Braddock wrote:
FAO: Imortal
I must commend you on your consistency, many others on these boards chop and change their opinions to suit the argument. And while I fully believe that the press do a very important and necessary job in covering conflict in war time it is irresponsible not to make yourself clearly identifiable as member of the press.
However, as Kmarion pointed out, it is not okay to shoot civilians no matter what kind of conflict might be going on. Fair enough these guys were in the wrong place at the wrong time and with the wrong attire but they weren't launching any kind of attack on these soldiers (at least not as far as we could see on the video) and so one must ask the question why the hell did the soldiers open fire on them? Is it common practice in the military to open fire on random vehicles before identifying who is in them? Also, the shooting continued even when the vehicle was clearly making a retreat.
Boy, I have to try to walk an ethical tightrope here. First, I do not condone what the soldiers did. I was commenting mainly on the journalist's tendancy to place themsleves in dangerous positions with a feeling of their own invulnerability. Second, I do not know how these nations train their soldiers to react to threats like that, so I cannot comment if they were out of line with their training or not. Third, I have said it before, from a distance a camera can resemble a weapon; most particually a rocket launcher. That video started with the camera rolling, and them lowering the camera; we do not know what happened before. From a distance, through the windshield on a sunny day, those soldiers might think that there was a team with an RPG or missile launcher in the car preparing to hit their position. That being said, they may have continued to fire to prevent the escape of what they could think was an enemy trying to fall back from a busted attack. I may not agree with what they did, but I can understand it.
Granted, that is speculation. At least the journalists made it through. I can only imagine that there may have been a temptation by the unit, their command staff, or the politicians iinvolved to make the jounalists and the tape 'dissapear.' From the information I got, the camera crew was held on a base for 3 days. No one was killed, although one had an eye injured.