BF2S Forums Unbelievable Massacre

Seriously? Did you not even watch the video, the chopper was clearing the way for a patrol, ensure there weren't any insurgents prepared to ambush. The chopper does not leave enemy combatants in an ambush position.

eleven bravo wrote:

Ottomania wrote:

nukchebi0 wrote:

This thread title led me to believe you'd finally seen the light in regards to Turkish-Armenian relations in the early part of the 20th century.

If any genocide have ever happened, fuck the responsibles.

funniest post of the year.  you truly are slow.

Since I'm sick of all you guise bitching, I looked at 3:45 and found this



Don't look like a camera to me

ruisleipa wrote:

DBBrinson1 wrote:

In their bravado/stupidity they fire on that tiny helicopter way far away (crap, what's it going to do -right?).

No-one fired at anyone ya idiot.

Cybargs wrote:

Hajji don't trust GI too much.

lol...i wonder why? cos GI is racist psyco who shoots civilians and kids from a helicopter? hmmm...think I can see the correlation thar.

JohnG@lt wrote:

Does that make us all psychopaths too?

makes you all sick people who've lost part of your humanity, yeah.

Professional soldiers don't need to find joy in killing. Immature men/boys who ahve been manipulated by the army...do.

S3v3N wrote:

Also this is a prime example of the media needs to stay the fuck out of a war zone.

No, the media needs to stay there, just so that there's a chance in the middle of the propaganda shit some people are held responsible for war crimes etc.

JohnG@lt wrote:

or is it the insurgents fault for not obeying the rules of war

LOL...pot, meet kettle.

JohnG@lt wrote:

What would you rather they do, cry? At least they're displaying some emotion and not sitting there stone-facedly.

Fuckin right they should cry. I'd rather they sit there stone-faced and NOT TAKE FUN OUT OF BLOWING UP PEOPLE.

I mean, how fucked up do you have to be to be proud that someone from your armed forces has blown up some kids?

eleven bravo wrote:

what has been done here clearly falls under jus in bello

BULLSHIT.

BN wrote:

Thank you Wikileaks for this.

This is a disgrace. How can you be so sure there is an RPG & AK's and be so far from the truth? Surely being "the good guys" you need to be 100% sure that they were armed.

Why would you engage a unarmed van driver helping a wounded person? Is that in the ROE?

The cover-up in the aftermath is even more of a disgrace.

We are supposed to be liberating this country and all we are doing, and have been doing, is creating resentment and more insurgents.

Nuff said?

Ive articulated a clear argument and all you could say is "bullshit".  i love it.

Last edited by eleven bravo (2010-04-06 09:11:48)

wait wat. 2 11 bravos, which one of u is marine

i am a angry ham sandwich

eleven bravo wrote:

i am

LIAAAAAAAR

I thought 11 Bravo was US Marine not you, oh well...

Dilbert_X wrote:

It wasn't a 'warzone', it was a civilian city, the US military were involved in policing operations in a civilian city under the jurisdiction of the Iraqi govt.

There's your problem I think.

Two of the guys were holding cameras, misidentified as RPGs. Its quite common for civilians in cities to have cameras.
I wasn't aware being a moron was a capital offence either.

The entire country is full of tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel and all the hardware associated with that, fighting thousands of insurgents across the nation using guerrilla tactics. When you're trying to stop people from blowing themselves up in crowded markets or detonating roadside bombs daily that is a little more than a policing effort. That is a war zone. Being a war zone and a civilian city are not mutually exclusive.

I hardly think it is common for civilians in Iraq to have cameras. It's not a matter of looking at the pictures after the fact and saying does this look like an RPG or a camera, it's looking at it and asking what it is period. Given the time and place, it has an astronomically higher chance of being an RPG compared to anything else.

Being a moron is most certainly a capital offense, and it's hardly limited to being a moron in a war zone. I'm sure you've heard of the Darwin Awards. Being a moron when everybody has guns just gets you killed a lot faster than being a moron in suburbia.

Well, I see this has turned into another 'The invasion was unjustified' thread, as if that has any bearing whatsoever on the OP. Good to know. Glad I wasted my time.... again.

mikkel wrote:

You can't just come and say that credible and overwhelming reason (as opposed to assumptive and underwhelming reason) doesn't exist in urban warfare without any rationale, and then use that conclusion to tell me what my opinions are. Urban warfare is full of credible and overwhelming reason. That's what you have when you get shot at, or when you're sure beyond reasonable doubt that you're shooting at the right guys.

Without any rationale? Seriously? The entire thread is rationale. The enemy doesn't wear a uniform, they don't stand out in the open, they carry firearms in public places and expect not to be shot at unless they shoot first. The side that uses "overwhelming reason" is the side that loses, and it's a bloody loss.

You say sure beyond a reasonable doubt, but it doesn't count when people openly carry weapons. The only other thing they could do would be roll out a sign that says "shoot us, we're enemy combatants".

mikkel wrote:

I'm sorry, but again I have to remind you that I have not at any point claimed to disagree with the idea of 'command decisions.' There is no logical fallacy here. I'm going to extend the argument to the preposterous so that the logic should be apparent and obvious. What I'm telling you is that I disagree with the kind of warfare that justifies and finds acceptable the kind of 'command decisions' involved in shooting at targets that are very possibly civilians in the middle of the city before having a credible and overwhelming reason to believe that they aren't civilians. That has nothing to do with my opinion on 'command decisions.' It has to do with my opinion on the kind of warfare being led. Had the U.S. come into Iraq and indiscriminately used chemical weapons in urban civilian areas, I would also disagree with that kind of warfare for justifying and finding acceptable that kind of force. That would also not have anything to do with my opinion on 'command decisions.'

Defining "very possible civilians" is a command decision. Watching someone wire 10 artillery shells together and claiming they are "very possibly civilians" is preposterous.

Either you agree with command decisions and by extension reasonable assumptions or you disagree with the idea of engaging the enemy entirely.

mikkel wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

mikkel wrote:

Well, these people came across the place in a truck after the shots had been fired. That doesn't to me constitute hanging around people with weapons. It doesn't suggest to me that they knew that the people had weapons. It just suggests to me that they stopped and tried to help an injured man. It's easy to postulate and assume the worst, but what I'm saying is that when it's equally easy, or easier to postulate and assume the good, one should exercise constraint. The chance of three dead insurgents isn't worth a very likely chance of three dead civilians to me. Certainly not in the situation displayed.

They had AKs that could be seen from a chopper. How could you possibly "not know" the people had weapons? If you assume the best, you could assume every single person in the country has a weapon to do nothing more than defend their home and family. You could assume the best and say that every person with a cell phone by the side of the road is calling their grandmother. You could assume every single frickin person in the country could be considered a civilian, there is absolutely no way to tell. Even if they shoot at you, they could be doing it at gun point or other similar ridiculous and useless theories.

As far as I can tell, none of the men in the truck had guns, the pilots never report anyone in the truck as being armed, and no gun is ever seen in or around the truck. The gunner postulated that it looked like the people in the truck were "picking up bodies and weapons" before the truck had come to a stop, and before anyone had gotten out. As I have said before, I can understand that you can never be 100% certain in these kinds of situations, but you can absolutely be a lot more certain than this.

Maybe someone that actually knows can clarify, but it seems to me that gathering the wounded is what caused them to engage the van. They weren't identified as medics, if the person they were gathering was a target and they're helping that target, then how is that not a very reasonable situation?

mikkel wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Assuming the reasonable is the only thing that matters. It's reasonable to assume that people dressed like the people that shoot at you, holding the things they use to shoot at you with, are going to shoot at you. Assuming that people around armed people helping previously armed people are "very likely" three civilians is highly unreasonable.

Well, the people in the truck were not holding any guns in the video as far as I can tell. The person who they were helping didn't have a gun on him, and the bodies of the people that were armed according to the gunner in the helicopter looked to be 30-40 feet away, as the person they stopped to help had run, and then crawled away from the fire. It's very reasonable to recognise the very real possibility that these weren't combatants. You can't just use the cumulative succession of events to assign a certain intent to people who arrived well after the events had taken place, and argue that it is based in credible and observed behaviour. The missing link of their presence demotes that to the rank of speculation.

People helping combatants are combatants.

What is that?

What if it was an ambulance?

youre not supposed to.  as well as NGO's.  but, if avoiding those targets is detrimental to the success of a combat operation, they are fair game to an extent.  youre not going seek these people as targets but if the oppurtunity arises where neutralizing a threat also means harm to those other elements, the safety of those elements will come second to the objectives of the mission.  this is especially true when combat involves non state actors who dont fall under any kind of international convention.