Im just suprised that some people are suprised by this sort of thing, what do you think happens when you get a group of young men with no higher education(not talking about officers here) and spend all day making them into killing machines?

@BBanner- you have obviously ignored every single one of my posts. Until you go and look atthe video at the 3:40->4:00 mark of the video, I'm done arguing with you. Keep linking up everything the media tells you, nomnomnom.

@Thucydides- I don't know. None of us have been in that situation (I'm assuming), so it is tough to judge. Maybe they joke so that they don't have to focus on the fact that they just killed 10 people. I know that I would have trouble killing someone, so maybe laughing it off makes them sleep easier or something.

@Hereward77 Why not look up the Afghanistan war between the Soviets and natives, the natives used RPGs to destroy Hind gunships, which are even more heavily armored than Apaches. If people are running around with RPGs in a war zone than the assumption will be that they plan on shooting them at something, and the pilots decided it wasn't going to be them. And any and all reporters who go into a war zone know that they are putting themselves in danger, their lives aren't the military's responsibility. On the van it wasn't marked as a medical aid vehicle, therefore it was a potential threat, and soldiers aren't going to waste precious seconds which could get them killed to determine if an unmarked vehicle is really hostile or not.

Hunter49r --

Yeah, maybe it helps until they think about the fact that they stood by while some jackass on the radio laughed about rolling over a body.

Personally that would be enough for me to mull over for years:

"Why didn't I say anything?" etc

Has anyone who has already commented on this thread served in combat? If so, what branch, where, and in what capacity? How does that experience give you the ability to talk about how people do behave and how they ought to behave?

@kreilly89 yeah that unmarked van was really out of bounds man. We know what happens to injured people they take in. They turn them into goddamn cyborg killing machines! There was a good chance the van itself could be a decepticon or something. Or maybe the driver had a missile battery up his ass. You never know. It's a warzone after all. Also when you invade a country the invaded people should have the decency to send their kids to summer vacation abroad so they won't get hurt (duh). Not to mention procuring some red paint to put a red cross on their vans even if they are living a Muslim country. Surely it's not blatant iignorance to assume every medical facility in any warzone is a red cross franchise, and every good Samaritan on their payroll, and should therefore proudly wear the cross.

taylank +1000

Has anyone seen the movie 'Hurt Locker'? Think of the beginning when the soldier has to decide to shot the guy with the cell-phone or not. I think it's pretty similar. The van may or may not have been a threat, but the fact that it arrived a couple minutes after the fire-fight makes it suspicious and a thus a threat. The gunner had no intention of killing the wounded man unless he picked up a weapon, so you can't say that they are just shooting people for no reason.

@Taylank- lolz, u is so funny dude. can i B u'r e-buddy?
Bringing children into a zone that has just been gunned down minutes before = retarded.
But I agree that the soldiers should have been able to see those kids in the van with their super infrared goggles. I thought that all apache helicopters came standard with X-ray vision?

@hunter49r

Ok let's speculate on that a bit more. Maybe they thought "Yeah this place was gunned down, but so was the place a block back, and a block left, and a block right, because our whole neighborhood is a warzone now. So this place might be as safe as any other place in hell. Besides we are civilians carrying no guns, and we are obviously trying to save someone's life here, so we should be safe as long as the guy in that chopper is not a frigging psychopath. In any case I should give it shot, and if I die I'll die as a human being with decency and courage in helping another human being."

With kids in the car? no. Your first priority as a parent is the safety of your kids.

You're just not hearing the point.

@ kreilly - you're right, the mujahideen used RPGs against Hind gunships which are more heavily armoured than the Apache. That wasn't my point though, my point was that in that video the RPG is no threat to the Apache due to its unguided, short-range capabilities. I have no doubt that if an RPG struck an Apache it would seriously damage or destroy it, but it would never hit at that range.

As far as I was aware Hind gunships tended to hover low over mountainous terrain rather than circle from a significant distance. Further, the Hind is capable of transporting infantry and was frequently used as such, placing it in situations where it would have to hover or place itself on the ground in hostile situations. In short...the situation you outlined doesn't really parallel this one at all.

A man on the ground with a phone near a bomb nearby your own poorly armoured self is a little different from an attack helicopter circling comfortably and viewing the enemy through long range optics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/world/08psych.html

Here's a really good (atleast I thought it was) basically about the psychology behind the video. Read through all of it, don't skim. It's worth tit,

Interesting article. I remember also reading an article written by a veteran in which he talked about how when he returned home, he could only ever talk about how horrible the war was, but deep down he couldn't help but remember how much fun it had all been and he felt a sense of shame for having this feeling, and he could never tell civilians about it because he feared their reaction.

Yeah, war definitely causes reactions that are odd. Humans were definitely not designed to kill each other, so it's understandable that it has such negative psychological affects.

The real issue here is that the US forces are routinely gunning down non-combatants,

http://www.allgov.com/Top_Stories/ViewNews/NATO_Admits_US_Forces_Killed_Innocent_Pregnant_Women_in_Afghanistan_100406

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stq1Gd3OnGk

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/04/09


Sorry, there there is NO excuse for that.

We called it a war crime when the Nazis did it.

We called it a war crime when the Japanese did it.

It is a war crime when the US does it!

Period. End of Story.

SteevoKun:

You do not have to be a thief to say stealing is wrong.

"Yeah, war definitely causes reactions that are odd. Humans were definitely not designed to kill each other, so it's understandable that it has such negative psychological affects."

See, but is it really true that humans were not designed to kill each other? In modern hunter-gatherer peoples, and from archaelogical evidence from past hunter-gatherer tribes, it's quite clear that the number one cause of death of males is other males. Homicide was extraordinarily common place as was intertribal warfare. We spent most of our evolutionary existence in a hunter gatherer state, so it would make some sense if we're equipped on some level to end another person's life.

It's probably a great triumph of civilization that the government's monopoly on violence and its enforcement of the law, the existence of various cathartic outlets such as films and video games, and our interdependence on each other due to a lack of self sufficiency has reduced violence to unprecedented levels.

That video certainly is shocking. I don't know if I fully understand what was going on though. I just watched another video with some of the same footage, and some addition footage that puts a different spin on the event. According this video there had been some fighting in that area about an hour before - so it was a warzone at the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYfTRAZqek

When I say it warzone at the time, I mean apparently it was a warzone at the time. I don't actually know what was going on. But if there had been fighting in that area, and it was some kind of bad-zone, and the people who were shot really did have an RPG - then they were combatants (apart from the journalists) and they were killed in battle.
That said though why were there so many people there who were unarmed? If they were combatants why weren't they all armed?
So I would like to know what was really going on. What were all the people who were shot doing? What were there intentions.? I don't think they were just hanging out in their local neighborhood.

Chrisp, murder and warfare among hunter-gatherers is a completely different thing from modern nation-states hiring people to do their killing. The former kill to survive; the latter kill because they've been talked into it somehow or another - modern wars never benefit the people who actually do the fighting (unless they are psychopaths who enjoy killing; sadly I imagine there are a fair share of those in any modern volunteer army).

I'm genuinely curious about your claim that archaeological evidence suggests that pre-historic man's primary cause of death was man. Do you have a cite for it?

As for the case at hand, after viewing the actual video, my thought is that the Apache pilot/gunner aren't exactly Genghis Khan. OTOH, they certainly seemed to place little value on the life of non-American soldiers and seemed to be erring on the side that butchering a dozen innocent people is better than taking the smallest chance of getting shot at yourself. Notice that they never take fire themselves (even though they hovered over the scene for many minutes before opening fire), and I have a really hard time believing that armed insurgents would be walking around in the open like that with an attack helicopter circling right over their heads. I never saw anything that looked obviously like a weapon myself in the video (granted it was a little fuzzy), and when the gunner apparently got all excited about seeing an RPG for a split second, that was almost certainly a telephoto camera lens. And once the ground troops roll in they don't ever (in the video at least) confirm that the shootees were armed.

For all of you who think the children were fair game because they were 'in a war zone': I hope terrorists kill your children. Iraqis didn't get to pick where the 'war zone' was. Firefights (or massacres) can happen at any time and any place in many parts of Iraq, and civilians generally don't know where the action is going to be until it actually happens. The parents or whoever was driving those children around was doing a purely good deed in trying to bring wounded people to medical care (several minutes after the shooting stopped, I would add). Anyone who thinks they deserved to die is sick.

Tolstoy, I'll dig it up when I have more time, but I have to get my drink on. In short, I think it had something to do with a great deal of skeletons found had marks on their bones characteristic of spears, arrows and/or trauma from blunt objects. Actually, I think I remember that most homicides amongst hunter gatherers were motivated by vendetta. It's a cycle really, you killed my brother, now I'm killing you, now your son is killing me, now my nephew is killing your son etc. It's pretty interesting overall. I'll be sure to get back to you.

@Tolstoy
I'd just like to make it clear that I do not think, categorically, that these people deserved to die. But its not absolutely clear what was doing on. It is a fact that some journalist were killed and that is a tragedy. But IF some of the people were insurgents and were carrying a an RPG for the purposes of attacking the Americans, then what we were seeing is what happens in a war. With regards to the black minivan just being luckless passer by trying to help, this is not necessarily true - they could have been insurgents too. We weren't there and that video might be a short piece that could misinterpreted out of context.
Now as to whether the US should even be in Iraq at all, and whether the war is a just war, that is in another question altogether. Personally I don't American should have ever invade Iraq, and I don't think they should be there now. This war will go down as a shameful episode in American history.

There is another video which shows event earlier on, and afterward too, which shows the ground troops arriving. I posted the link earlier in the thread.

@spyman
I agree with most of your argument, except for the part about the van
Even if they were insurgents they should at least be allowed to carry back an injured man
Unless the people in the van took up arms I don't see the real point in firing on them.
All they're trying to do, whether insurgent or not, is to save a life. For what purpose we do not know but the fact is that they tried to save him, and they did not try to attack the helicopter.

Tolstoy, as promised...

Here's a great and relevant talk given by Steven Pinker at TED. It's well worth the 20 minutes to listen to:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html

From a New Scientist article citing info from a paper who's full text is not available for free (I provide the link to the abstract anyway):
"In ancient graves excavated previously, Bowles found that up to 46 per cent of the skeletons from 15 different locations around the world showed signs of a violent death."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17255-ancient-warfare-fighting-for-the-greater-good.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/324/5932/1293

Regarding modern day hunter gatherer mortality, I've got this blog quoting an article which also unfortunately does not make its full text available for free. Again, the abstract is also provided.

"Violence is the major cause of death among the precontact Ache (55% of all deaths) and very important among the Hiwi (30% of all deaths), but notably less important in the two African societies and the Agta (3–7% of all deaths). Indeed, the crude homicide/warfare death rates per year lived are more than ten times higher among the Hiwi and Ache than among the Hadza or !Kung (1/100 and 1/200 per year for precontact Hiwi and Ache, respectively, vs. 1/2500 and 1/3000 for the Hadza and !Kung, respectively). Blurton Jones et al. (2002) suggested that this may be due to the more pervasive effects of colonial governments in Africa and the reduction of intertribal warfare."

"If high mortality, warfare, homicide, and accidental trauma are typical of our Paleolithic ancestors, the Hiwi mortality patterns may be more representative of the past than those derived from other modern hunter-gatherers. If so, several observations about the Hiwi are important. First, conspecific violence was a prominent part of the demographic profile, accounting for many deaths in all age and sex categories. Most of the adult killings were due to either competition over women, reprisals by jealous husbands (on both their wives and their wives' lovers), or reprisals for past killings. The criollo-caused killings were motivated by territorial conquest. Moreover, infanticide (especially on females) constituted the highest mortality rate component of all Hiwi conspecific violence. Second, no predation deaths were reported despite attacks by anacondas, Orinoco caimans, and piranhas, and the presence of jaguars in the area. Accidents associated with the active-forager lifestyle were common, but disease was a more important killer, accounting for nearly half of all deaths. This suggests an adaptive landscape in which success in social relations, competitive violence, and disease resistance are paramount. This may partially explain why many of the genes that appear to have been under strong selection in the past 50,000 years affect either disease resistance or cognitive function (Wang et al., 2006), presumably related to success in an atmosphere of frequent violent social competition (Hill et al. 2007:451)."

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/life_history/aging_evolution/hill_2007_hiwi_mortality.html

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJS-4MHNRJ5-2&_user=10&_coverDate=04%2F30%2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1289621447&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userID=10&md5=1a945d3884b45be8625c7830004a7113