thrown into near civil war, it morphed again into "We'll only kill the bad guys, so it's fine."
Everyone who was against the war anyway still knew this was false, but it's enough to shift the tone of the national debate. If you've got a military leader on one side of the table saying, "we have high technology, and will only kill bad guys," it's hard to say you think they should stop anyway. Either you're questioning the effectiveness of the military, which will automatically bias some people against you, or you're saying they shouldn't even kill bad guys, which will bias even more.
This kind of documentation is vital simply to remind each and every person in the country that, as you said, there is never a war where civilians don't get killed. Not just because we forget, but because our leaders were, for a while, actively trying to convince us otherwise.
Re:War is not pretty (Score:4, Interesting)
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The gunner didn't know he was firing on civilians. He thought he was firing on insurgents.
Oh, right. Unarmed people carrying off a wounded person. How incredibly insurgent. The impertinence!
Besides, re-read my post: I did not place the blame solely or even specifically on the gunner. Someone screwed up the intel and told someone else to go ahead and shoot, and that someone was only too happy and eager to oblige. Many people fucked this up together. That does not make it a purely random, unavoidable accident.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, except that same helicopter (same day, before the 17min Collateral Murder vid) crew DIDN'T fire when children and other noncombatants were present, and a second time when they also couldn't get a positive ID on insurgents.
And yet no video has ever been released to back up the soldier's claims, despite the fact that this would *clearly* soften the blow for the military.
So, just so I have this straight: I'm supposed to believe the statements of these soldiers, who've already proven to have bad judgment, and to trust that the military, a military that's proven time an again to be very happy to whitewash incidents if it's in their interests, has the video to back up these claims, but has just decided to hold on to it for no good reason?
Uhuh. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense...
Re:Feh (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Feh (Score:4, Insightful)
So long as "our" generation does not get lobotomized, we just have to wait until the young are old and the old are dead.
Because, you know, that worked so well for the baby boomers.
Don't put it off. Do what you can now.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
If you accept that wars, by necessity must be dirty, and that one side should do what it must to win, then the September 11 attacks come into a whole new focus. That was just one side striking out the only way they could. Had they an industrial economy, a seat at the UN and a decent counterintelligence machine, I'm sure their objections to the US's economic and military adventures in their region would have been voiced differently.
Don't ever justify what is wrong. It's one hell of a slippery slope.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, except that same helicopter (same day, before the 17min Collateral Murder vid) crew DIDN'T fire when children and other noncombatants were present, and a second time when they also couldn't get a positive ID on insurgents.
Yes, but they did fire on children and other noncombatants at least once without getting a positive ID on insurgents, and it was captured on video. And that is the point. Or are we supposed to give everyone a free pass for doing a bad thing if they do a good thing now and again - to paraphrase your argument - "nobody ever mentions all the black people that the KKK didn't discriminate against, or that time a KKK guy walked past a black man without beating him...".
Re:Feh (Score:4, Informative)
YEah, those damn baby-rapists...
No one said they raped babies. But their presence has caused the deaths of tens of thousand of Iraqi children, mostly due to destroyed infrastructure. It's forced millions of professional Iraqis out of their own country, forced many to live near pools of raw sewage, forced many Iraqi women to become prostitutes to provide for their family, and has created the ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda that did not exist before we invaded.
It's a fucking brutal mess that could have been avoided. The video is just proof of how many people die when Americans make mistakes. I'd bet my last dollar that a hundred times more people have died because of American "collateral damage" in the Iraq war than died on 9/11.
PS The last two generations of my family served. I chose not to because fighting for the US Military has nothing to do with defending the United States.
Re:Feh (Score:4, Informative)
Before making comments like that, you may want to check your numbers a bit better, because you just hit grand prize on the exaggeration scale... if you can bring positive proof that tens of thousands of Iraqi children have died as a consequence of this war, as well as proof that millions of professional Iraqi men even exist, then you my friend would almost certainly make the headlines in every major newspaper and station in the country
Do you think the major media outlets are in the habit of telling the truth about the Iraq War? From 2003 to 2008, about 9% of all violent deaths in Iraq were children [iraqbodycount.org]. That brings the number of dead children to a minimum of 9,000, and that's the lowest estimate possible according to Iraq Body Count. If you believe the Lancet, that number could be as high as 54,000. This does not even begin to address infant mortality issues, or deaths caused by the deplorable conditions we created by destroying Iraq's infrastructure.
As to your comment about professional Iraqi men, that just illustrates your unbelievable ignorance. Iraq was one of the most secular, highly educated and literate cultures in the Middle East. It was one of the few places were women could receive an education. And yes, over two million Iraqis have fled their home country because of the civil war there, with millions more internally displaced. Most of these people are middle class citizens.
I'm just saying get your damn numbers right
I'm just saying you're an ignorant fuck. Full stop.
Oh, and you know what's funny, the professional Iraqi citizens were leaving the country at every opportunity even BEFORE the war! I think it had something to do with a very controlling leader, and a lack of well paying jobs... America has done nothing but made it a much more easy and pleasant process to leave. Sad but true.
Actually, it was the US sanctions that were strangling the country and killing half a million kids over a ten year period according to the UN. And no, the US has not made it easy to immigrate. There are less than 25,000 Iraqi immigrants in the United States. That's less than 3,500 per year.
you should be ashamed for badmouthing the hard working men and women who do serve, if anyone in your family really DID
I didn't say anything negative about anyone. I just said that while my grandparents both served in WWII, and two of their children served in Vietnam, I chose not to because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't providing safety or security to US citizens.
Re:Feh (Score:4, Insightful)
Read the Geneva Convention(s) - it is specifically prohibited to fire on civilians who are attempting to help the wounded, even if the wounded are enemy combatants (legal or not). Furthermore, anyone who is not armed and not otherwise recognizable as a combatant must be assumed to be a civilian. Note that this prohibition is specifically mentioned in the conventions beyond the generic "care must be taken not to harm civilians" language found elsewhere, so you can assume the folks who agreed on the conventions thought this point warranted special attention.
What this means is that unless the aircrew saw the men attempting to help the wounded reporters pick up the reporters "weapons", they where not allowed to engage them. I would think that if the aircrew had seen the men pick up weapons, they would have mentioned this fact when requesting permission to engage - but they didn't. Considering that when this was discussed on the blog of a retired U.S. Army colonel, said colonel was not aware that civilians attempting to help wounded enemy combatants do not lose their protected status as civilians, I conclude that the U.S. Army does a very sloppy job of teaching its soldiers what is and what isn't permissible under the Geneva Conventions, and the aircrew simply didn't know that they weren't allowed to open fire. Of course in law ignorance is no defense, so IMO the aircrew is guilty of a manslaughter. Note that the initial engagement of the reporters was probably legal, as the reporters where in close proximity to actual insurgents, telling a camera from an RPG could be tricky in a combat situation, and the Geneva Conventions only demands that reasonable steps be taken to prevent harm to civilians.
regardless of whether their status as civilians is in question or not. Note that the status of the wounded is also irrelevant. This means that unless the aircrew saw the men attempting to help the wounded "insurgents" (I accept that the aircrew had a legitimate reason to believe the reporters where insurgents and thus legitimately opened fire on them) pick up the "insurgents" weapons, they where specifically prohibited from firing on them. Since the aircrew didn't mention seeing the men pick up weapons when they requested permission to engage, I assume they didn't see anything of the sort. Since even a (retired) U.S. colonel was not aware that the Geneva convention does not allow soldiers to engage civilians
Re:Feh (Score:4, Informative)
As for the Geneva convention, it is not clear to me whether it applies in this case.
It does.
After all, the responsibility is on the insurgents to wear uniforms, so that the Americans can know whom to shoot.
It is the responsibility of insurgents in a sense that, as soon as they are clearly identified as insurgents, they become illegal combatants not protected by the Convention in any way due to not wearing uniform. There is nothing in the Convention, however, that relaxes the protections civilians of the other party in the conflict enjoys if enemy combatants illegally pretend to be civilians. You can legally execute any captured insurgent dressed in a civilian clothing - once you reasonably ascertain that he is indeed an insurgent - but you can't shoot at any random civilian claiming that he might be an insurgent, just because insurgents dress as civilians.
Simply put, the rule is this: when someone looks like a civilian, does not engage in any activity that would identify him as a combatant, and there is no past information that identifies him as such, then he should be assumed to be a civilian, and all provisions of Geneva Conventions applicable to civilians should apply.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Now, how nearby combat affects whether you can shoot at people retrieving the wounded without violating the Geneva Conventions is a different question.
Article 50 [deoxy.org] of the Geneva Convention defines a "civilian", and makes it clear that there is a presumption of innocence on the part of civilians - a solder is not allowed to "assume" that an unidentified person is an enemy combatant and then fire upon them:
"Article 50: Definition of Civilians and Civilian Population
1. A civilian is any person who does not belong to one of the categories of persons referred to in Article 4 A 111, lIl, (31 and 161 of the Third Convention and in Article 43 of this Protocol. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.
2. The civilian population comprises all persons who are civilians.
3. The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character."
It is the soldiers job to clearly identify that a target is a combatant before opening fire. If the soldier is unclear as to whether or not a target is a combatant, then that person is to be treated as a civilian: "In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.". The presence of combatants within a civilian population does not excuse firing on civilians: "The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character." The rules are very clear on this issue.
One of the important distinctions is that this was an occupying military force battling internal resistance fighters. It was not a war between nation states. Under the Geneva Conventions, an occupying force has the absolute responsibility of providing for the basic needs of the people under its control, including food, clothing, shelter, medical attention, and the maintenance of law and order. It is not supposed to kill them. Under the conventions, in an actual battle with soldiers of an opposing nation state, a commander has a duty to protect civilian life, even if it comes at the cost of exposing his troops to greater danger. The commander/soldier must be able to justify any military action that results in the loss of civilian life as being "reasonable" and "unavoidable" in the context of the military target. Hence, a soldier could not slaughter a million civilians in order to kill 100 enemy, but if the enemy had one civilian amongst them, then the killing of that civilian as a side effect of killing the enemy may be justifiable. But this is a completely different matter to that of killing civilians because you "presume" them to be combatants due to their presence in an occupied city. Baghdad is one of the most populous cities on the planet - ranked 22nd with a density of 9,250 per square kilometer. Within a few hundred meters of this incident there are thousands of people living. The men in the street could have been anyone - there was no attempt made to identify them as being combatants or civilians, and therefore the laws of war state that they must be treated as civilians.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
The United States didn't sign the addtional protocals mainly because
Wrong. "the United States (..) signed it on 12 December 1977" [wikipedia.org]. However, the U.S. has not ratified them. Nevertheless, "a number of the articles contained in both protocols are recognized as rules of customary international law valid for all states."
Also note of the 4th Geneva Convention [wikipedia.org]: "In 1993, the United Nations Security Council adopted a report from the Secretary-General and a Commission of Experts which concluded that the Geneva Conventions had passed into the body of customary international law, thus making them binding on non-signatories to the Conventions whenever they engage in armed conflicts." The United States is a member of the U.N. Security Council.
... the Russians wrote this section during the Cold War, so they do not apply to this.
What are you talking about? The Protocols were written by experts in the law of war and were endorsed by Ronald Reagan. [utexas.edu]
Oh, that is a nice link to a Bush-Cheney War Crime website.
The text itself is a direct copy of the original source. Here's the same text on Wikisource [wikisource.org]
(I linked that particular site because it is one of the first search results I found for the citation from Google, but this is really irrelevant - the text of the Convention is what is important.)
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I watched the full video.
Thoughts:
1. The adage that aerial forces cannot take or hold terrain remains true.
2. Higher resolution cameras or operating at closer range could have changed the outcome of this.
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Is it me or is it patently DUMB to wear a bright, red "shoot here for best effect" aiming mark?
But aside of that, the problem here is that we don't want this to be a war. War is where people die. You can't really wage war these days. So you have to kinda-sorta play some sort of heavily armed police ... kinda force. Which is quite STUPID to start with.
But hey, fighting an asymmetric war is stupid in the first place. So far, I cannot remember one where the "orderly" army won against the insurgents. From the U
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"Is it me or is it patently DUMB to wear a bright, red "shoot here for best effect" aiming mark?"
That is kind of the idea. If you have the RED CROSS you are not armed and are a none combatant.
AKA you freaking stand out so nobody shoots at you.
Just how else would you do it? I know you wear cameo so you blend but look just like any other personal. Just how would you know not to shoot at them?
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure the military will start releasing unedited footage so that everybody can get a fair and balanced picture.
Re:Feh (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah.. murderers shouldn't ever be punished.. just think of all the moments of their life that they spent not murdering anyone! It's got to be at least 99.9999%. That's good enough for me!
Re:Feh (Score:4, Funny)
In the missing footage, we know that the helicopter pilots DID NOT fire TWICE when there were civilians/children in harms way.
Not exactly Matlock's moment of glory here. You honestly think OJ's best defense strategy would have been to find two women to testify that he had not (yet) chopped them up? Seriously, dude?
Re:Feh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Right...because soldiers would really implicate themselves in something like this.
Like I said before, it doesn't matter if they did it twice or not...what matters is they did it once.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Uh, if they were lying, then the video would show the that. They have the cockipt voices and video from the chopper showing what happened. They made a statement. If there was a contradiction, the JAGs office would have a field day with them....
You said the unedited video doesn't exist. If that's true, then all we have to go on is what the pilots said, pilots which would never implicate themselves (and the military likely wouldn't either, as it would add validity to the fact that what they did was wrong.)
If it DOES exist, and if it clears the military from looking as bad, then why doesn't the army release it?
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
Why doesn't the military release ALL of the videos that it has? There's probably tons of stuff out there that makes them not look bad. The Army is not in the business of "trying to not look bad".
LOLFR! Wow, you win a gold star for dumbest comment of the day. "The Army is not in the business of 'trying to not look bad'"... are you fucking *kidding* me? The military practically *invented* propaganda, both at home and in theatre. Christ, have you never studied the world wars? Vietnam? Korea? The military spends an *enormous* amount of time trying to gain and maintain domestic support for its activities abroad.
Seriously, I don't know if you're a troll, naive, or just incredibly stupid...
Re:Feh (Score:4, Insightful)
The Army is not in the business of "trying to not look bad". They are in the business of fighting a war.
Go with the times, will ya? Your ideal of the army's duty has been outdated since WW2. Back then, the US fought their last "real" war. And, lo and behold, they won. Why? Because they fought a war!
Since then, politicians tried to keep the war "limited", to make war a less dramatic and horrible experience. Especially for the people at home. Today the problem of the US isn't to unleash enough firepower to obliterate their enemies. There's hardly a country or even an alliance on this planet that could defend against the firepower the US can raise. There will never be another D-Day with thousands of US soldiers being mowed down by enemy guns.
The problem for the US today is that it gets increasingly hard to "sell" war at home. Also, there's more money in waging war than in winning it. War is business. And even the old saying that war is only good for your economy when someone else is waging it has been turned upside down. Granted, it's not good for the US economy, only for a handful of companies profiting from the bloodshed, but let's not be picky here. Also, it's not the point now.
The problem is you could not easily convince the people at home if you just waltzed in and killed everything and everyone around. Not to mention that you'd have quite a bit of a problem with your international prestige. Nobody likes a bully. So we're doing about the worst we can do: "Limited" war. Which is about the most painful, most severe and most devastating kind of war you can do to a country.
First and foremost, the more "limited" your war is, the longer it runs. The longer a war runs, the longer it takes for the country to recover from it. During the war you cannot rebuild. During the war your people are less inclined to rebuild since, well, why bother, tomorrow it's shot to pieces again anyway. And don't even try to convince a foreign investor to come.
The "cleanest" war is one that is fought hard, fast and ended quickly. No matter the suffering, no matter the destruction. If you want to keep war "humane", keep it short. Prolonging it is about the worst thing you can do to a country where you fight.
Re:Feh (Score:4, Insightful)
Soldiers lie to JAG, under orders, on a fairly regular basis. Look up the case of the Seals who face punishment for just this same thing because they didn't all maintain the same lie.
Likewise JAG lies to the press.
So what, exactly, is gained by the insight of your statement?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you demand perfection from troops, as in they never make a mistake, never harm an innocent, never cause collateral damage, well you are an idiot.
If you demand perfection from engineers you're an idiot too, but when one makes a mistake that kills somebody, he *still* goes to jail.
I'll let you deduce the reasons why for yourself.
Re:It does, actually (Score:4, Insightful)
Now while you can argue that this (and many other good reasons) means we should stop waging a war in Iraq, you should not vilify soldiers who make mistakes. Demanding perfect from them is no more realistic than demanding perfection anywhere else. You are not perfect, I am not perfect, they are not perfect.
You could argue this, but it would be off-topic. The video doesn't depict accidental 'collateral damage'. It demonstrates a will to fire on those people and a number of falsehoods being relayed to command to get clearance. They wanted to kill those people, more than they wanted to do the right thing, and the video depicts the result.
The topic can't be used to hang every soldier everywhere, as you're suggesting it might. But this was clearly an example of what not to do. Apologizing for it by cloaking it in a fog of war is basically requesting that it happen in the future.
Well the combatants in Iraq don't obey those rules. In fact they go out of their way to try and blend in as civilians, they do things like use ambulances for strikes.
All of this makes the job harder, but it doesn't make the excuses flow more easily. Not in a civilized society.
We're supposed to be over there making their lives better, remember? How can we do that if we make a game out of killing them?
Re:Feh (Score:5, Interesting)
What a dumbass.
There are ways, such as Congressional investigations, to out that sort of stuff. Plastering it on the web works but isn't exactly brilliant.
Example:
Find Congresscritter(s) with adequate security clearance and appropriate record of stirring shit. Give them a detailed verbal brief including the docs and their location. Have THEIR legal eagles work out a procedure for accessing the material.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
There are ways, such as Congressional investigations, to out that sort of stuff.
Sadly, I don't think there are that many people of the same calibre as Morris Udall (he was the congressman who took up an accusation of US soldiers massacring civilians in Vietnam - twenty nine other recipients of the same accusation ignored it).
Re:Feh (Score:5, Interesting)
I loved how nobody bothered to point out that there were rocket launchers and AK-47's in the collateral murder video.
Did you bother to point out that there were children in a van that was being loaded with a wounded journalist that got blasted to hell?
Anti war people are so gullible.
And pro-war people aren't? "Iraq has WMDs! Oops, we mean they don't." "If we go to Afghanistan, we can capture and/or kill bin Laden! Oops, I mean we can't."
Come on. Seriously? You're acusing anti-war folks of being gullible?
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
"And pro-war people aren't? "Iraq has WMDs! Oops, we mean they don't." "If we go to Afghanistan, we can capture and/or kill bin Laden! Oops, I mean we can't."
Come on. Seriously? You're acusing anti-war folks of being gullible?"
Both "sides" can be vulnerable to agenda-driven manipulation and can engage in willful ignorance of important context.
Re:Feh (Score:4, Insightful)
Both "sides" can be vulnerable to agenda-driven manipulation and can engage in willful ignorance of important context.
And only one of those sides started a war based on that agenda driven manipulation. Which isn't to say wilful ignorance of any sort is fine, just that this time at least, there have been dire consequences.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but only one side has a body count.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh. There NEVER was any intel that iraq had WMDs in 2002/2003. That they didn't have them wasn't "new evidence that came to light years later". It was simply knowledge that was confirmed after it was too fuckin' late to not go to war and destroy the country.
But, we stopped them selling oil in Euros at least (which is one thing Iraq WAS trying to do in 2003, along with Iran now... oh look they're terrorists too now), thus propping up the ailing US dollar.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
>Anti-war folks like to blame the administration for not knowing facts that came to light months or years after the decision to go to war was made.
If only that were true... we have proof that the Bush administration actively MANUFACTURED A cause for war. We have the records of meetings between the CIA and MI5 where the CIA request (and MI5 agrees) to cook intel to make it look like there is a solid case that Iraq has WMD's...
True the records of these meetings only came out a long time after the war started - it came to light later. But that's the EVIDENCE of the lie coming to light later - I think saying those who TOLD the lie couldn't know about it before-hand is a bit silly ?
It's clear from said records that the CIA agents in that meeting were there under ORDERS from then President Bush. He had tasked them to find him an excuse for an invasion - or create one if they couldn't- and they were meeting with MI5 to request their help in that act of fiction.
The MI5 agents and the commanders who approved it were prosecuted and punished. It was a major scandal in Britain and frontpage news for weeks... nobody on the US side was punished - and nobody even thought of maybe IMPEACHING the president who MANUFACTURED FALSE INTELLIGENCE to excuse a war that the vast majority of the population did NOT support (evidence: two years into the Iraq war Mister Bush's approval ratings not only hit his personal all-time low, but the lowest of any president in the ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES). I kid you not... Bush managed to remain president unimpeached and unchallenged while he was LESS liked than Abraham Lincoln in the South the day before the civil war started !
This in the country that impeached one president for spying on his political enemies and another for getting a blowjob... you know somehow I think (and I always thought Clinton was a bit of a so-so president) but all politicians lie... personally I'd choose the guy who lies about a blowjob over the guy who lies to start a war any day.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, should we give a get-of-the-jail-free card to anyone who don't shoot children?
WTF is wrong with you, people? Since when following Geneva conventions is considered anything but normal?
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
that showed some very UNdamning things that the pilots did, like NOT firing when children/innocents were in the line of fire.
If I don't stab you on Monday, and I don't stab you on Tuesday, then I stab you on Wednesday, what does it matter what I did on Monday and Tuesday? I still fucking stabbed you. And these soldiers still fucking shot at people trying to remove a wounded journalist from the field. Frankly I think you would have to be some kind of idiot to believe they weren't ordered to do so. Didn't shoot kids, didn't shoot kids, shot journalist. Oh, but I didn't shoot the kids, so it's OK.
Re:Feh (Score:4, Insightful)
that showed some very UNdamning things that the pilots did, like NOT firing when children/innocents were in the line of fire.
If I don't stab you on Monday, and I don't stab you on Tuesday, then I stab you on Wednesday, what does it matter what I did on Monday and Tuesday? I still fucking stabbed you.
That depends on why you stabbed me on Wednesday. And if the accusation against you is that you stab everyone in sight whether it's justifiable or not, then the fact that you didn't stab me when you saw me on Monday or Tuesday may be very important.
And these soldiers still fucking shot at people trying to remove a wounded journalist from the field. Frankly I think you would have to be some kind of idiot to believe they weren't ordered to do so. Didn't shoot kids, didn't shoot kids, shot journalist. Oh, but I didn't shoot the kids, so it's OK.
The soldiers had no way of knowing he was a journalist. He was with a group of men carrying AKs and at least one RPG near an area where there was recent fighting between ground forces and insurgents. The reasonable conclusion is that all of the armed men are insurgents, and that he's one one them.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:4, Informative)
Guys like this should get the Medal of Honor. Instead, they're way more likely to get long prison sentences.
The days when people who go against the government are rewarded are long gone.
YOU COMMIE SPY! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:YOU COMMIE SPY! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I've been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that's the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones. You sure you got today's codes?
This guy deserves a medal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This guy deserves a medal (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, do you think the government he worked for, swore an oath to defend and protect, and that trusted him to properly handle secret documents should give him an award for violating that trust/oath?
You can't on one hand call "leakers" brave heroes for risking severe consequences and then act suprised when their actions have those very same consequences.
History may prove him right or not, but right now his offense is punishable, and he knew it when he did it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, do you think the government he worked for, swore an oath to defend and protect, and that trusted him to properly handle secret documents should give him an award for violating that trust/oath?
Honestly, do you think he swore an oath to protect the Government? No, he swore an Oath the defend the Constitution. Too many people seem to convenielty forget that.
Yes, I do think perhaps We should give him a medal. It appears to me that these images were kept secret to avoid causing discomfort to the ruling political class. This is an abrogation of Our trust as a people. It takes Honour and Courage to go against one of the most powerful systems on the planet to do what you feel is right.
In my mind he
Re:This guy deserves a medal (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This guy deserves a medal (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This guy deserves a medal (Score:4, Informative)
Why Was He Discussing Operations? (Score:5, Informative)
He's putting US Citizen's lives in danger by exposing a cover up by the US Military? Now there's some Dubya bush logic!
From a BBC article with more details from the person who turned him in [bbc.co.uk]:
I gave them conversation logs that implicated Special Agent Manning. They were particularly interested in a code word for a major operation.
So you know, in addition to the videos and diplomatic cables he was out and about bragging about this and discussing major operations and their code words. While you might be able to justify the videos, I don't know how you could justify bragging to people about it and discussing current military operations on the internet. That could probably be construed as putting the lives of many soldiers in danger.
Re:Why Was He Discussing Operations? (Score:4, Interesting)
So you know, in addition to the videos and diplomatic cables he was out and about bragging about this and discussing major operations and their code words.
The same article states that Adrian Lamo is a journalist. We have no idea what the context of their talks were, or whether Agent Manning was bragging or not. It is entirely possible that he was merely talking to a journalist that he thought he could trust, and Lamo thought he would get a better story by burning his source.
Re:Why Was He Discussing Operations? (Score:5, Insightful)
That could probably be construed as putting the lives of many soldiers in danger.
So since you're so concerned about the lives of American soldiers you must absolutely HATE George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Chenney and Colin Powell for putting so many American soldiers in danger, right?
Just as a matter of interest, could you point me to where you've ranted and raved against them for putting so many American soldiers in danger during the illegal and unnecessary invasion and occupation of Iraq?
Unless you can point me to that, I'm afraid I'm going to be skeptical about your purported concern. If you think it's ok for GW Bush and Co to put the lives of American soldiers in danger for no readily apparent reason, but not ok for some random guy who is trying to expose wrong-doing and hold the government to account, then you really don't care about the lives of American soldiers: you're just a shill for the organs of the state.
Re:This guy deserves a medal (Score:5, Informative)
why would he do this (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to do something illegal that you don't want anyone to know you did, perhaps you shouldn't tell people about it on the internet. Whether it was the morally right thing to do or not, leaking it anonymously then bragging you were the source makes no sense and is stupid.
the human ego (Score:4, Insightful)
the upside is that a healthy ego can help you navigate the missteps, crises and setbacks we experience in life
the downside is that an overly healthy ego can help create those same missteps, crises and setbacks
There's a couple of scandals here (Score:5, Funny)
The first scandal is the usual shit the government does, make a mistake and then cover it up. We've seen a lot of those in this war. We know this stuff happens all the time but the proof of it always hits me in the gut.
The second scandal is that the government is so poor at covering this stuff up that a junior guy like this is able to find the info and disseminate it without any difficulty. Absolutely piss-poor security. Perversely, I expect and demand a modicum of competence to go along with the amoral and evil. I feel insulted when I find out I'm getting screwed over by Mayberry Machiavellis.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly the Army owes the guy a medal (Score:3, Interesting)
If WW2 showed us anything, it was people are capable of atrocities if ordered to do so. Read the book "Ordinary Men" (I think that was what it was called). Almost to a man, the excuse will be "I was ordered to do so, I was doing my duty".
If we took anything away from that war that was positive it was even within a strict command structure, one does not have to follow orders he believes to be illegal. I think you can also extend that to information. If you know of something that went on that you felt was illegal, I think you are OBLIGATED to report that information. I have no idea if this guy tried to use the usual channels of communication to report this incident, but I don't think it is a bit stretch that if he did, that the proof would "disappear" and he would be "reassigned". He may have felt he had NO choice but take the action he did, in good conscience.
Now, it is also reasonable to say if you refuse what you think is an illegal order, or release information in the way he did, there will be a price to pay. There would certainly be an military court decision, that would say one way or another, if you made the right choice. Likely regardless your life as a military professional would be over no matter what, a sad, but likely true outcome.
However even with that, years later when shit might be going down, you can say with some self respect, that you did no follow that order you believed to be wrong, or that you tried to let people know the truth at your own personal cost. "I was just following orders" is a horrible thing to say, though even I can have some empathy when the outcome was they would be shot for not following orders.
Anyway as someone who isn't in the military, I am glad someone like that was in it, and I think he thought he was doing the right thing. He will be judged one way or another, and likely we don't have all the facts, but I would hope that if nothing untoward complicates the issue that the military court will absolve him, maybe even give him a medal (and then likely discharge him). I also think that as much as this is bad PR for the Army, it is also potential good PR. As I don't think anyone is too surprised that this sort illegal action or accident took place, however I know I would feel more comfortable, and confident knowing that there are good people within the Army that are also trying to do the right thing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lifetime in jail vs keeping quiet, though choic (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit.
First, there was a story on /. not long ago how *everything* is confidential now - and it's a major problem. Secondly, there are no "safety reasons" why this should be confidential - at most, it was to protect them from their own incompetence.
Exactly - the people of the US, not only the military. In this case, the people of the US have the right to be protected from their own army (yes, I know they weren't shooting US civilians, but to me an innocent's life is worth the same, no matter when they're from).
Re:Lifetime in jail vs keeping quiet, though choic (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you take an oath to defend the Constitution. *BIG* difference.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A lot of that material SHOULDN'T'VE been secret (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A lot of that material SHOULDN'T'VE been secret (Score:5, Informative)
The military all too often makes things secret not because it is sensitive, but because it would generate bad PR. This is not how a democratic government is supposed to function. If you don't like living in a country with a transparent government, you can always move to places like North Korea.
A lot of data is classified because the system its created on is classified and that's a one way trip; once something is classified, its forever classified until someone qualified checks it then declassifies it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of whether or not Lamo is liable, no hacker will ever again trust him as their "go-to" journalist. OTOH, this will massively increase his profile, and he will be well paid for writing this story for various newspapers around the world. So maybe it is worth it for him.
Re:No charge (Score:5, Insightful)
FFS This isn't "Informative" it's being a "Troll."
This perp is in the military- there is absolutely no need for the "2006 military commission act." He VOLUNTARILY put himself under the UCMJ.
Re:like anyone here knows what they're talking abo (Score:5, Insightful)
While I like the idea on a visceral level, the "only veterans can judge" thing could never work in practice. There would be far too much room for abuse and collusion, just like the "blue line of silence" shown by police officials towards internal corruption. This is the real world, and not Starship Troopers. A jury of randomly selected ordinary citizens is shown the evidence, and determine if a supposed crime was an accident, negligence, or willful action. That's the system, and it needs to be applied here.