Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Snail on April 07, 2010, 09:32:29 am
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http://collateralmurder.org/
5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.
After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement".
Consequently, WikiLeaks has released the classified Rules of Engagement for 2006, 2007 and 2008, revealing these rules before, during, and after the killings.
WikiLeaks has released both the original 38 minutes video and a shorter version with an initial analysis. Subtitles have been added to both versions from the radio transmissions.
WikiLeaks obtained this video as well as supporting documents from a number of military whistleblowers. WikiLeaks goes to great lengths to verify the authenticity of the information it receives. We have analyzed the information about this incident from a variety of source material. We have spoken to witnesses and journalists directly involved in the incident.
WikiLeaks wants to ensure that all the leaked information it receives gets the attention it deserves. In this particular case, some of the people killed were journalists that were simply doing their jobs: putting their lives at risk in order to report on war. Iraq is a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139 journalists were killed while doing their work.
Hardly surprising that some civilians would be getting caught in the crossfire, however regrettable that many be, but I haven't heard anything about this on any of the main news channels, which leads me to believe there is some form of cover-up going on.
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Well, thats been on the BBC News website for a day or so, i dont know about any TV reports though, i've not seen the news on TV in some time :P.
IT would be a kind of pathetic cover up, seeming its already been reported in other countries. Maybe the US News Agencies don't want to post anything that makes the US look bad? Which is the oposite of the UK, where outr news agencies ONLY report things that makes the UK look bad.
Edit: I should hence forth add, apart form the BBC and my local newspaper, as far as im concerned, most News organisations in this country suck.
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Mostly if it makes it to the mainstream media in the US, the story won't be about "it's their fault for bringing kids to battle" it'll be about wikileaks threatening national security by releasing this video.
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Anyone who says releasing the video is a threat to national security is a ****ing moron.
Also, anyone who believes what this story seems to imply, the US deliberately doing this is equally a ****ing moron.
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A few individuals got caught on tape killing a bunch of innocent people (reporters, bystanders, some people who got out of a van to try to help the wounded), wounding two children, and treating it like it's a goddamn video game.
And then the US military tried to cover it up with a series of lies (there was a gunfight going on when the soldiers opened fire, etc).
/me has a hard time believing the latter wasn't deliberate.
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Also, anyone who believes what this story seems to imply, the US deliberately doing this is equally a ****ing moron.
I view it as simply horrendously bad judgment on the part of the pilots (who were complete ****ing morons).
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The copter crew's comments are totally horrible to listen to - its just like they were playing a game. That is i can understand how some one can mistake a camera/tripod or equivalents for weapons. Though the group was in the open and only few had anything resembling weapons with them. Having grotesque fun and sort of 'egging' wounded targets to pick weapons just to give the crew a valid reason to resume firing is something that to me seems totally wrong. Sure little kiddos when playing some FPS or the likes do that but (adult - though apparently not mature) trained soldiers in real combat?
If US wants to make sure the Arabs will keep hating them then by all means keep up the 'good' work. Otherwise hiding this kind of incident for several years does not exactly help with anything.
Of course there is the prevailing situation which affects the judgments the soldiers and pilots made but that is not usually an acceptable excuse for this kind of actions.
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An unhealthy eagerness to pull the trigger was my main concern over that video.
Edit: Oh, and the 'That's what happens when you bring you kids to a battle' comment, that's just so full of ignorance and assumptions it's unbelievable.
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I noticed this on Reuters yesterday. Disgusted by the conduct of the pilots and gunners. Disinclined to believe it was completely deliberate.
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I noticed this on Reuters yesterday. Disgusted by the conduct of the pilots and gunners. Disinclined to believe it was completely deliberate.
Concur.
oh and right before I saw it I had an amazing killstreak as a chopper gunner in Bad Company 2
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Heh, agreed, it was a cock-up, and the pilots were pretty disgusting in their attitude, but it wasn't deliberate to my eyes (or, at least, not any more deliberate than firing a gun into a group of people can be).
One thing did occur to me, though, obviously, the cam from a single chopper involved in a multi-vehicle operation won't explain everything, but why did the reports first go from 'they're carrying guns' to 'they're carrying AK47's and RPGs' to 'We are under attack from AK47's and RPGs' without a single shot being visibly fired?
Edit: And I'm still not certain that RPG wasn't a telephoto camera, but it's very hard to tell, it does appear to be a shoulder-mounted device of some description, so maybe the RPG claim was correct...
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To be fair to the pilots and the "attitude" they had, the way they and soldiers throughout time have dealt with what they are required to do is to depersonalize the enemy, imagining them as monsters or whatnot.
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Well this has defiantly been all over the news. There are a couple of important points no one has mentioned. One is that the chopper was cleared by troops on the ground that the targets were indeed hostile before firing. The chopper itself wasn't even close to the target. The footage is highly magnified. Attitude of the pilots bad or not it wasn't their call to pull the trigger. Second the chopper had apparently been taking sporadic small arms fire from somewhere in that area.
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To be fair to the pilots and the "attitude" they had, the way they and soldiers throughout time have dealt with what they are required to do is to depersonalize the enemy, imagining them as monsters or whatnot.
Actually soldiers used to be really bad at this; it's why so few soldiers actually fired at the enemy in World War II.
Today we have training that helps with this, but (directly or indirectly) it also causes horrifying PTSD in many people. And in this case, it made these soldiers unable to perform their jobs.
They failed in their mission and are probably struggling with the consequences even today.
But I do agree that at the time this is probably what caused the problem...they thought they saw enemies and rushed to kill them, forgetting that the benefits of killing a few insurgents were far smaller than the costs of killing a few civilians.
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Edit: And I'm still not certain that RPG wasn't a telephoto camera, but it's very hard to tell, it does appear to be a shoulder-mounted device of some description, so maybe the RPG claim was correct...
It was a camera. They shot a reuters journalist and his cameraman.
To be fair to the pilots and the "attitude" they had, the way they and soldiers throughout time have dealt with what they are required to do is to depersonalize the enemy, imagining them as monsters or whatnot.
And that's why we should be proud of our military. They no longer have any regard for the lives of huge groups of people (regardless of age), just because the government told them not to. USA! USA! Our soldiers think it's fun to commit murder! Yaaaay!
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In this case I'm pretty sure what was shown counts as a war crime. But that's mismanaged war policy, too little ground troops, over eager pilots and Shock and Awe for you. Innocent people have always died in war, but that isn't a reason to ignore good pre-planning and smart weapons delivery. It is odd that ground forces identified objects as RPGs and AKs when they clearly aren't.
It is not surprising that the usage of Air Force has been restricted in Afghanistan after similar incidents.
Well this has defiantly been all over the news. There are a couple of important points no one has mentioned. One is that the chopper was cleared by troops on the ground that the targets were indeed hostile before firing. The chopper itself wasn't even close to the target. The footage is highly magnified. Attitude of the pilots bad or not it wasn't their call to pull the trigger. Second the chopper had apparently been taking sporadic small arms fire from somewhere in that area.
But do you know who's gonna face charges should this thing proceed to court? Being ordered to do so doesn't count as an excuse in a war crime tribunal!
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There was an interesting incident at some point in the past 50 years where what I believe was an Air Force pilot shot down a friendly Black Hawk helicopter full of US troops.
The pilot swore that he had seen a Russian helicopter and even vividly described his perceptions.
It's possible that what happened here was a cognitive illusion produced by stress and expectations.
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I get that. Sure, maybe the camera looked like an RPG. I really do understand that. They thought they were shooting insurgents. Okay.
But murder shouldn't be fun, no matter who you're killing. And there's absolutely no reason to not care that you just shot a couple of little kids.
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I find it hard to take anyone (meaning original article) seriously who doesn't know how to spell "gunsight".
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The military released a report yesterday that which produced pictures which do show some busted AKM rifles at the scene and the cameras. The conclusion drawn by the army was that the cameramen were in the company of armed insurgents.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/ArmyReport_ExhibitO.png)
Thoughts?
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Bad luck for the camerapeople. However it doesn't necessarily excuse the behavior of the helicopter crew.
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It's amazing more reporters didn't get killed that way. Home many times where there reporters near insurgents who were fighting? There were all kinds of interviews and videos of insurgents from back then.
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isn't the number of dead reporters something like 150?
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The RPG-7 picture appears to be showing nothing.
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In all honesty, I wouldn't be surprised if the AKM picture wasn't even of the scene in question at all, but of a nearby area or something.
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The RPG-7 picture appears to be showing nothing.
The insurgents have the gray box. My god, this is worse than we thought!
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You'd think with all the tax dollars they get, the Pentagon could do a better job at cover-ups.
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They'd spent the cover-up budget on 9-11 and the moon landings already. :p
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The lesson here: Democracies are really bad at covering things up.
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Attitude of the pilots bad or not it wasn't their call to pull the trigger.
...what? :doubt: Of course it was. They made the call to pull the trigger, and you're trying to say it wasn't their call to pull the trigger. Duh.
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Attitude of the pilots bad or not it wasn't their call to pull the trigger.
...what? :doubt: Of course it was. They made the call to pull the trigger, and you're trying to say it wasn't their call to pull the trigger. Duh.
No, it actually wasn't; by rules of engagement they have to get permission to fire.
They did, however, receive that permission.
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Exactly. No one in the military is allowed to pull the trigger willy-nilly without authorization. That's what the assholes at Haditha got in trouble.
And no, that shouldn't be the attitude of the helicopter crew, but when you're about to pull the trigger on someone and take away somebody's father, brother, son, cousin, etc..it's stressful. I really, really, really doubt these guys take pleasure in killing anyone. If anything it's just a mental defensive reaction on their part.
Frankly, with the intel they had at the time and given the situation, they did the best they could. When a recon platform picks up radio calls indicating a bunch of insurgents operating in an area, and then a camera spots a bunch of armed folks walking around carrying what looks to be an RPG near a helicopter...
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Attitude of the pilots bad or not it wasn't their call to pull the trigger.
...what? :doubt: Of course it was. They made the call to pull the trigger, and you're trying to say it wasn't their call to pull the trigger. Duh.
No, it actually wasn't; by rules of engagement they have to get permission to fire.
They did, however, receive that permission.
Permission to fire isn't an order to fire, so pulling the trigger was still their call. Were they ordered to or were they simply given permission to fire on all those people?
And even if they were ordered to fire, nothing would force them to do it, so it'd still be their call. You can't threated me into shooting someone else in such a way that it wouldn't still be my call to shoot or not shoot that someone else, assuming I don't turn all non compos mentis. And we're actually talking of a situation where the repercussions of choosing to not fire would likely have been "none" and the pilots don't exactly seem like they're panicking either.
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Defensive reaction? It seemed more like they were continuously looking for any possible excuse to start shooting at a wounded unarmed man crawling on the street.
All you got to do is pick up a weapon
Apparently its OK to consider wounded men, the people who help them, and their medevacs all as valid targets according to US RoE. Wonder what other things in it contradicts with certain international accords...
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Anyone who says releasing the video is a threat to national security is a ****ing moron.
Also, anyone who believes what this story seems to imply, the US deliberately doing this is equally a ****ing moron.
They said it was a threat to national security because they were covering it up. Good thing they blew it (eventually).
Oh, and about the picture showing the guns and stuff, how do we even know that was real? If it was real then why did they try to bury the story for so long?
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All you got to do is pick up a weapon
Apparently its OK to consider wounded men, the people who help them, and their medevacs all as valid targets according to US RoE. Wonder what other things in it contradicts with certain international accords...
Anyone with a weapon in his hand is a valid target by any international accord, and an Apache's own weapons are not precise enough tools to kill one and leave those standing next to him unharmed. If the crew geniunely thought they were carrying weapons, then they did exactly the right thing in firing.
Also considering that the insurgents neither mark their medical personnel (if they have any) nor respect US medics, does it come as any surprise they'd fire on percieved insurgents trying to pull someone to safety? If you want the protection of international accords you have to operate within them.
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If you want the protection of international accords you have to operate within them.
And this is reason enough to fire on civilians? That is how are civilians supposed to do that?
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Mmm... Just thinking about what we'd be saying if the insurgents shot up a van of kids of people trying to help a US soldier.
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Also considering that the insurgents neither mark their medical personnel (if they have any) nor respect US medics, does it come as any surprise they'd fire on percieved insurgents trying to pull someone to safety? If you want the protection of international accords you have to operate within them.
So because they choose to act like a bunch of barbarians that means we should follow suit?
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And this is reason enough to fire on civilians? That is how are civilians supposed to do that?
You conveniently ignored the rest of my post. Try reading it again and pretending you don't have an axe to grind.
So because they choose to act like a bunch of barbarians that means we should follow suit?
If you employ terror as a weapon, conciously or otherwise, people are going to react like you did: they'll strike at you in any way possible. This is the exact reason why the US has greatly cut back on the employment of airstrikes and limited night operations so much; they scare the hell out of people.
However expecting a soldier to offer mercy to a percieved enemy who isn't at the least wearing a Red Cross armband and not armed is basically madness. The nature of the tools employed is such that mistakes are inevitable. If you want it to be treated like a law-enforcement matter you should use law-enforcement personnel.
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Well assuming those two kids survive, there's some more enemies that'll show up in a decade or so right there. Might as well kill them now. Show no mercy. :P
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And this is reason enough to fire on civilians? That is how are civilians supposed to do that?
You conveniently ignored the rest of my post. Try reading it again and pretending you don't have an axe to grind.
There was nothing relevant to that in the rest of your post. You clearly said that you think firing at someone carrying a weapon is "the right thing to do" regardless of the collateral damage, and then you tried to hint that the civilians were not operating within international accords and thus weren't protected by them.
However expecting a soldier to offer mercy to a percieved enemy who isn't at the least wearing a Red Cross armband and not armed is basically madness.
I don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness"... :rolleyes:
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There was nothing relevant to that in the rest of your post. You clearly said that you think firing at someone carrying a weapon is "the right thing to do" regardless of the collateral damage, and then you tried to hint that the civilians were not operating within international accords and thus weren't protected by them.
On the contrary, what I said had everything to do with it. If they thought they were engaging insurgents, then they had every reason to fire because that violates no law and it's exactly what they're trained to do.
I don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness"... :rolleyes:
These are soldiers. Their purpose, their very existence, is predicated on confronting armed threats and dealing with them in the most violent way possible. If you don't want people killed and things broken, don't use soldiers.
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Besides how should the people in van have understood that they were designated as 'potential insurgents'. There were no combatants in sight apart from the Apaches circling nearly a kilometer away (according to CNN) - which is easily far enough so that it would have been ignored. How should civilians have perceived that helicopter as something that is threatening them? They saw carnage where one man was desperate trying to claw his way somewhere away from the site. Killing unknown people just because they were suspected insurgents without any warning makes the US troops there no better than the presumed insurgents they were facing.
Hell Apache crews certainly didn't bother to warn (ever heard of warning shot?) of their intent. They just kept spraying.
And they have right to engage if the know they are engaging insurgents. In the first shooting this was somewhat suspected (some weapons were seen) - however there was no shooting, nothing explicitly marking that group of men as insurgents. In the second shooting there was nothing indicating that people in the van would have been insurgents.
If US soldiers are trained to shoot - without warning - unarmed men helping a wounded man then perhaps there might be something slightly wrong in their training.
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There was nothing relevant to that in the rest of your post. You clearly said that you think firing at someone carrying a weapon is "the right thing to do" regardless of the collateral damage, and then you tried to hint that the civilians were not operating within international accords and thus weren't protected by them.
On the contrary, what I said had everything to do with it. If they thought they were engaging insurgents, then they had every reason to fire because that violates no law and it's exactly what they're trained to do.
That has absolutely nothing to do with whether the civilians in question were not operating within international accords or not. So, do you indeed think the civilians in question were not operating within international accords and thus weren't protected by them? Yes or no?
I don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness"... :rolleyes:
These are soldiers. Their purpose, their very existence, is predicated on confronting armed threats and dealing with them in the most violent way possible.
What are you going on about? I said I still don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness". That was in response to you saying that it does count. Your personal opinion on what "the purpose" of soldiers is isn't relevant in any way.
If you don't want people killed and things broken, don't use soldiers.
Yeah, I don't use soldiers.
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Attitude of the pilots bad or not it wasn't their call to pull the trigger.
...what? :doubt: Of course it was. They made the call to pull the trigger, and you're trying to say it wasn't their call to pull the trigger. Duh.
No, it actually wasn't; by rules of engagement they have to get permission to fire.
They did, however, receive that permission.
Permission to fire isn't an order to fire, so pulling the trigger was still their call. Were they ordered to or were they simply given permission to fire on all those people?
And even if they were ordered to fire, nothing would force them to do it, so it'd still be their call. You can't threated me into shooting someone else in such a way that it wouldn't still be my call to shoot or not shoot that someone else, assuming I don't turn all non compos mentis. And we're actually talking of a situation where the repercussions of choosing to not fire would likely have been "none" and the pilots don't exactly seem like they're panicking either.
That's a good point.
Richard Morgan once made an interesting argument that 'soldier' is one of the least honorable professions in existence because it involves giving up your right to make moral decisions. One of his characters, an ex-soldier, said something along the lines of "I'm trying to become something better...a paid killer, maybe." The idea being that at least when you're a mercenary you get to choose what you're going to fight for.
I found it compelling.
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Okay, watched the video, and am disgusted by it. But I have to say, I would've mistaken the cameras for weapons at the first pass as well. However, when the helo moves around the building, and the RPG guy doesn't make an attempt to track the helo, as well as there being a bloody congregation going on with the supposed Tangos including RPG boy, I would've highly doubted they were making an attempt to down the helo at that point/were hostile forces, if I was the WSO. And the camera doesn't even look like an RPG at that point of the footage.
What are you going on about? I said I still don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness". That was in response to you saying that it does count. Your personal opinion on what "the purpose" of soldiers is isn't relevant in any way.
You seemed to have missed the part where he talked about the tools they were dealing with, and do deal with, in modern warfare. It is not the job of a soldier to 'be nice', especially not to an enemy that'd string their body through a street if they had the opportunity (not literally here, but you get the idea). As long as the soldier's still alive, he's still a threat (depending on the case, but usually). Ergo, it is necessary to shoot the **** out of some bastard that very likely hates your guts. Unfortunately, they slaughtered someone's father, husband, brother, etc. Which is absolutely ****ing disgusting. But they could easily have been, and were, mistaken as insurgents.
And even if they were ordered to fire, nothing would force them to do it, so it'd still be their call.
You've obviously never spoken to someone in the military. When a superior officer says, "Pull the trigger," You bloody well pull the trigger unless you have a damn good reason. Without knowing the background to the engagement, it's hard to make educated judgements, but as far as I can pick up, the Apache Crew had little reason to suspect the target was civilian. Thankfully, the way in which US Forces provide CAS and the like has been dramatically revised, as most HLP-ers should know, courtesy of Battuta.
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What are you going on about? I said I still don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness". That was in response to you saying that it does count. Your personal opinion on what "the purpose" of soldiers is isn't relevant in any way.
You seemed to have missed the part where he talked about the tools they were dealing with, and do deal with, in modern warfare.
Nope.
It is not the job of a soldier to 'be nice', especially not to an enemy that'd string their body through a street if they had the opportunity (not literally here, but you get the idea). As long as the soldier's still alive, he's still a threat (depending on the case, but usually). Ergo, it is necessary to shoot the **** out of some bastard that very likely hates your guts. Unfortunately, they slaughtered someone's father, husband, brother, etc. Which is absolutely ****ing disgusting. But they could easily have been, and were, mistaken as insurgents.
It's practically no one's job to 'be nice', yet I expect niceness from people, especially when it's niceness in the form of not shooting other people. As for the rest, I don't see how that's relevant to anything I've said. Could you be nice and point to something I've said that is incorrect?
And even if they were ordered to fire, nothing would force them to do it, so it'd still be their call.
You've obviously never spoken to someone in the military. When a superior officer says, "Pull the trigger," You bloody well pull the trigger unless you have a damn good reason.
And that's gonna be your call, not your superior officer's call. Ordering you to pull the trigger or not is his call, pulling the trigger or not is yours.
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Yes, I will.
And we're actually talking of a situation where the repercussions of choosing to not fire would likely have been "none" and the pilots don't exactly seem like they're panicking either.
Let's go right back up the thread, shall we? This is correct, in hindsight, but unfortunately in real time, we don't have that wonderful luxury. Those people were deemed to have been insurgents, and IIRC, were confirmed as insurgents. Therefore, there is a likelihood they may have opened fire on the helicopter/mounted some kind of offensive action, if given the opportunity, or called some mates in. You don't want to leave anything to chance.
And that's gonna be your call, not your superior officer's call. Ordering you to pull the trigger or not is his call, pulling the trigger or not is yours.
Yes, well if you don't pull the trigger and don't have a good reason for it, have fun having the **** yelled out of you by the CO, and losing any possibility of being promoted.
But I don't believe the Apache crew were told that the target may not have been hostile, therefore, acting on the information they were given, had no reason to treat the target as a possible civilian congregation, thus the problem lies right up the line with whoever the hell ID'd the target as hostile. I don't condone slaughtering of civilians by any means, I found that video disgusting, but in terms of the crew's accordance to procedure, I don't see a lot of fault. (not to say they were fault-less, however.)
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That has absolutely nothing to do with whether the civilians in question were not operating within international accords or not.
Because that's a stupid question. I mean seriously, what are you on about? What are you trying to cite? I'm not even talking about the civilians, as you should easily be able to tell from context, I'm talking about the pilots.
Or are you being dense just for the sake of trying to make it look like I'm attacking the victims?
What are you going on about? I said I still don't quite agree that expecting people to be nice and not shoot other people just because they can legally get away with it and/or unless it's somehow really necessary counts as "basically madness".
And what gives you the right to define "necessary" at the possible cost of others lives? Granted I have no more right, neither of us has ever been in combat, but at least I'm taking a posistion that was devised by those who have. You're off over in your happy never-never land pretending you have some kind of moral authority that is wiser than a great many people who actually do know what they're talking about.
Your personal opinion on what "the purpose" of soldiers is isn't relevant in any way.
So basically, you're saying all that training, stuff about fighting wars, bunch of malarky. They're absolutely normal people doing absolutely normal stuff!
Bull****.
Besides how should the people in van have understood that they were designated as 'potential insurgents'. There were no combatants in sight apart from the Apaches circling nearly a kilometer away (according to CNN) - which is easily far enough so that it would have been ignored. How should civilians have perceived that helicopter as something that is threatening them?
Not relevant to the discussion of why they were shot.
They saw carnage where one man was desperate trying to claw his way somewhere away from the site. Killing unknown people just because they were suspected insurgents without any warning makes the US troops there no better than the presumed insurgents they were facing. Hell Apache crews certainly didn't bother to warn (ever heard of warning shot?) of their intent. They just kept spraying.
A warning shot is giving the guy who's believed to have an RPG a chance to turn around and nail you. It's not practical, and it's certainly not fair to people who are already being asked to do things pyschologically damaging enough to ask them to put their lives at unnecessary risk. They were told "these are hostile" and that's all they needed to know from their standpoint.
And they have right to engage if the know they are engaging insurgents. In the first shooting this was somewhat suspected (some weapons were seen) - however there was no shooting, nothing explicitly marking that group of men as insurgents. In the second shooting there was nothing indicating that people in the van would have been insurgents.
Except the crew was told by higher command that they were, and in the absence of some way for the man on the scene to prove otherwise without endangering himself, had to act on that information.
If US soldiers are trained to shoot - without warning - unarmed men helping a wounded man then perhaps there might be something slightly wrong in their training.
Warning is not practical from both a military standpoint and a human one, as noted. The cardinal problem with both your reasoning and zookeeper's is that it's the pilot's fault. It's not their fault: they're a part of the weapons system. Whoever told them there were insurgents in the area blew the call. It is patently unfair to blame the sword for the hand that wields it.
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Warning is not practical from both a military standpoint and a human one, as noted. The cardinal problem with both your reasoning and zookeeper's is that it's the pilot's fault. It's not their fault: they're a part of the weapons system. Whoever told them there were insurgents in the area blew the call. It is patently unfair to blame the sword for the hand that wields it.
Couldn't have put it better myself.
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Ugh, this thread is going in the 'let's make it all violently personal' direction. NGTM-1R, I think a better way to approach zookeeper would be with a bit less derision and a bit more diplomacy. Ladling contempt all over your posts only triggers affect responses that guarantee you won't be listened to by your target.
So basically, you're saying all that training, stuff about fighting wars, bunch of malarky. They're absolutely normal people doing absolutely normal stuff!
Halfway right. They're absolutely normal people doing abnormal stuff. They've undergone psychological conditioning. For better or worse, just about anybody can do what a soldier does if given the right training.
Warning is not practical from both a military standpoint and a human one, as noted. The cardinal problem with both your reasoning and zookeeper's is that it's the pilot's fault. It's not their fault: they're a part of the weapons system. Whoever told them there were insurgents in the area blew the call. It is patently unfair to blame the sword for the hand that wields it.
Couldn't have put it better myself.
It is the pilots' fault. It may not be exclusively their fault, but moral responsibility doesn't get passed along. It is borne by each and every person at every step of the decision. The pilots had the ability to make a better decision than they did given the information they had, after all.
Ultimately, the pilots still bear direct responsibility for pulling the trigger, which is why they were so desperate to justify their actions to themselves ("their faults for bringing children into a battle.")
In this case, I think the attitude of the pilots is telling; they had already framed the situation and were only looking for confirmation. I would be more impressed with their conduct if they were actively seeking disconfirmation, just to be sure. It's a tactic that helps combat the kind of heuristics that cause these sorts of situations in the first place.
Reminds me of the time the USS Vincennes shot down an airliner. All the necessary information to prevent the tragedy was present, but it was never assembled appropriately because the people making the call had a conclusion already in mind.
All that said I wouldn't call this a war crime, just a mistake produced by situational factors. It was a combat zone and these people were arguably asking for it. My problems were mostly with the decision process, not the decision outcome - that and the decision to fire on the van.
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... is that it's the pilot's fault. It's not their fault: they're a part of the weapons system. Whoever told them there were insurgents in the area blew the call. It is patently unfair to blame the sword for the hand that wields it.
Yes. And perfectly true. However the Apache crew also acted as eyes and ears for the 'swinging hand'. And they reported that van arrived to pick up insurgents and weapons. However this (gathering of weapons) did not happen and the crew never bothered to inform the command of their error instead they repeatedly pressed the command for a clearance to engage.
Had the van indeed arrived to gather the scattered RPGs like the Apache crew claimed then the commands decision to engage would have been understandable.. Excessive perhaps but understandable. Now the Apache crew either lied or made false claims (both of which are serious offenses in military in combat situation) which lead to the destruction of the van.
Of course this is not the first instance US military looks the other way in a case where situation blinds the operators (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 ).
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Yeah, the technical term is 'scenario fulfillment'.
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Did anyone mention the US can't find their copy? I may have missed it.
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All that said I wouldn't call this a war crime, just a mistake produced by situational factors. It was a combat zone and these people were arguably asking for it. My problems were mostly with the decision process, not the decision outcome - that and the decision to fire on the van.
Mistake or not, this was intentional killing of a wounded person and opening fire towards civilian population. So I do think it counts. Circumstances might lessen the verdict in court if this case goes there. The fact seems to be that the helicopter crew still destroyed a vehicle without any confirmation of what was inside of it and what it was doing in the area. All they got was that the passengers were helping a wounded. Trusting the superior officer is not an excuse.
By the way, there is a case in Afghanistan of Finnish and Swedish ground forces actually preventing an air strike against the civilian population as Taliban (most likely) staged civilian uprise against their station. Most of the people had only stones as weapons, while there were a small amount of guys carrying AKs. In this case the ROE would have allowed to use air power to repel the attack, but since their situation never got desperate air strike was overruled. According to the comments from the participants the air force pilots had exactly the same attitude as in this video. If I recall it right, the ground forces decided to shoot only those who had a gun.
Later analysis showed that the air strike would have likely killed 300+ civilians. The actions of these ground forces were later commended by NATO. It is no wonder why the usage of Air Force has been made a lot more strict in the current theaters.
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As I said, I'd consider the decision to fire and the van separate and much more problematic.
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Yes, I will.
And even if they were ordered to fire, nothing would force them to do it, so it'd still be their call. You can't threated me into shooting someone else in such a way that it wouldn't still be my call to shoot or not shoot that someone else, assuming I don't turn all non compos mentis. And we're actually talking of a situation where the repercussions of choosing to not fire would likely have been "none" and the pilots don't exactly seem like they're panicking either.
Let's go right back up the thread, shall we? This is correct, in hindsight, but unfortunately in real time, we don't have that wonderful luxury. Those people were deemed to have been insurgents, and IIRC, were confirmed as insurgents. Therefore, there is a likelihood they may have opened fire on the helicopter/mounted some kind of offensive action, if given the opportunity, or called some mates in. You don't want to leave anything to chance.
Sure, we can agree that the pilots and their superiors thought they might be insurgents.
And that's gonna be your call, not your superior officer's call. Ordering you to pull the trigger or not is his call, pulling the trigger or not is yours.
Yes, well if you don't pull the trigger and don't have a good reason for it, have fun having the **** yelled out of you by the CO, and losing any possibility of being promoted.
Well, that's tough. Anyone who willingly joins the military (unless they're so stupid they shouldn't be allowed to anyway) knows that they'll going to possibly end up in such a situation where they'll be ordered to kill someone who might very well be an innocent civilian and that they'll get punished if they refuse.
And frankly, I don't think getting yelled at and losing the possibility of being promoted morally justifies shooting people. Something else might, but certainly not that.
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That has absolutely nothing to do with whether the civilians in question were not operating within international accords or not.
Because that's a stupid question. I mean seriously, what are you on about? What are you trying to cite? I'm not even talking about the civilians, as you should easily be able to tell from context, I'm talking about the pilots.
Or are you being dense just for the sake of trying to make it look like I'm attacking the victims?
All this flows from this bit you said:
Anyone with a weapon in his hand is a valid target by any international accord, and an Apache's own weapons are not precise enough tools to kill one and leave those standing next to him unharmed. If the crew geniunely thought they were carrying weapons, then they did exactly the right thing in firing.
Also considering that the insurgents neither mark their medical personnel (if they have any) nor respect US medics, does it come as any surprise they'd fire on percieved insurgents trying to pull someone to safety? If you want the protection of international accords you have to operate within them.
The first paragraph is quite explicitly saying that killing unarmed civilians (who you know to be unarmed civilians) is ok if you're actually trying to kill an armed insurgent and your weapons are simply too imprecise to avoid the collateral damage.
The second paragraph is quite explicitly saying that an unarmed civilian perceived as an insurgent isn't operating within international accords and thus isn't protected by them.
Your personal opinion on what "the purpose" of soldiers is isn't relevant in any way.
So basically, you're saying all that training, stuff about fighting wars, bunch of malarky. They're absolutely normal people doing absolutely normal stuff!
Bull****.
What? Can't figure out what you're trying to argue for or against there.
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Of course this is not the first instance US military looks the other way in a case where situation blinds the operators (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 ).
Not sure where you're going here...655 was a little more complex then that.
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I've refrained from commenting here because I happened to believe that they behaved correctly given the situation, this isn't some wargame on your computer where you get a redo if you screw up, they get one chance to make the correct decision or innocents die.
Something to remember throughout all of your discussion of this:
The enemy(insurgents, terrorist, whatever you wanna call them, it boils down to them being agents of chaos and mayhem) almost always masquerades as civilians. The only way to tell the good ones from the bad ones is if they are pointing a weapon at you.
My observation of thread indicates that one side is approaching this with the opinion that every soldier, at least every American soldier(though I could be wrong in this perception), is a trigger happy idiot with the willingness and intention to commit heinous crimes at the drop of a hat. This is certainly not true and the the calls of derision and contempt against NGTM-1R are unjustified as this is the correct response to such an attitude. It's similar to saying that everyone from Germany are a bunch of German Supremicists that want to take over the world, or that the French are wine-drinking assholes who are rude to everyone. They are overblown stereotypes that aren't true(at least I would hope they aren't) and it's insulting to throw blanket statements like that around no matter how veiled they are.
So how about you all take a break from the posturing and poo throwing and see the situation for what it is.
It's war, people die, sometimes unjustly. But you aren't there fighting, bleeding and dying so you don't get to second guess a split-second decision with the attitude "Well if I had been there...".
You can judge history and all the thousands or millions killed in a given situation and sit there on your high horse and say you would have made a different decision. But you have the benefit of hindsight and all the events that have unfolded since then. When you are there with your hand on the trigger, it's different.
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You wouldn't know, lol.
Anyway, if they were sooo just in their decisions, why was there a cover-up?
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You wouldn't either. He is correct in that. People shouldn't be so quick to jump on peoples' mistakes, especially if they could easily make the same mistake.
That aside, would you want anyone to know you'd accidentally killed someone?
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I've refrained from commenting here because I happened to believe that they behaved correctly given the situation, this isn't some wargame on your computer where you get a redo if you screw up, they get one chance to make the correct decision or innocents die.
Yeah, exactly, and they failed.
I don't think anyone has made the claims you describe. Again you're attacking something that isn't there.
What has been said is that these soldiers could have done their jobs better, but failed in their duty for easily understandable but nonetheless tragic reasons.
It's possible to recognize how difficult a situation is but still see that it could have been handled better.
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Until a person is in that situation, im not sure about how any of us would react
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I doubt any of us would have handled the situation better.
That doesn't prevent us from critiquing, though, especially when there's a good empirical basis available to understand what probably went wrong. Autonomic arousal ****s with decisionmaking something fierce, and when your adrenaline is up parts of the brain shut down.
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As far as I saw it, the pilot and gunner were willfully blowing the situation out of proportion. They saw a single AK - or a couple of them, in the video I only saw a single something that could be one - then they reported 6 insurgents with AKs.
Then they proceeded to mention being under fire when in reality I saw no-one firing at them. Finally they saw something at the edge of a corner. That could have been an RPG. In hindsight I *know* that it was a camera tele-objective, but I'm trying to see it from the pilots perspective.
Although we didn't see anyone carry one, they could have got one from the house that covered them from the camera. However even when they changed position they didn't see anything that could be an RPG.
...all throughout the engagement the pilot and gunner were grossly misinterpreting the situation for the officer on the end of the line, giving the impression of a - to them - dangerous situation enfolding, when it wasn't at depicting the humans on ground as insurgents armed up to their gills.
Listen to the video, listen to what they say. That's all that the officer on the end of the line knew. They didn't receive confirmation - of the targets - from the officer they only received permission to open fire on their own judgment as there were no friendlies in the area.
...all in all, the both the pilot and the gunner should be held accountable for they misled and grossly exaggerated the situation to the officer in charge and received firing permission on false grounds.
FINALLY, I'm not a piecenik who thinks that it was a deliberate slaughter by the soldiers. No. They lost their COOL and they were too GUNG-HO.
However the whole procedure grossly underlines what's wrong with the American efforts in Iraq: they're trying to fight a war, and still act as if a conventional enemy was waging war against them.
Massive firepower and shock & awe won't do any good in COIN.
It's COIN. It's 1/2 policing, 1/4 intelligence gathering, 1/8 psyops and only... let me stress this only 1/8 guns blazing action.
It seems the boys on the ground - or those in the sky - still don't have a ****ing clue as to what this is all about. They can spout the program, they can do the motions they were shown, but they still don't understand and still can't intuitively follow it up and actually execute it.
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Of course this is not the first instance US military looks the other way in a case where situation blinds the operators (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 ).
Not sure where you're going here...655 was a little more complex then that.
The final sign that Iran Air Flight 655 was an F14 was when it was seen diving at the USS Vincennes (i.e assuming an attack posture, rather than calmly flying over the ship at the same altitude). In fact it did no such thing despite the radar operators claim that it did.
When questioned in a 2000 BBC documentary, the US government stated in a written answer that they believed the incident may have been caused by a simultaneous psychological condition amongst the 18 bridge crew of the Vincennes called 'scenario fulfillment', which is said to occur when persons are under pressure. In such a situation, the men will carry out a training scenario, believing it to be reality while ignoring sensory information that contradicts the scenario. In the case of this incident, the scenario was an attack by a lone military aircraft.
It's also a good example of the fact that the US military will twist and turn rather than admitting responsibility. Which is exactly what is happening here. Rather than realise that there are serious problems in training when someone is reporting large numbers of insurgents who simply aren't there, they'd rather sweep the whole thing under the rug. This is pretty much the same as the case with the Vincennes where despite a catalogue of errors from the crew they blamed the whole thing on the pilot of the plane.
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As I said earlier, in the case of the Vincennes, all the available pieces of information to make the right decision were plainly present. They were just never assembled.
To add to karajorma's points the aircraft was even squawking a civilian transponder code.
In this case the van was clearly not a valid target for immediate fire but the pilots' selective expectations made it one.
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To add to karajorma's points the aircraft was even squawking a civilian transponder code.
Yep. Misidentifying it was one of the catalogue of errors.
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No matter what happened, or how it happened, you have to feel sorry for the families who lost their loved ones.
War breeds war.
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Which means that we won't ever see the end of it, because no societies capable standing for long(ish) periods of time will ever no be able to banish the specter of war from the minds of their populations.
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Which means that we won't ever see the end of it, because no societies capable standing for long(ish) periods of time will ever no be able to banish the specter of war from the minds of their populations.
what are you going on about? We went to war to take US taxpayer money from good purposes, and funnel it through contracts and connections and war spending into the pockets of a few morally bankrupt (but otherwise very well off) groups and individuals. There's no 'specter of war,' there's just some bad apples in the basket of humanity.
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Only the dead have seen the end of war.
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Which means that we won't ever see the end of it, because no societies capable standing for long(ish) periods of time will ever no be able to banish the specter of war from the minds of their populations.
what are you going on about? We went to war to take US taxpayer money from good purposes, and funnel it through contracts and connections and war spending into the pockets of a few morally bankrupt (but otherwise very well off) groups and individuals. There's no 'specter of war,' there's just some bad apples in the basket of humanity.
Where did he mention the US in that? I thought it was a general comment on people in general. Think about it. There have been less years of peace in recorded history than there have been years of war. It's not restricted to the US.
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Maybe we'll grow out of it someday.
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Maybe we'll grow out of it someday.
This.
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Not bloody likely. What will happen is we will eventually come up with ultra-low cost or free energy in a large an amount as we need and promote everyone up to middle class standards of living and then everyone can burn out the violence on sports instead of killing each other.
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Actually, Liberator is probably on to something there, I don't think we will ever shake off our competitive and violent nature, I'd even go so far as to say that doing so would be a bad thing, but destroying the need for violence in the context of living-standards would probably do a great deal to solve the problem, you would still, however, always get a few, either because of greed or because of conditioning, be it physical or mental.
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Eh, can't blame me for being an anti-war optimist. Grew up on Star Trek and Gundam. I believe people can be better than we are, and that war is the most useless ****ing thing we've invented after god.
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Eh, can't blame me for being an anti-war optimist. Grew up on Star Trek and Gundam. I believe people can be better than we are, and that war is the most useless ****ing thing we've invented after god.
If it's one thing Gundam and especially Star Trek taught me, it's that war is not only justified in certain circumstances, but absolutely necessary.
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well if there's one thing they've taught me, is that it's hell and suffering, and is perpetrated by the villains found on both sides. With exchange of information and understanding, along with removal of those people who stand to gain from the suffering of others, pretty much any situation can end without people being killed.
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There's a quote related to this stuff by a guy named John Stuart Mill but for the life of me I can't remember what it says.
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War is a remarkably inefficient method of doing things, so in the long run the market should prevent it.
And, indeed, wars have been dropping off dramatically for some time now.
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Extreme situations breed extreme solutions, remove those situations, and you remove the grip of those who use hardship to influence people.
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There's a quote related to this stuff by a guy named John Stuart Mill but for the life of me I can't remember what it says.
I can think of a certain quote by Maddox, but it would hardly be appropriate for this topic.
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Awww... I just read through the whole thread, and was all ready to make an on-topic post, when I got to the last page or so and noticed it's all simmering down.
How dare you agree on things, I wanted to stoke the fire! :mad:
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You wanna stoke a fire?
President(though not my choice) Barack Hussein Obama is a nacissistic creep who may not even be American, nevertheless he seems to want to shove freedom eroding programs, executive orders and congressional law down everyone's throat simply because he knows better than the rest of us unwashed masses. :hopping:
There, I feel better now.
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30 day ban from Gen Disc for trolling.
Now the rest of us feel better too. :p
Oh, and any one who replies to this obvious troll bait is joining him.
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Damn, laying the hammer down are we? :p
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I'm not well and you people shouting makes my headache worse. :p
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Here's a couple Tylenol and a Heineken. Go lay down :p
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This just strikes me as a big mistake. Nothing more.
The comments from the gunship operators seem pretty standard soldiers comments to me, nothing to cry home about.
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Mmm, I think adrenaline may have had something to do with their attitude.
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President(though not my choice) Barack Hussein Obama is a nacissistic creep who may not even be American, *snip*
Why not just post a link to Fox's website instead of spending all that time typing their broadcasts up yourself?
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Does that reply mean zack gets banned too?
It might actually be quiet down here for a few weeks.
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Nah, she gets preferential treatment because she's a girl, right?
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Actually I think she did get banned by kara in another thread.
Might be back though.
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Does that reply mean zack gets banned too?
Yeah. It does. I quite clearly stated what would happen and she was pretty lucky I was feeling lenient earlier. She's gone for at least a week now and if I hear any whining about it on IRC I'll extend that.