Political YouTube Clips Thread

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It would be funny if it wasn't true, well, if you mirror it all. From what I have seen the Tea Party seems to be portrayed as the saviours of the American nation against the ravishes of the evil Hussein Obama who is bent of raping the trembling maiden that is the USA.

 

The following video is going to have (I hope!) some political ramifications and it's on Youtube, that's why I am putting it in this thread. I have known about the following video for a few weeks now. Wikileaks has been announcing that they would released the video today (April 5th) and since then have suffered obvious intimidation attempts by people who are very likely acting for the US intelligence services. Since they announced their possession of the video, one of their members has been arrested and interrogated and other members have been stalked by people who are taking video footage of the wikileaks crew. Gee, is this in Eastern Germany? Nope. Soviet Republic? Nope! Just some western amateur journalists living in Iceland and are being harassed by American intelligence agencies. It has been known for a while that the US government sees Wikileaks as a threat, which is why they wrote this classified (SECRET/NOFORN) document detailing a plan of attack against Wikileaks.

Now the video. The following video dates from 2007 and shows how some triggerhappy *******s in an Apache helicopter mow down innocent civilians and journalists. Oh well, if you're triggerhappy and suffering from bad eyesight, you might mistake civilians with cameras for insurgents with AK-47s. Funnier is that a vehicle then stops by, 2 men step out and they are trying to help one of the wounded, obviously with the idea of taking him to a hospital. Blow them up too! How dare they help wounded civilians?! Isn't that against BOTH the Geneva convention AND the rules for engagement? A bunch of tanks later arrive, and drive right over the corpses (If they were still alive, they sure aren't now *vroom* *vroom*). When the ground forces arrive at the scene of the vehicle, they find two wounded children inside. Permission was asked to take the children to a hospital. Permission denied.

Later, after the battle, US army spokesmen make the following claims (which can be seen in the video,) emphasis mine:

Which is odd if you realize that none of the civilians have weapons. Whoops.

Okay, so it's a war. In a war you make 'mistakes'. You then cover up said mistakes, blame the insurgents for any dead civilians and harass anyone who figured out what really happened. Just typical. I wonder how many of the other insurgent-blamed attacks were actually just triggerhappy idiots in a helicopter on a shooting-spree.

P.S.:
Oh and why hasn't CNN released any info on this? I expected FOX News to be busy with the love life of Tiger Woods, but I expected that CNN would at least cover it.

Edit:
Oh look, the US media is responding! Except not in the way that they should. When you search for anything on MSNBC, anything! they show you the results. You search for "wikileaks"...... you get an error.

Edit2:
And CNN has responded. When you put that story on CNN iReport. They remove it

Edit3:
The great Bill Hicks responded from beyond the grave (you may replace American Gladiators with Tiger Woods)

 

I know it is "trendy" to make fun of Fox News, but they are carrying this as their main story at the moment.

As to the video, while it may have been tragic, I don't see anything nefarious. If you listen to the dialogue the helicopter pilots clearly believe they are engaging people with AK-47s and RPGs. They then did what they were supposed to.

The other thing I would like an explanation for is why was a camera crew following these innocent civilians around. I'm guessing these guys weren't the innocent civilians they are being made out to be. I'm guessing the camera crew was imbedded with these guys.

 

I saw that a few minutes before I went to bed. So both FOX and CNN are covering the story, but only started doing so 7 hours after the video was released and a good 4 hours after most major European news stations + Al Jazeera were covering it. People who identified themselves on reddit as journalists claimed that they were waiting for permission from the Pentagon and were instructed to publish nothing about the video.

Blowing up an unarmed truck is nothing nefarious? I understand that the dividing line between insurgent and civilian is somewhat problematic, but here is something that can help:

- If Has a weapon -> Insurgent
- Else -> Civilian

So it looked like one of the journalists had a weapon. There was nothing to be seen on the vehicle that could be seen as a threat. I know that the Geneva convention is null and void against insurgents, but what about civilians? Do the rules that serve to protect them no longer apply because they can not be told apart from other insurgents.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that those people were insurgents and not civilians. Here is the story published shortly after the shooting:

 

Briefly: That's not correct. The GC do apply to 'insurgents'. Under the GC fighters who do not wear uniforms while fighting they are *civilians* and do not enjoy the privileges of combatants, notably the privilege to fight and the privilege of POW status. That means, 'insurgents' can be combatants and can have POW status - all it takes is them wearing an identifier - armband, green scarf or whatever. That is, they have to fight overtly. A historical example:

​

'Insurgents' who don't bother to do that and prefer unmarked civilian clothing are to be treated like civilians. That is a severe disadvantage, because that means they are petty violent criminals when they shoot at soldiers and blow up **** , and subject to the criminal law of the occupied land, and under threat of usually severe punishment. That is an intentional disincentive.

Rule of thumb: Soldiers are entitled to kill and blow things up in combat; civilians are not - i.e. a Taleban fighter throwing a grenade at a US soldier, perhaps killing him, is fighting (with impunity), a civilian doing the same thing is committing a serious crime.

PS: And no, you don't need to be a signatory to the GC for the GC to apply to you.

 

That is a very simplistic view and blatantly untrue. Weapons can be concealed and most suicide bombers have the explosives hidden. Terrorist (insurgents) usually use unarmed vehicles (at least I've never heard of terrorist who drives a tank).

 

In the back echelons many troops are actually unarmed or very lightly armed, and they drive unarmed and unarmoured trucks.

Generally, the law of war has little to do with whether someone acts nefarious. It is certainly nefarious and hostile in its truest sense to call in an air or artillery strike on an enemy position, or to lay a minefield or to conduct an ambush, or to literally take a shot at the enemy yourself. Combatants in combat do not tend to bring good intentions to the fight. War is a nefarious thing.

Treacherous and deceitful is a different matter. It is generally understood that people who, say, surrender to then again attack the people trying to take them prisoner not only rarely survive the attempt, they also adversely affect their comrades odds to be taken prisoner. Same for killing negotiators and other atrocities. Fighting in civilian clothing is considered bad because the GC put an emphasis on protecting the population, thus the emphasis on that combatants need to be recognisable - to distinguish them from the civilians. It is thus cowardly, treacherous and deceitful to fight in civilians clothing; soldiers doing that forfeit their POW status.

What we understand to be terrorists usually falls into the category of treacherous and deceitful. I don't extend verdict that to uniformed insurgents like the Mahdi Army and certainly not to Hezbollah. I wouldn't extend it to the Taleban as well - even though their raggedy uniforms leave a lot to be desired. What about something fancy, well visible and pleasing on the eye, like day glow orange?

So-called terrorists drove tanks in the Lebanon war. When the Taleban fought each other in Afghanistan's civil war they had artillery pieces, tanks, APCs and other heavy weapons, even a couple fighter bombers and choppers - suggesting that what some call terrorists are simply warring parties forced to fight their wars on a shoestring budget.

 

How far away was that Apache anyway? There is a several second delay between when you hear the shots and when the bullets reach the target. I don't know how fast bullets fired from a machine gun (likely a 50 cal) travel, but it suggests that they are really, really far away...

 

Aldeth: Most guns like that fire high speed rounds -- the bullets are moving faster than sound so you'll see the impact, then hear the report.

 

Yeah, but the opposite was happening - you hear the sound of the weapon firing immediately (presumably because the pilot is mere feet from the gun and you hear the gun firing from the pilot's headset) and several seconds later you see the shots reaching the target in the video feed.

 

Sorry, I didn't watch the video -- open mouth/insert foot -- I assumed the video was filmed from the ground by the reporters who were there. I believe the guns are 30mm which should be firing rounds at ~1200 meters per second.

 

Of course that is a simplistic view, but what I try to say is that unless there is any good reason to think otherwise, one should treat civilians as civilians. You shouldn't kill civilians if there is no reason to suspect them for being a threat. At the end of the video, the pilot sees that there were children inside the vehicle and remarks that the people he just shot shouldn't have taken their children into battle. Those children weren't taken into battle, there wasn't a battle for the adults inside the vehicle. Two civilians simply see a wounded man on the side of the road and do what every man should do: they try to help him.

@Ragusa,
My mistake then, I did mean 'insurgents' that do not wear a uniform.

 

Once again, I'm not sure why you think the pilots did anything wrong. At no point that I'm aware do they believe they are shooting civilians. The fact that they may (as I'm still not convinced they were) have been civilians makes it a tragedy. Do you get from the video that these bloodthirsty Americans were targeting civilians? From the radio chatter I was under the impression that there were soldiers on the ground that ID'd them as combatants who were engaging ground forces.

 

The first mistake is regrettable. The photo cameras could be easily mistaken for weapons. The second mistake, with the vehicle, is almost inexcusable. Some mistakes are easier to make when working from a certain disposition. The mistake to mow down civilians is easier to make when having a bloodthirsty disposition. On the audio you can practically hear them begging take another shot at a wounded insurgent. "Just reach out for a weapon"* They at least carry the responsibility because they 'decided' to work from that disposition.

When they requested permission from their superior to attack the vehicle, their superior should have replied with one question: "Are they are a direct threat?" The obvious answer is no, loading a wounded man onto a bus constitutes no direct threat. Therefore: no permission to fire. I don't think that these soldiers should be punished, the officer perhaps should. He is an officer because he carries responsibility.

*Quoting from memory.

 

They didn't know who they were shooting at, which is obvious from the results. I saw the pictures and they looked like civilians to me. But I own a camera, so I have the advantage of knowing that a camera does not look anything like an AK-47 machine gun. I guess my non-specialized training is better in that respect than the sub-standard training that pilots receive who are flying some of the most sophisticated technology your tax dollars can pay for, Snook. I respect your high opinion of our soldiers, and I tend to share it, Snook, but they screwed this one up because they were careless.

Take a look (even though it is MSNBC):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36182383/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

 

I am not a fan of either insurgents or terrorists, but I have to say that the GC as you describe it, Ragusa, is a little whacky. Let me illustrate.

The Beautiful nation of Canada is invaded by . . . oh, let's say Russians, take us back to the good old days of the 70s and 80s when silly movies like Red Dawn were popular. Canadian military personnel face the Russkies squarely and get their anuses inverted by superior technology and numbers.

LKD is not a soldier, never has been. But when the Russians come close to his home, he loads up the 30.06 rifle that he inherited from his father and finds a nice little sniper spot. He then proceeds to peg off 3 Russian soldiers. Then he hides the rifle and returns to his home. He has no uniform of any kind.

As near as I can make out, I've done nothing frigging wrong. This is my home, and my city. The approaching Russians are invaders. I don't really care what some people in Switzerland said in the 1800s, I don't think that the invaders can realistically state that they have a legal right to do what they are doing, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna just sit here and do nothing.

Or am I not understanding the GC properly?

 

Well, yes. Someone should have mentioned that there were 2 kids in the van, but it was a "hot zone" so those kids should not have been there (even if they were just trying to save the life of an innocent civilian who was laying on the ground helpless).

Regarding accountability: Hardly ever happens. Every once in a while they find some really, really bad apple to drop in the fire, but hardly ever is anyone held accountable for being a murderer, rapist, thief, whatever else, let alone just plain screwing up (like in this instance). Hey, we gave those people their freedom, and now we can't do with them what we please? What kind of deal is that? And don't forget that they all hate us anyway, which I will NEVER understand. EVER.

 

I think this video is a good example of why they hate you and there are plenty more. I guess a majority hate you less than they hated Saddam but I honestly think it is a close thing. The reasons should be quite obvious.

 

Gah. That is war. What do you expect when you send out a high tech force like the American one out to hunt insurgents? The Apaches were providing air cover for ground troops (the guys in tanks coming to the scene later). That is how air cover (or artillery or mortar support) looks like - a bloody mess when the ground troops arrive, so that they don't have to risk trying to create that themselves. I am reluctant to put these folks under a thorough and (self-)righteous ex post facto review.

That, on the other hand, the US have killed an awful lot of people for no good reason, for example in checkpoint shootings (or night raids, or drone attacks) is something that Gen. McCrystal has admitted himself, and obviously something that doesn't endear them to the locals. So trivial, so good.

That said: What do you expect? I find it silly to blame the troops for their enthusiasm. Civilians prefer to not know that, but that's how combat troops are, and most probably need to be. Otto von Bismarck said that laws are like sausages - it is better not to see them being made. Same for war: People like the glory, but then are aghast when they see how that looks like in reality.

That Americans at times are a little more enthusiastic than others as far as shooting goes (as I was privy to witness on a NATO shooting range; the M16's default mode appears to be full auto), and that their advanced weapons can turn attacks into outright savagery (think of the rout of fleeing Iraqi troops at the hands of US air power in Gulf War I on the 'Highway of Death') is another matter and a thing US commanders ought to think long and hard about. It's the officers job to reign their troops in and to limit and focus their enthusiasm.

 

Sarcasm failure #2. I'll keep practicing.