go to the site and check out the video of the first article. As if lying about WMD's wasn't enough.

Wow wat the hell

Sort of makes you want to bring back flogging as a military punishment, doesn't it? Wellington used to hang soldiers who murdered civilians... As a man who's taken the Queen's shilling (albeit only briefly and at the TA level) I am acutely aware that some cock-ups at times of high stress in the fog of war are forgivable. This ain't one of them.

The real problem is that everything will probably be swept under the carpet again, no one will be punished for this.

That'd have to be one hell of a carpet...

countdown to someone defending the soldiers begins now....

of course BBanner, someone has to do it and since no one else has...

First, war is hell. Civilian deaths are gonna happen. I'm not saying that it is acceptable to just let it happen, but it is going to regardless. War reporters/photographers are especially in danger, and they understand this risk when they go out to do their job. I'm sure they get paid highly in that line of work, as most dangerous jobs do. Reporters getting killed is nothing new, so they knew.

The video points out the cameraman and news people, but they fail to point out the actual weapons. [Watch this quick video to see them more clearly if you missed them - http://img708.imageshack.us/i/1270493174790.gif/] and if you watch the 4:08 time on the original video, then you see one of them getting ready to load and shoot an RPG.

If I'm in a helicopter, and they are aiming an RPG at me, then they are gonna die. There is no question in my mind that firing on the group of ~10 was the correct thing to do in that situation. These soldiers have to look out for themselves, and were given a very short time to decide what to do.
Shooting the van is less black-and-white for me. But again, if you think that they pose a threat, then you've gotta take them out. They didn't fire on the one wounded guy crawling away, until there was a threat. If a van comes into a war-zone, then it's safe to assume that it is not civilian? I don't know.

A couple questions come to mind (since I'm looking like the only one defending the soldiers :-) ). First, why were these two photographers so close to the group? They were just standing around with them. If I'm there, I get as far away as possible. America is known for its war technology, so at any moment there is the possibility that they are gonna engage, even if you don't see them.
Secondly, why bring kids into that situation? There is no justification for this at all. Even if the van is driven by civilians, what the hell were they thinking? You see 10 gun-downed people in the streets, you've got 2 kids in the car. What is your initial response? especially in a country that is at war.

You can't really make out what they have in the video, but to me it doesn't seem like an RPG.I would say at least one of them had a gun but it's not uncommon for news people to have armed escorts when out in the field.
As for the kids, those people could have been just been driving by and felt compelled to try save someones life, possibly knowing from other attacks that the US military don't give the best medical attention.
Stuff like that is what makes ordinary people radical and only helps to fuel support for the terrorist minority.

I'm pretty sure that the range an AH-64 would be engaging them would be significantly out of an RPGs effective range, especially a bog-standard RPG-7 which is what the insurgents tend to be armed with. On top of that if the pilots identify what to me clearly seemed to be a camera as a weapon then I don't really trust their judgement of who seems to be armed.

Photographers and reporters go near to insurgents all the time and yes, it is risky. It doesn't mean they're in cahoots or that they deserve to die. Read Iraq Ablaze: Inside the Insurgency by Zaki Chehab if you want an example of that.

'If you think they pose a threat then you've gotta take them out' is actually technically not true according to the American rules of engagement as far as I understand them. I may be mistaken but the enemy has to either be attacking you or showing blatantly obvious hostile intent, not something evident among the men in this video (excepting the possible RPG man, but as I said he was almost certainly no threat to an Apache given the fact that the RPG is unguided and massively inaccurate even at short range).

Then there's the fact that the pilots are not acting in a professional manner - you can tell that quite easily from their cockpit chatter. Their Voice Procedure is awful and they clearly are looking to shoot for the thrill of it, due to the fact they repeatedly hope out loud the wounded man will grab a weapon (which wouldn't make him any more of a threat due to his injuries and the fact that they will be hovering FAR outside the range of any small arm).

All that said I do agree that war is hell and that civilians will get caught in the crossfire. Especially when one side chooses not to clearly indicate who is a combatant and who isn't. You can excuse the environment, but not, in this case, the conduct of the pilots.

I'm probably going to be crucified for saying what I'm about to say, but I guess I'll do it anyway. =P

First of all, like hunter said, war reporters realize the danger in their line of work.

Second, did the people really have weapons on themselves? I personally was not able to tell because the video quality wasn't especially good and they didn't say anything conclusive about it at the beginning or the end. Either way though, if the soldiers thought they saw the people carrying weapons and opened fire then it becomes not a heinous war crime, but simply a horrific and tragic accident. That is what I personally think we have here, a tragic accident. Also, I hadn't even been able to see the children in the van when I watched it the first time through, so how could I expect the soldiers to when they were in a much more tense situation?

In all I don't think that this event is really as horrible as people are making it out to be. It was an absolutely tragic accident, but no more.

I'm almost positive that there was at least one RPG. Watch the original video from the 3:40 mark to about 4:00. The guy that turns around has it, next to the guy in the striped shirt with the AK. It goes from the ground to his chest, and the way he was holding it near the front end, which is where the trigger would be. The guy in stripes looks almost like he was trying to hide his gun behind his back, as if they noticed the helicopter.

Based on the video at the OP's link I can't tell what anyone is holding - for all I can tell everyone in that video could be holding cameras, weapons, or picnic baskets. I also only see little light-colored blobs where the children in the van were pointed out toward the end of the video.

I don't know if any better footage or other evidence exists, but that wikileaks video alone doesn't seem to be enough to prove or disprove anything. Keep in mind that means if there's no additional proof there's no case against the soldiers participating in the attack.

Also, the soldiers in the helicopter and the people they're talking to don't show any sign of thinking these people are innocent civilians - if they were indeed all innocent civilians, then it seems a mistake was made as opposed to a purposeful act of murdering innocents. While the effect on the victims and their families obviously doesn't differ on that basis, any culpability (if any proof exists...see above) on the part of the soldiers has to be based on their intentions and knowledge - if they believed they were firing on militants there was a failure someplace that is completely different from murder.

Oh, and OP, please don't presume everyone in the American military is exactly like Bush. There are plenty of people who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan both that have problems with some or all of how Bush and now Obama have done things there - whether the individual servicemen/women be conservative or liberal.

It is interesting, though, that you see things like this (some of them actually have substantive proof) against American soldiers, et al, but I've never seen anyone on a forum like this post anything showing atrocities committed by the other side (remember the Americans who had their heads sawed off by their Iraqi captors while they were still alive?)

Even if we assume they were all armed to the teeth, that still doesn't mean they can fire with impunity. There is no real threat to an Apache at that range, with AK47s and RPGs. That's assuming of course that the armed men were even hostile, which isn't necessarily the case. Many ordinary Iraqi citizens and pro-Coalition militias also sport such weapons.

I'm all in favour of eliminating hostiles with extreme prejudice, but what particularly irritated me about this is the attitude of the pilots. At no point is there a hint of uncertainty beyond asking for permission to fire, which they seemed to relish a little too much for someone in command of an Apache.

That guy with the "RPG" looks just like me when i change settings on my camera with a large tele...

you may want to see the timeline:

http://www.collateralmurder.com/en/timeline.html

The crime is that they tried to cover it up and label any civilians who were killed as insurgents. The act could be debatable but the fact that they tried to hide the additional casualties caused by the helicopter gunner pretty much speaks for itself.

@Reaver Trying to cover it up was the only sensible thing they did. That sort of thing in the public domain will lead to more recruits for the enemy (in all its various forms) and the deaths of coalition soldiers. Firing on people who looked about as military as your average bank clerk (generally speaking the enemy aren't so thoughtful as to make sure they keep standing in the open when our gunships are circling them) was the crime. Firing on the people in the van who were clearly trying to save wounded men was unforgivable

@Octavious
The magnitude of emotions that come out of people differ if they found that the government tried to hide it rather than if they presented the raw facts. Don't get me wrong, I know that every other country would do the same and there is not much else that they could do but even when the evidence is released they could present a public apology/acknowledgment to the families to the innocent civilians who were killed.

That was shockingly cold blooded. But then I guess conscientious, wracked-by-guilt soldiers are hardly effective soldiers. Still, as a civilian, that footage was cold.

Was it cold? I read them as enjoying it. A soldier shouldn't be of the overly sensitive, wracked-by-guilt sort I agree, but nor should they enjoy killing really. Not in a modern, professional force in any case.

Haha you dumb morons. I knew it.

You're right. I normally think of cold blooded as without aggression, aggravation, or provocation because most non cold blooded murders are done in anger but I guess it really refers to a lack of human emotion. In a sense, their casual enjoyment is probably more disturbing than actual cold bloodedness.

Anyone see the movie "Red Dawn"? I can only wonder what all the soldier-defenders here and elsewhere would be saying if the helicopters were flying over Arizona and manned by Soviet or Cuban soldiers and were firing on American 'terrorists'.

"Sorry about your kids, Bob Smith of Phoenix, but war is hell"?

@zarat- yes, the man by the side of the building looks like he might have had a camera rather then a weapon, but what about the guy at the 3:40 mark? I have never seen a camera that long, or held like that.

Even if armed escorts are allowed (or whatever) a RPG is NOT a defensive weapon. There is one main goal of a RPG and that is to take down Helicopters, and I doubt that any reporters are gonna be attacked by Terrorist helis.

@Tolstoy- A responsible parent/guardian doesn't drive his children into that situation.

Hey - when I go to the 'wikileaks' link, I cannot play the video. There is just a rectangle where the video should be, with a tiny icon in the top-right corner depicting a sheet of paper with some shapes drawn on it. Help? How can I see the video?

RPGs are designed to destroy armoured vehicles at short range. Not helicopters. They CAN be used as such, but they were designed for ground vehicles. That's why they're rocket-propelled unguided shaped charges rather than guided high explosive/penetrator.

@Jamiet- does this work for you? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYTxuW2vmzk

http://asset.soup.io/asset/0771/3018_93b4_480.jpeg