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WikiLeaks releases footage believed to show civilian deaths in Iraq in 2007.


Nero

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However, I do have one gripe. Making jokes is one thing, but they should have realised that they smacked a civllian vehicle when they saw the ground troops scurrying away with the children. Their response was like "They shouldn't have brought their kids to war". Who brings their children to fight with them?

The Taliban sure do.

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The only thing shocking about that is the fact that it's probably not true. When headlines on the front page of that website say "we democrats" vs "them [republicans]," the validity falls somewhat in question. People in media will do just about anything to get attention, ratings, or hits. In one of the above little /b/ images people are posted for lulz, it shows a bloody camera listed as a "abandoned machine gun." Presumably the camera belonged to a journalist killed by American troops. The image is obviously fake and staged, and the blood is likely nothing more than red paint (guess what, blood is a darkish red that approaches black when spilt). Journalists around the world love to set up fake photos with actors/actresses or photoshop images in order to prevoke emotional response. It's been done for decades.

 

There is no true media outlet. It doesn't exist as even an AP wire was concieved by someone voicing their opinions on a subject. Reality sucks and doesn't sell.

 

This is apparently headline news but if an African dictator orders his guns to fire on villages because of their racial heritage, nobody cares. But if American chopper pilots are idiots? Oh hell, that's news! A precocious looking white girl gets kidnapped and raped we spend WEEKS on the news ignoring nigh all else in order to cover it, but the same situation happens hundreds of times daily in America alone, much less the rest of the world. All Journalists care about is getting attention and milking it.

 

If the truth really had a website, it would probably be on Geocities and struggling at that.

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My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. -Sir Arthur Wellesley

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The only thing shocking about that is the fact that it's probably not true. When headlines on the front page of that website say "we democrats" vs "them [republicans]," the validity falls somewhat in question. People in media will do just about anything to get attention, ratings, or hits. In one of the above little /b/ images people are posted for lulz, it shows a bloody camera listed as a "abandoned machine gun." Presumably the camera belonged to a journalist killed by American troops. The image is obviously fake and staged, and the blood is likely nothing more than red paint (guess what, blood is a darkish red that approaches black when spilt). Journalists around the world love to set up fake photos with actors/actresses or photoshop images in order to prevoke emotional response. It's been done for decades.

 

There is no true media outlet. It doesn't exist as even an AP wire was concieved by someone voicing their opinions on a subject. Reality sucks and doesn't sell.

 

This is apparently headline news but if an African dictator orders his guns to fire on villages because of their racial heritage, nobody cares. But if American chopper pilots are idiots? Oh hell, that's news! A precocious looking white girl gets kidnapped and raped we spend WEEKS on the news ignoring nigh all else in order to cover it, but the same situation happens hundreds of times daily in America alone, much less the rest of the world. All Journalists care about is getting attention and milking it.

 

If the truth really had a website, it would probably be on Geocities and struggling at that.

 

If cynics, conspiracy theorists and those distrustful of everyone and everything had an outlet, i bet they could doubt everything categorically and therefore live in complete ignorance. That would be due to their irrational disbelief of everything not emperically observed by them, directly. No one can ever present "the truth" and prove its absolute validity, all truth is subjective.

 

...oh wait, the internet and its forums exist, someone beat me to it :(

 

 

really though, general distrust is out of all reasonable proportions. bias is everywhere by definition; you choose who to trust, not that you cannot turst anyone because they're not yourself. Reasoned scepticism is the only constructive scepticism, selective distrust is only used to justify opinion when it contradicts fact.

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The only thing shocking about that is the fact that it's probably not true. When headlines on the front page of that website say "we democrats" vs "them [republicans]," the validity falls somewhat in question. People in media will do just about anything to get attention, ratings, or hits. In one of the above little /b/ images people are posted for lulz, it shows a bloody camera listed as a "abandoned machine gun." Presumably the camera belonged to a journalist killed by American troops. The image is obviously fake and staged, and the blood is likely nothing more than red paint (guess what, blood is a darkish red that approaches black when spilt). Journalists around the world love to set up fake photos with actors/actresses or photoshop images in order to prevoke emotional response. It's been done for decades.

 

The /b/ image isn't serious, it's for fun. It's ok and expected that it is fake.

 

As for the article, a quick google search of a snippet of one of their stories led me to it already being reported on two years ago.

 

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JI20Ak01.html

 

I'm sure if you wanted to, you could do the same for all of them.

 

This is apparently headline news but if an African dictator orders his guns to fire on villages because of their racial heritage, nobody cares. But if American chopper pilots are idiots? Oh hell, that's news! A precocious looking white girl gets kidnapped and raped we spend WEEKS on the news ignoring nigh all else in order to cover it, but the same situation happens hundreds of times daily in America alone, much less the rest of the world. All Journalists care about is getting attention and milking it.

 

If the truth really had a website, it would probably be on Geocities and struggling at that.

 

Africa is a [cabbage] hole, but we expect more of America, who apparently are there to free the people and stop terrorists and blah blah blah.

 

Agreed about the white girl stories though

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The only thing shocking about that is the fact that it's probably not true. When headlines on the front page of that website say "we democrats" vs "them [republicans]," the validity falls somewhat in question. People in media will do just about anything to get attention, ratings, or hits. In one of the above little /b/ images people are posted for lulz, it shows a bloody camera listed as a "abandoned machine gun." Presumably the camera belonged to a journalist killed by American troops. The image is obviously fake and staged, and the blood is likely nothing more than red paint (guess what, blood is a darkish red that approaches black when spilt). Journalists around the world love to set up fake photos with actors/actresses or photoshop images in order to prevoke emotional response. It's been done for decades.

 

The /b/ image isn't serious, it's for fun. It's ok and expected that it is fake.

 

As for the article, a quick google search of a snippet of one of their stories led me to it already being reported on two years ago.

 

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JI20Ak01.html

 

I'm sure if you wanted to, you could do the same for all of them.

 

This is apparently headline news but if an African dictator orders his guns to fire on villages because of their racial heritage, nobody cares. But if American chopper pilots are idiots? Oh hell, that's news! A precocious looking white girl gets kidnapped and raped we spend WEEKS on the news ignoring nigh all else in order to cover it, but the same situation happens hundreds of times daily in America alone, much less the rest of the world. All Journalists care about is getting attention and milking it.

 

If the truth really had a website, it would probably be on Geocities and struggling at that.

 

Africa is a [cabbage] hole, but we expect more of America, who apparently are there to free the people and stop terrorists and blah blah blah.

 

Agreed about the white girl stories though

Yea, American teachings and biases teach the poor quality of Africa so that people expect these things and then feel apathetic because they're dense and they cannot comprehend a person=a live. Plus the African dictator isn't probably going around the world claiming to be the best nation to save all nations and to peacefully bestow upon them lovely democracy while in actuality they censor their own failings (Korean War *cough) and further their own agenda.

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What about the Korean War? If I am not mistaken, the United Nations won that one.

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My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. -Sir Arthur Wellesley

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WASHINGTON - April 9 - Josh Stieber, who is a former soldier of the “Collateral Murder” Company, says that the acts of brutality caught on film and recently released via Wikileaks are not isolated instances, but were commonplace during his tour of duty.

 



“A lot of my friends are in that video,” says Stieber. “After watching the video, I would definitely say that that is, nine times out of ten, the way things ended up. Killing was following military protocol. It was going along with the rules as they are.”



 

Stieber deployed to Baghdad with Bravo Company 2-16, whose members were involved in the incident captured in Wikileaks' “Collateral Murder” video, which has made international headlines by depicting a July 2007 shooting incident outside of Baghdad in which over a dozen people, including two Reuters employees, were killed. Although he was not present at the scene of the video, he knows those who were involved and is familiar with the environment. Stieber, who now works to promote peace and alternatives to war, is speaking publicly about his time in Iraq and the incident captured in this video.



 

“If these videos shock and revolt you, they show the reality of what war is like,” says Stieber. “If you don’t like what you see in them, it means we should be working harder towards alternatives to war.”

 

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/04/09

 

 

 

 

RICK ROWLEY: We asked the crowd of people what might have prompted the attack, and they said that when the journalist arrived, residents quickly gathered around him.

WITNESS 2: [translated] The group of civilians had gathered here because people need cooking oil and gas. They wanted to demonstrate in front of the media and show that they need things like oil, gas, water and electricity. The situation here is dramatically deteriorating. The journalists were walking around, and then the Americans started shooting. They started shooting randomly and targeted peaceful civilians from the neighborhood.

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/8/exclusive_witnesses_describe_deadly_2007_us

 

 

e: More links about the practice of using drop weapons, as described in a previous article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/02/soldiers-discuss-using-dr_n_104682.html

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1711636,00.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/23/AR2007092301431_3.html

 

A night-time raid in eastern Afghanistan in which eight schoolboys from one family were killed was carried out on the basis of faulty intelligence and should never have been authorised, a Times investigation has found.

 

Ten children and teenagers died when troops stormed a remote mountain compound near the border with Pakistan in December.

 

At the time, Nato claimed that the assault force was targeting a “known insurgent group responsible for a series of violent attacks”. Officials said that the victims were involved in making and smuggling improvised explosive devices. But Western sources close to the case now agree that the victims were all aged 12 to 18 and were not involved in insurgent activity.

 

Nato sources say that the raid should never have been authorised. “Knowing what we know now, it would probably not have been a justifiable attack,” an official in Kabul told The Times. “We don’t now believe that we busted a major ring.”

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7040166.ece

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The only thing shocking about that is the fact that it's probably not true. When headlines on the front page of that website say "we democrats" vs "them [republicans]," the validity falls somewhat in question. People in media will do just about anything to get attention, ratings, or hits. In one of the above little /b/ images people are posted for lulz, it shows a bloody camera listed as a "abandoned machine gun." Presumably the camera belonged to a journalist killed by American troops. The image is obviously fake and staged, and the blood is likely nothing more than red paint (guess what, blood is a darkish red that approaches black when spilt). Journalists around the world love to set up fake photos with actors/actresses or photoshop images in order to prevoke emotional response. It's been done for decades.

 

There is no true media outlet. It doesn't exist as even an AP wire was concieved by someone voicing their opinions on a subject. Reality sucks and doesn't sell.

 

This is apparently headline news but if an African dictator orders his guns to fire on villages because of their racial heritage, nobody cares. But if American chopper pilots are idiots? Oh hell, that's news! A precocious looking white girl gets kidnapped and raped we spend WEEKS on the news ignoring nigh all else in order to cover it, but the same situation happens hundreds of times daily in America alone, much less the rest of the world. All Journalists care about is getting attention and milking it.

 

If the truth really had a website, it would probably be on Geocities and struggling at that.

 

Al Jazeera is pretty much the only solid organization that consistently reports on world news, IMO.

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Ah yes, those pesky journalists! They're just doing ANYTHING they can to strum up trouble and controversy. Do you listen to yourself, Bari? The media is an absolute failure, and the only reason we even know about this is because investigative journalists had the savviness and knowhow to even bring the story up. Journalism is just about dead in the United States. If they wanted to string up controversy and actually bring come forward with the truth, they'd stop treating the US government with such reverence. Why don't they call what we did for what it is: TORTURE. They don't. Any and every domestic media source has called it "enhanced interrogation techniques." Cut the [cabbage] and call it what everyone else around the world does: torture. We did it, the world knows it, and the War Criminal in Chief Barack Obama refuses to prosecute the actual war criminals for political expediency, despite our international treaties and the Geneva Conventions demanding that we do.

 

I almost feel like your post is agreeing with me, in that you're calling the media a joke; and it is. And you got it right: "we the Democrats/Republicans say..." They report what the other one says, they never report what the reality is. "[bleep] Cheney claims he didn't violate the law. Everyone else except for Republicans say he didn't. That's what's happening, you decide which is true because we don't want to lose our anonymous sources to continue this charade!" That's another thing: the constant use of anonymous sources. Can we stop that, please? If a government official, WH official or something else is too afraid to put a name to their words, stop reporting on it. I understand the need to keep certain sources under wraps, but they do it so much that they rarely put a name to a statement anymore.

 

However, you've got it backwards: they NEVER "milk" stories like this, they never "string up controversy" with things like this. The last thing the media wants is to make the United States look like it made a mistake. The last thing they ever want to do is the double cross the MIC and ruin all of the inside the beltway access that they have for their future political gossip like the sleazy Halperin-Heilemann book. Because that's where the real gold is: the gossip.

 

The NY Times, WaPo, and every other major newspaper was practically beating the drums to go to war with Iraq. They're doing it now with Iran.

 

This isn't a rare occurrence. This happens all of the time in these types of wars. Why do you think the civilian casualties are so high? We're trying to keep ours as low as possible, and conducting war in this manner is really the only way to minimize our own casualties. However, instead of putting so much on the soldiers, who are trained to do this and needed higher command's permission before they do, we need to focus on the real criminals: the Bush administration, and whomever in Congress allowed them to get away with this; that includes every Democrat, Republican and Independent who was involved.

 

They're doing the same with the war in Afghanistan. That is a war I support, although I don't agree with how it's being conducted; I question the legality of using drones to target and assassinate people in this way. It may be legal, but I have yet to see any justification for it. I would like to see happen what should have happened when Reagan was in office: massive amounts of money to start the nation building throughout the entire nation. Afghanistan wasn't always war torn, it was once a great flourishing country. So the BS about it being the graveyard of empires isn't based on anything but fiction and hyperbole.

 

Anyway, as usual, Greenwald details how they're doing the same in Afghanistan (the media misreporting it):

 

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/05/afghanistan/index.html

 

Anyway, sorry for the hostility in the original post, as the media IS a joke...but when it comes to our own crimes, they're never trying to milk it.

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This is topic in which I am very Leary about posting in as I'm trying very hard to not get into confrontations on the internet, but a lot of the stuff I'm reading screams against all my beliefs and values. Lets be clear about collateral damage, it has always happened and until we invent bullets that only seek a specific persons DNA they always will. Imagine if you will a football game (American football) where you have two teams playing against one another, now imagine that all of the crowd that would normally in the stands is now in the field. There is no realistic way you could play then where the crowd would not get hit. Reporters,and civilians for that matter in warfare are the same as the crowd on a football field, they are out of their element, the problem with civilians is that many times they CAN'T leave. Is it sad that it happens? Yes. Do I wish it didn't have to? Yes. Also I did see some pictures making fun of how our troops search newspaper reporters and leave alone the RPG toting terrorist. Are you really so naive to think that if terrorists found out that by taping PRESS on their chest they wouldn't get searched. Believe it or not they aren't stupid people, they don't run around waving RPGs and yelling. I think that about sums up my feelings without really calling anyone out.

 

Also please if you're about to post telling me how stupid and blind I am amongst many other things you can think of, please pause for a moment, collect your thoughts and present them in a respectable way so you won't be wasting your time trying to insult me and you won't waste my time with argument that will only degrade further and further into a flame war. Thanks.

 

Edit: I have now seen the video, and see what everyone means, but my opinion remains. IMO they could have toned down on the ^Saeeds body type thing that was in the video I saw. I get it they are dead. The part about the firing at a nearby building, that was apparently when another reporter showed up.

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" I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin. I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there... I'm a monster.What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done."

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Apparently the troops fired some shots into nearby buildings first and most people scattered. I'm assuming that when the journalists didn't, and starting pointing cameras

You really should just watch the video..

Reality is hundreds of times more beautiful and more interesting than delusions. Fairy tales just tend to be easier to follow than the wonderful intricacies of life.

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Apparently the troops fired some shots into nearby buildings first and most people scattered. I'm assuming that when the journalists didn't, and starting pointing cameras at them someone on that helicopter was either inexperienced enough or tensions were just too high so they made a snap decision that in an actual danger situation may have saved their life.

 

Watch the video, there are probably plenty of places to watch it.

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What about the Korean War? If I am not mistaken, the United Nations won that one.

Sorry for the delayed response. Not really. No one really won the war. There might have been the ensuring of the creation of South Korea, but it many thousands were killed on both sides and nuclear threat was real. The UN (specifically India I think it was) created the terms of the armistice but it was failure for all sides.

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He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked... Your daily life is your temple and your religion
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What about the Korean War? If I am not mistaken, the United Nations won that one.

Sorry for the delayed response. Not really. No one really won the war. There might have been the ensuring of the creation of South Korea, but it many thousands were killed on both sides and nuclear threat was real. The UN (specifically India I think it was) created the terms of the armistice but it was failure for all sides.

 

I believe plans were made to cross the 38th parallel, but China was a major obstacle in the way of this, Either way, I definitely wouldn't consider it a US/UN failure, even if it wasn't a complete victory. I'm sure the SK's would call it a win.

 

I think the only war we could really say was a total defeat was Vietnam.

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It's not rocket science, just a tiny tiny bit of training. you don't throw a granade when you can't reach the target: you don't shoot when you don't know what you're shooting at. They could always be friendlies, or civillians. Especially when you're trying to gain the trust of the population, you don't shoot anyone unless you really really really really really really really really really really really really have to.

That's one of the first basic lessons every guy in training here: you need information to act.

I wasn't going to post because I don't want to get involved, but this brings up something that's torn me up for a long time.

 

Several years back, in Afghanistan, Canadian troops were doing a routine nighttime training mission. An American plane flew over them and assumed they were hostiles shooting at the plane. As far as I know, they did not radio for information but it's been years since I read the story. So, they see gunshots on the ground and they bomb the hell out of the soldiers.

I'm not in the military, so I don't know, but at the altitudes that planes fly, can AK's even get that high? Why would you fire at an unknown human being just because you see gunfire? You're not even in any direct threat.

 

Back to this story, I was following the comments on MSN's coverage and one person who claimed to be ex-US military said that taking the 'splashdown' time and the speed of the bullets, he calculated the helicopter to be over 1km away. At that distance, I KNOW an AK wouldn't do any serious damage and (I only know from video games) an RPG is way too inaccurate to hit a moving helicopter at that range.

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