[Liberator]

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.

[iamzack]

You wouldn't know, lol.

Anyway, if they were sooo just in their decisions, why was there a cover-up?

[Scotty]

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?

[General Battuta]

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.

[TESLA]

Until a person is in that situation, im not sure about how any of us would react

[General Battuta]

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.

[Flaser]

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.

[karajorma]

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.

[General Battuta]

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.

[karajorma]

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.

[TESLA]

No matter what happened, or how it happened, you have to feel sorry for the families who lost their loved ones.


War breeds war.

[Liberator]

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.

[Turambar]

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.

[SpardaSon21]

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

[Scotty]

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.

[iamzack]

Maybe we'll grow out of it someday.

[Turambar]

Maybe we'll grow out of it someday.

This. 

[Liberator]

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.

[Flipside]

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.

[Turambar]

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.