If anyone interested Wikileaks published the Rules of Engagement here.

War Sucks and innocent people get killed.

I am more interested in Dick Cheney being tried than worrying about this

[QUOTE=ChrisV;18046953]lol pajamas mediaQUOTE]

Amazing, as soon as I saw the pajamasmedia link in my head I thought exactly "lol pajamas media". And then I saw your post and my head asploded.

Testimony from Iraq vets on rules of engagement and civilian casualties:

http://www.truthout.org/iraq-war-vet...e-care-us58378

That is downright horrible, but it highlights the point I made earlier about how no one on this forum is even remotely qualified to make any comments on ROEs. They change. Soldiers are ordered to do things. The reality of it is, you either listen to your Colonel or you go to the Brig. 99.9% of soldiers are going to listen to their Colonel, even if ROEs are ****ed.

I'm certainly not implying that the higher-ups should be immune from punishment, the very basic point I'm making is that ROEs are what your CO/XOs are telling you they are, not what's scribbled on some official paper.

How do these people live with themselves? Are they just too stupid to realize that shooting people for being out past "curfew" is insane and evil? Jesus.

"They were just following orders" doesn't justify it at all. Each soldier out there chose to be there and is responsible for their own actions. The Nazis who ran the deathcamps of the Holocaust were also just following orders.

All of this outrage is completely besides the point.

It should be obvious that this is what goes on in a war, why would you need this video to see that? Do people really think that killing people is a clean business, with rights and wrongs?

War should be a last resort, for when your country and the civilians in it are threatened in such a way that justifies all the horrors that go with it.

It's a mystery to me, how in a civilized world, the United States can get away with starting a war based on lies.

And yes, all your excuses are invalid: the WMD, the evil dictator, the terrorists...

It was always obvious that Iraq was never a danger to the US, that the evil dictator couldn't possibly ever inflict the kind of pain on its citizens that this war has, and that there would never be more terrorists that this war has generated.

And even if those were valid reasons: aren't there more dangerous countries who you are certain of they have WMD? Aren't there enough African governments that have dictators who are killing millions, not thousands? Shouldn't you be discouraging terrorism, instead of encouraging it?

To finish off where I started, what were you expecting? This is ten people. What about the thousands of other innocent victims who were always certain to suffer?

You're assuming most people are aware that this is status quo stuff for war. That is obviously not the case. If you want to reignite the debate over the validity of the war, appealing to emotion isn't a bad way to get the ball rolling.

Also seeing the raw video and hearing some washed out account of the events on CNN are two very different things.

Excellent. At first, I trusted wikileaks (not sure why), and was fairly outraged by the video, although this was somewhat abated by my noticing there was at least 2 AKs in the group (that wiki did not mention but I saw). Since, I have watched most of the uncut version, and am more outraged at wikileak's ****ty reporting. These sorts of videos are important, I think, because:
is important. People need to know/see this stuff, and although I'm hardly amazed by what happened given how I've been reading about similar things happening for a long time, it's still different actually seeing it, even in shtity res and B&W.

That said, I had no clue this was shrunken in size until now, which makes a huge difference when judging the pilots' actions. A lot of the context is missing from leak's reporting, and it's inexcusable given the role they could/should be playing in the public discourse. We need good independent reporters with credibility and integrity, not some jackasses trying to get donations in a fairly blatant fundraising/awareness campaign by releasing something they've selectively edited to create the most buzz.

OK I incorrectly assumed that he was an officer because you had to be when I was in (during peacetime). I think he should be made an example of. These are not scandals to me and I think people who feel the need to defend the military are rationale and all that ****. The reality is though you have to document and punish instances like this. It's the only ****in way to reduce it and you have to reduce it.

Why would we need to watch something as ugly as this if everything was satisfactory? I dont mean to say that **** like this will never happen because thats impossible.

There's no need for even airing this **** if it was handled. I'm not saying give the ****in guy 10 years. I think experiencing it was beyond punishment for him but you have to do something. no ****in way around that unfortunately

So cliffs: wikileaks has no credibililty

yea obviously wiki has no credibility now in fact i heard they kill kittens when they're not smearing the troops good name as much as possible. they are the real terrorists! AFter them~!!!!

I'm sure they have plenty of credibility as an organization who gets classified information out, they probably shouldn't comment on the information they get from classified sources though. Just post the info and let people who know what they are talking about comment about the information for good or bad.

this incident is given time in David Finkel's book "The Good Soldiers". sadly, it doesn't say much more than the video in terms of facts, much less actually than the video tells.

Editing the video and giving commentary clearly to deceive the viewer certainly hurt their credibility.

If your goal as an organisation is to leak official documents anonymously then you cannot take a view that it is your job to frame the documents in a way that is most shocking and prejudicial.

They have done some great work in the past but yes they have 100% harmed all future work and the entire reputation of the project. It is somewhat ironic they did what they often accuse others of which is spinning the release to make sure people focus on what you want to see. It is a magic trick. Lets highlight the cameras and hope people dont see the AK and the RPG being carried by the enemy that these guys were embedded with and whilst we are there lets lie about the children receiving treatment by the Americans. Lets point out the two reporters but not label the enemy combatants. The two reporters didnt deserve to die but they certainly have to expect a high likelyhood when they run around with armed guys in the region whilst not wearing the classic bulletproof vest with "media" on the front in an area where the US troops have been taking fire.

The real story if there is one is the firing on the van and the attitudes of the crew of those two Apaches. But because of the spin which has been unspun the focus is no longer on the important parts of the video and it is easily brushed away.

Also fwiw i dont think the comments by the servicemen on their own radios to each other were out of line at all. You dont drive kids into a hotzone to stop and pick up a guy who was CLEARLY just shot up by the Americans and celebrating killing the enemy is pretty standard. To survive war you must become war etc. Im not even sure the attack on the van was bad, they were greenlit to take them out and its not like it was an ambulance that turned up on the scene.

i'll tell you one think about finkel's book that does put things into perspective in regard to this incident - the lead up to the situation. (the exact situation shown in this clip is part of a chapter in his book - though the book was published awhile back, it's word for word on what happens on the video, for the most part - finkel musta had the tapes prior to their release, somehow)

these guys had lost men in recent days before and were pissed. really pissed. and scared. and wanting to just let it rip and not die like their pals had recently earlier.

They released the edited and unedited videos at the same time.

The 17 min version is the only one on the frontpage of the wikileaks.org site and to find the full version you need to either go into their youtube profile or go to the collateralmurder.com site where it is second on the page with no indication what they edited out only stating:

That is the only reference to the difference. When i first heard this story i only knew of the edited version (which is because i went to their own wikileaks.org site) and had i known of the two versions id probably have watched the shorter version only anyway.

They released both versions, sure, but only on their cm.com site and the shorter version has a clear bias to it and that is undeniable.

the point is why have an edited version of all if they want to maintain some kind of professionalism? Also having their editor go around and basically give his own commentary on the video to various news organizations is not terribly professional either. If they want to maintain credibility as a neutral arbiter of classified info they should just realease the information and let the interested parties comment on it.

This is what I meant. No credibility. They shouldn't even try to frame the incident. Just post it. But ok *if* you must frame it at least don't be so obvious in distorting the incident. Unfortunately it seems to be literally paying off for them.

Not that I agree with them releasing an edited version, at least not as WikiLeaks (I would have no problem with the same people behind WikiLeaks releasing an edited version that they didn't claim was the main source; maybe they should have put the unedited version front and center or put the edited version on a separate website, I don't know), but I believe the unedited edition was directly below the edited edition on the front page of collateralmurder.com at least for the first day or two after it was released.

I would rather people who know what they are talking about make an edited version or comment on a video instead of some idiot who has an axe to grind. America has talk radio for that kind of thing uninformed ideological bs.

Well, they apparently have a lot more footage they're preparing to release, including one of an Afghan airstrike (one of the many that had high civilian casualties, as claimed by the villagers). Who knows, maybe they'll tone it down; maybe they needed this one to get their name out since they're in quite a few people's sights. A man can hope.

As has been said they did this for money. Pure and simple. Hence they took all their info offline briefly first to generate "we cant live without them" buzz and when that failed they went for the Hail Mary of crossing (as i understand it) their own personal rules on independence in order to get their name out there. It probably worked in the short term but long term - we'll see i guess.

I assume they have more than covered their server costs so i dont think anyone internally will be calling this a huge fail but they clearly put a price on their credibility. With the increased hits and notoriety ill be shocked if this does hurt them long term but its easy to call it as you see it in the next few stories so they need to get their house in order before some rival moves in on them without their biased reporting baggage. If this is just step one in a multi step US forces smear campaign then it cant look anything like good for them in the public's eye.