On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
Your argument seems to be that VBIED = dangerous, van could be VBIED so shoot van because van is in hot zone. If this is SOP, then doesn't any van in any situation with armed hostiles become a target, no matter what its doing? I can understand shooting a vehicle not stopping at a roadblock, but is shooting an idling van really justified? In any case, if the van was to be detonated by proxy, how would shooting it help? It doesn't remove any explosives inside or attached to the van. I really doubt that that was the basis for the gunners decision to light it up.
On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
Your argument seems to be that VBIED = dangerous, van could be VBIED so shoot van because van is in hot zone. If this is SOP, then doesn't any van in any situation with armed hostiles become a target, no matter what its doing? I can understand shooting a vehicle not stopping at a roadblock, but is shooting an idling van really justified? In any case, if the van was to be detonated by proxy, how would shooting it help? It doesn't remove any explosives inside or attached to the van. I really doubt that that was the basis for the gunners decision to light it up.
This post and your previous post sum up my thoughts exactly.
By your logic Hawk and Jibba, any vehicle or anything close to any US troop should be fired upon, because there is a slight chance that there are armed explosives waiting to be detonated..... seriously, you can't have RoE like that, because what happened in this case will happen all the time. That's why it would make some more sense that you fire IF there is a sign of a threat. Hell, there was not even a small sign of any threat there.
And one thing you seem to fail to realize was that this was not a battle as you say it was. This was not some planned attack by any force at all. Also, there was no resistance when the US troops attacked. If someone first attacked the US troops and then a van all of a sudden rushed in it would be different. This was a slaughter by the US troops where they decided to attack a group of people simply walking around the middle of the streets. If it was some planned attack where it was likely this van was used to carry explosives, then I am sure the situation would be different, and the people they shot on would not just "wander around" the middle of the street like that for example. They were completely unaware of what was about to happen.
sympathetic sucker like yourself
Sorry for feeling sympathy when a completely innocent person gets killed, and then when someone else tries to help him also gets killed. Seriously though, this attitude is what we would be better off without in the case of those helicopter gunners...
How much does the excuse of war justify? Do Hawk, Jibba et al. also believe that it is justified for US soldiers to place 'drop weapons' on the corpses of civilians 'accidentally' killed as described in the following video?
On April 06 2010 18:54 [DUF]MethodMan wrote: I actually agree with Focault on here. Civilian Casualties were always on the same level, until WW1 and have risen ever since. Instead of risking the lives of people who are paid to fight and possibly die the civilian life has become more expendable. 1. If civilians die, you get political backup due to the outrage in your own population. (This thread is a good example lol) 2. Civilians aren't as expensive as soldiers, talking of western standards, they were trained for years and carry expensive equipment.
Of course it's a bit difficult when at war in poor countries which can't afford a real army, because combatants there are almost always "civilians". Iraq is such a country, so let's not forget western soldiers there face an insane amount of pressure, not knowing who's a threat or not.
Civilian casualties used to be much higher in the less civilised wars where cities would be levelled for resistance. But yes, there was a brief paradigm in which the country that would lose a war thought it was a good idea to put all their soldiers in uniform and line them up where the stronger invader could find them. That was never a historical standard because it's a really stupid idea. Civilians haven't become more expendable because of the invader, it's the intelligence of the defender that created this situation.
I can't find an online source but I have read about before WW1 civilian casualties being at about 10-20% which has risen to about 60% nowadays. I'm not so sure about the exact number, but I remember it being ridiculously high compared to the days before WW1. Like it was mentioned before, if you fight with a sword you just can't kill X enemies + X2 civilians. Controlling a drone from thousands of miles away also makes you less affected by the death you cause because it feels like a videogame and not like actually killing somebody (I'm not saying people don't know they're killing sb when controlling a drone, but it just doesn't feel like it).
When civilian casualties occured in pre-WW1 wars, it wasn't by accident.
On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
Your argument seems to be that VBIED = dangerous, van could be VBIED so shoot van because van is in hot zone. If this is SOP, then doesn't any van in any situation with armed hostiles become a target, no matter what its doing? I can understand shooting a vehicle not stopping at a roadblock, but is shooting an idling van really justified? In any case, if the van was to be detonated by proxy, how would shooting it help? It doesn't remove any explosives inside or attached to the van. I really doubt that that was the basis for the gunners decision to light it up.
This post and your previous post sum up my thoughts exactly.
By your logic Hawk and Jibba, any vehicle or anything close to any US troop should be fired upon, because there is a slight chance that there are armed explosives waiting to be detonated..... seriously, you can't have RoE like that, because what happened in this case will happen all the time. That's why it would make some more sense that you fire IF there is a sign of a threat. Hell, there was not even a small sign of any threat there.
And one thing you seem to fail to realize was that this was not a battle as you say it was. This was not some planned attack by any force at all. Also, there was no resistance when the US troops attacked. If someone first attacked the US troops and then a van all of a sudden rushed in it would be different. This was a slaughter by the US troops where they decided to attack a group of people simply walking around the middle of the streets. If it was some planned attack where it was likely this van was used to carry explosives, then I am sure the situation would be different, and the people they shot on would not just "wander around" the middle of the street like that for example. They were completely unaware of what was about to happen.
Sorry for feeling sympathy when a completely innocent person gets killed, and then when someone else tries to help him also gets killed. Seriously though, this attitude is what we would be better off without in the case of those helicopter gunners...
"By your logic Hawk and Jibba, any vehicle or anything close to any US troop should be fired upon, " No, holy fucking shit. There is a big difference between some guy sitting in a truck on a peaceful street and a guy driving a truck into the middle of a fucking firefight. When there aren't guns being discharged, a person sitting on the side of the road in a vehicle isn't considered a threat that you would shoot at. Guess what? THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN.
The military had engaged a target and was coming to mop up with ground troops. This guy drove in during the middle of a firefight as the troops are coming to secure the area. Having a random truck with an unknown content/occupants drive right up as you're doing this prevents the troops from securing the area and is a threat to threat to every ground troop there because you DON'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT IS IN IT. It's common knowledge amongst Iraqis that you don't roll into a firefight like that. A truck coming in sure seems like more insurgents coming to support
On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
Your argument seems to be that VBIED = dangerous, van could be VBIED so shoot van because van is in hot zone. If this is SOP, then doesn't any van in any situation with armed hostiles become a target, no matter what its doing? I can understand shooting a vehicle not stopping at a roadblock, but is shooting an idling van really justified? In any case, if the van was to be detonated by proxy, how would shooting it help? It doesn't remove any explosives inside or attached to the van. I really doubt that that was the basis for the gunners decision to light it up.
If there's a van with people in it during or immediately after a firefight, yes...
And shooting it isn't obviously going to stop it if it's by proxy. I was explaining why the van is a threat, even if the occupent doesn't appear to be in it. But if it is loaded, but not as a proxy, but with a remote on the guy that just got out, if you shoot him, it takes away one of the possibilities. Not too hard to understand!
On April 06 2010 23:53 VegeTerran wrote: What we have to keep in mind when watching this video is that the rest of the world hates ameica because of their freedom.
And btw wikileaks can't be trusted it has no coverage of the Tiger Woods story.
One of the most presumptuous and fallacious arguments possible.
1. There are many nations who are more 'free' than America.
2. The reason other nations are unhappy about us is not jealousy but our oppression and insistence on being world police. Imagine if Saddam decided that Bush was evil, sent a shit load of troops and fighter planes, and started doing what we are doing there. Do you think people would be pissed off at him here in America? I think so too.
On April 06 2010 23:53 VegeTerran wrote: What we have to keep in mind when watching this video is that the rest of the world hates ameica because of their freedom.
And btw wikileaks can't be trusted it has no coverage of the Tiger Woods story.
One of the most presumptuous and fallacious arguments possible.
1. There are many nations who are more 'free' than America.
2. The reason other nations are unhappy about us is not jealousy but our oppression and insistence on being world police. Imagine if Saddam decided that Bush was evil, sent a shit load of troops and fighter planes, and started doing what we are doing there. Do you think people would be pissed off at him here in America? I think so too.
Nobody seems to mind when we are "world policing" for all the damn humanitarian aid projects the military does.
Anyone who is shocked by this video and believes that American's are the only ones who talk like that in a wartime environment really should try to crawl out from under the rock they are in. These people are under a lot of stress...and objectifying your enemy is a very easy way to deal with it. Is it right? Probably not...but don't think America is the only one doing it O.o.
P.S And don't be so naive that you actually think we are over there because we want to police the world...little thing called natural resources has driven conflict since the beginning of time.
I'm not going to get into arguing whether the war is wrong or right since that's not what this topic is about.
I will however say that given the same situation (Yes, I watched the video and I'd be scared as fuck that those were real RPG's after I did see something that looked like AK-47s) I would most likely request permission to fire as well. It'd be my job to protect the troops below, and that includes taking out possible threats. I probably wouldn't react the way the gunners did, (trigger happy wanting to kill) but it's a war so I won't be quick to jump on the hate bandwagon. Shit happens that can really mess up the mind and make someone think that way.
It DOES look like a few people had AK-47's and when that one guy peeked around the corner (as if he was hiding) I would have deemed that as enough threat to be an RPG. The unmarked van was also a possible threat considering soldiers were moving in to the area.
Imho, there was also not enough information about the situation was released. All we have is a video of unclear items in the people's hands. Aside from the journalists there were items that looked similar to weapons in the hands of the other people. They could have been cameras. They also could have very well been weapons, but the anti-American/war media won't ever suggest that possibility. It's unfortunate that journalists were also killed, but that's the risk they do take walking around in areas like that.
TL;DR: I think the action was justified however unfortunate.
This 'stress' argument is being thrown around a lot in this thread. But again, how much does this justify? The soldiers who commited acts of torture, rape and murder in Abu Ghraib were also no doubt under stress; does this make what did acceptable?
On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
Your argument seems to be that VBIED = dangerous, van could be VBIED so shoot van because van is in hot zone. If this is SOP, then doesn't any van in any situation with armed hostiles become a target, no matter what its doing? I can understand shooting a vehicle not stopping at a roadblock, but is shooting an idling van really justified? In any case, if the van was to be detonated by proxy, how would shooting it help? It doesn't remove any explosives inside or attached to the van. I really doubt that that was the basis for the gunners decision to light it up.
This post and your previous post sum up my thoughts exactly.
By your logic Hawk and Jibba, any vehicle or anything close to any US troop should be fired upon, because there is a slight chance that there are armed explosives waiting to be detonated..... seriously, you can't have RoE like that, because what happened in this case will happen all the time. That's why it would make some more sense that you fire IF there is a sign of a threat. Hell, there was not even a small sign of any threat there.
And one thing you seem to fail to realize was that this was not a battle as you say it was. This was not some planned attack by any force at all. Also, there was no resistance when the US troops attacked. If someone first attacked the US troops and then a van all of a sudden rushed in it would be different. This was a slaughter by the US troops where they decided to attack a group of people simply walking around the middle of the streets. If it was some planned attack where it was likely this van was used to carry explosives, then I am sure the situation would be different, and the people they shot on would not just "wander around" the middle of the street like that for example. They were completely unaware of what was about to happen.
sympathetic sucker like yourself
Sorry for feeling sympathy when a completely innocent person gets killed, and then when someone else tries to help him also gets killed. Seriously though, this attitude is what we would be better off without in the case of those helicopter gunners...
"By your logic Hawk and Jibba, any vehicle or anything close to any US troop should be fired upon, " No, holy fucking shit. There is a big difference between some guy sitting in a truck on a peaceful street and a guy driving a truck into the middle of a fucking firefight. When there aren't guns being discharged, a person sitting on the side of the road in a vehicle isn't considered a threat that you would shoot at. Guess what? THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN.
The military had engaged a target and was coming to mop up with ground troops. This guy drove in during the middle of a firefight as the troops are coming to secure the area. Having a random truck with an unknown content/occupants drive right up as you're doing this prevents the troops from securing the area and is a threat to threat to every ground troop there because you DON'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT IS IN IT. It's common knowledge amongst Iraqis that you don't roll into a firefight like that. A truck coming in sure seems like more insurgents coming to support
On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
Your argument seems to be that VBIED = dangerous, van could be VBIED so shoot van because van is in hot zone. If this is SOP, then doesn't any van in any situation with armed hostiles become a target, no matter what its doing? I can understand shooting a vehicle not stopping at a roadblock, but is shooting an idling van really justified? In any case, if the van was to be detonated by proxy, how would shooting it help? It doesn't remove any explosives inside or attached to the van. I really doubt that that was the basis for the gunners decision to light it up.
If there's a van with people in it during or immediately after a firefight, yes...
And shooting it isn't obviously going to stop it if it's by proxy. I was explaining why the van is a threat, even if the occupent doesn't appear to be in it. But if it is loaded, but not as a proxy, but with a remote on the guy that just got out, if you shoot him, it takes away one of the possibilities. Not too hard to understand!
Ways a van can be a threat to the incoming ground forces. 1) Has armed people inside. 2) Is rigged to explode. In our case 1 is almost surely untrue, at least given the knowledge seen on the monitors. 2 is a possibility but if they waited 30 seconds it would have been pretty clear what the motivation of the occupants were and it definitely took at least a few minutes before the ground forces arrived. At no point in the conversation was IED even mentioned, it was more "damn he didn't pick up a gun earlier so I can't shoot him but now I have an excuse to kill even more people because they're taking him away". You're more or less trying to find and squeeze out whatever defense you can think of to make it seem like what happened is defensible.
On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
Your argument seems to be that VBIED = dangerous, van could be VBIED so shoot van because van is in hot zone. If this is SOP, then doesn't any van in any situation with armed hostiles become a target, no matter what its doing? I can understand shooting a vehicle not stopping at a roadblock, but is shooting an idling van really justified? In any case, if the van was to be detonated by proxy, how would shooting it help? It doesn't remove any explosives inside or attached to the van. I really doubt that that was the basis for the gunners decision to light it up.
This post and your previous post sum up my thoughts exactly.
By your logic Hawk and Jibba, any vehicle or anything close to any US troop should be fired upon, because there is a slight chance that there are armed explosives waiting to be detonated..... seriously, you can't have RoE like that, because what happened in this case will happen all the time. That's why it would make some more sense that you fire IF there is a sign of a threat. Hell, there was not even a small sign of any threat there.
And one thing you seem to fail to realize was that this was not a battle as you say it was. This was not some planned attack by any force at all. Also, there was no resistance when the US troops attacked. If someone first attacked the US troops and then a van all of a sudden rushed in it would be different. This was a slaughter by the US troops where they decided to attack a group of people simply walking around the middle of the streets. If it was some planned attack where it was likely this van was used to carry explosives, then I am sure the situation would be different, and the people they shot on would not just "wander around" the middle of the street like that for example. They were completely unaware of what was about to happen.
sympathetic sucker like yourself
Sorry for feeling sympathy when a completely innocent person gets killed, and then when someone else tries to help him also gets killed. Seriously though, this attitude is what we would be better off without in the case of those helicopter gunners...
"By your logic Hawk and Jibba, any vehicle or anything close to any US troop should be fired upon, " No, holy fucking shit. There is a big difference between some guy sitting in a truck on a peaceful street and a guy driving a truck into the middle of a fucking firefight. When there aren't guns being discharged, a person sitting on the side of the road in a vehicle isn't considered a threat that you would shoot at. Guess what? THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN.
The military had engaged a target and was coming to mop up with ground troops. This guy drove in during the middle of a firefight as the troops are coming to secure the area. Having a random truck with an unknown content/occupants drive right up as you're doing this prevents the troops from securing the area and is a threat to threat to every ground troop there because you DON'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT IS IN IT. It's common knowledge amongst Iraqis that you don't roll into a firefight like that. A truck coming in sure seems like more insurgents coming to support
On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
Your argument seems to be that VBIED = dangerous, van could be VBIED so shoot van because van is in hot zone. If this is SOP, then doesn't any van in any situation with armed hostiles become a target, no matter what its doing? I can understand shooting a vehicle not stopping at a roadblock, but is shooting an idling van really justified? In any case, if the van was to be detonated by proxy, how would shooting it help? It doesn't remove any explosives inside or attached to the van. I really doubt that that was the basis for the gunners decision to light it up.
If there's a van with people in it during or immediately after a firefight, yes...
And shooting it isn't obviously going to stop it if it's by proxy. I was explaining why the van is a threat, even if the occupent doesn't appear to be in it. But if it is loaded, but not as a proxy, but with a remote on the guy that just got out, if you shoot him, it takes away one of the possibilities. Not too hard to understand!
here is a big difference between some guy sitting in a truck on a peaceful street and a guy driving a truck into the middle of a fucking firefight.
Well, I just watched the video once again to be sure, and its not in the middle of a fire fight. First of all, to point it out again, there was never even a fire fight. There was one helicopter shooting. Second of all, the van arrives after the shooting is done, and troops are well informed about this and as far as we can tell from the video no one is close to the van at the time the van comes, stops, and tries to help the wounded (this is clearly pointed out by the people in the helicopter).
How is it not normal to go and help someone who is alive but injured after the shooting is over? Do you just sit and wait? Even though it can be argued that this is safer, you cannot say it is not a normal reaction to help a friend who is dying after he has been shot at and the firing seems to be over, which it was until he came with the van.
You can even see two children in the vehicle in the front right side window. I don't expect anyone to see this at first sight but I am sure things like this could have been seen if using different procedure, like for example examining the vehicle closer before opening fire. You can hear the soldier beg for permission to fire without even giving it any thought. "Can I shoot?" "Come on, let us shoot!"
And then of course the ending comment: "well its their fault for bringing their kids into a battle"
How stupid can you get? Seriously, at least at this point it must be obvious that PERHAPS the people you just slaughtered weren't armed forces but innocent people.. did they really think any attack group or any insurgents would bring their kids into battle? Yeah, they just happened to bring their two kids for the suicide bombing... What a bunch of idiots, seriously.. only explanation is that it must have been something they said because they wanted to feel better, not wanting to accept the fact that they actually killed a lot of innocent, unarmed people.
I don't know if this can be either condemned or defended - it's war and it's a tragedy but that's par for the course.
But for the hell of it, can someone who knows more than me please state what the general rules of engagement would be for a situation like this? I was operating under the assumption that a person would not only have to be holding a weapon, but would also have to demonstrate an immediate willingness to use it. Though, like I said, that's just an assumption - and I'm obviously wrong.
I think the interesting this is that while this is something that had to be 'leaked' in order to be seen by the western population, it's the kind of video, image, and story being passed along or seen every day by the civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we expect them to stop treating US troops as invaders.
this conversation could be a teamspeak recording from counterstrike or battlefield.
"all right, hahaha, i hit 'em" "oh yeah, look at all those dead bastards" "nice" "good shooting" "thank you"
the last living is crawling on the ground. "come on buddy, all u gotta do is pick up a weapon"
a van comes up to help the crawling wounded person, helicoptor is waiting for shoot permission. "come on let us shoot"
als sie dann nach erlaubnis auf den van geschossen haben. as they got the permission and had shoot the van. "i think the van is disabled" "go ahead and shoot it"
as the fog clears up and they see the dead driver in the van. "oh yeah, look at that. right through the windshield" "haha"
as the tanks are ariving the scene. "i think they just drove over a body" "really" "yeah" "maybe it was just a visual illusion, but it looked like it"
On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
Your argument seems to be that VBIED = dangerous, van could be VBIED so shoot van because van is in hot zone. If this is SOP, then doesn't any van in any situation with armed hostiles become a target, no matter what its doing? I can understand shooting a vehicle not stopping at a roadblock, but is shooting an idling van really justified? In any case, if the van was to be detonated by proxy, how would shooting it help? It doesn't remove any explosives inside or attached to the van. I really doubt that that was the basis for the gunners decision to light it up.
This post and your previous post sum up my thoughts exactly.
By your logic Hawk and Jibba, any vehicle or anything close to any US troop should be fired upon, because there is a slight chance that there are armed explosives waiting to be detonated..... seriously, you can't have RoE like that, because what happened in this case will happen all the time. That's why it would make some more sense that you fire IF there is a sign of a threat. Hell, there was not even a small sign of any threat there.
And one thing you seem to fail to realize was that this was not a battle as you say it was. This was not some planned attack by any force at all. Also, there was no resistance when the US troops attacked. If someone first attacked the US troops and then a van all of a sudden rushed in it would be different. This was a slaughter by the US troops where they decided to attack a group of people simply walking around the middle of the streets. If it was some planned attack where it was likely this van was used to carry explosives, then I am sure the situation would be different, and the people they shot on would not just "wander around" the middle of the street like that for example. They were completely unaware of what was about to happen.
sympathetic sucker like yourself
Sorry for feeling sympathy when a completely innocent person gets killed, and then when someone else tries to help him also gets killed. Seriously though, this attitude is what we would be better off without in the case of those helicopter gunners...
"By your logic Hawk and Jibba, any vehicle or anything close to any US troop should be fired upon, " No, holy fucking shit. There is a big difference between some guy sitting in a truck on a peaceful street and a guy driving a truck into the middle of a fucking firefight. When there aren't guns being discharged, a person sitting on the side of the road in a vehicle isn't considered a threat that you would shoot at. Guess what? THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN.
The military had engaged a target and was coming to mop up with ground troops. This guy drove in during the middle of a firefight as the troops are coming to secure the area. Having a random truck with an unknown content/occupants drive right up as you're doing this prevents the troops from securing the area and is a threat to threat to every ground troop there because you DON'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT IS IN IT. It's common knowledge amongst Iraqis that you don't roll into a firefight like that. A truck coming in sure seems like more insurgents coming to support
On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
Your argument seems to be that VBIED = dangerous, van could be VBIED so shoot van because van is in hot zone. If this is SOP, then doesn't any van in any situation with armed hostiles become a target, no matter what its doing? I can understand shooting a vehicle not stopping at a roadblock, but is shooting an idling van really justified? In any case, if the van was to be detonated by proxy, how would shooting it help? It doesn't remove any explosives inside or attached to the van. I really doubt that that was the basis for the gunners decision to light it up.
If there's a van with people in it during or immediately after a firefight, yes...
And shooting it isn't obviously going to stop it if it's by proxy. I was explaining why the van is a threat, even if the occupent doesn't appear to be in it. But if it is loaded, but not as a proxy, but with a remote on the guy that just got out, if you shoot him, it takes away one of the possibilities. Not too hard to understand!
Ways a van can be a threat to the incoming ground forces. 1) Has armed people inside. 2) Is rigged to explode. In our case 1 is almost surely untrue, at least given the knowledge seen on the monitors. 2 is a possibility but if they waited 30 seconds it would have been pretty clear what the motivation of the occupants were and it definitely took at least a few minutes before the ground forces arrived. At no point in the conversation was IED even mentioned, it was more "damn he didn't pick up a gun earlier so I can't shoot him but now I have an excuse to kill even more people because they're taking him away". You're more or less trying to find and squeeze out whatever defense you can think of to make it seem like what happened is defensible.
Why do you even consider what could be inside? They believed they were killing armed insurgents not civillians and reuters journalists and then some van comes in. What could it be, brave civillians or more insurgents helping another insurgent escape? If you wouldn't come and help yourself in this situation then don't be so surprised this van was attacked. I bet there aren't many people who would just come in and disregard any possible threats, especially with their kids inside.
On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
Your argument seems to be that VBIED = dangerous, van could be VBIED so shoot van because van is in hot zone. If this is SOP, then doesn't any van in any situation with armed hostiles become a target, no matter what its doing? I can understand shooting a vehicle not stopping at a roadblock, but is shooting an idling van really justified? In any case, if the van was to be detonated by proxy, how would shooting it help? It doesn't remove any explosives inside or attached to the van. I really doubt that that was the basis for the gunners decision to light it up.
This post and your previous post sum up my thoughts exactly.
By your logic Hawk and Jibba, any vehicle or anything close to any US troop should be fired upon, because there is a slight chance that there are armed explosives waiting to be detonated..... seriously, you can't have RoE like that, because what happened in this case will happen all the time. That's why it would make some more sense that you fire IF there is a sign of a threat. Hell, there was not even a small sign of any threat there.
And one thing you seem to fail to realize was that this was not a battle as you say it was. This was not some planned attack by any force at all. Also, there was no resistance when the US troops attacked. If someone first attacked the US troops and then a van all of a sudden rushed in it would be different. This was a slaughter by the US troops where they decided to attack a group of people simply walking around the middle of the streets. If it was some planned attack where it was likely this van was used to carry explosives, then I am sure the situation would be different, and the people they shot on would not just "wander around" the middle of the street like that for example. They were completely unaware of what was about to happen.
sympathetic sucker like yourself
Sorry for feeling sympathy when a completely innocent person gets killed, and then when someone else tries to help him also gets killed. Seriously though, this attitude is what we would be better off without in the case of those helicopter gunners...
"By your logic Hawk and Jibba, any vehicle or anything close to any US troop should be fired upon, " No, holy fucking shit. There is a big difference between some guy sitting in a truck on a peaceful street and a guy driving a truck into the middle of a fucking firefight. When there aren't guns being discharged, a person sitting on the side of the road in a vehicle isn't considered a threat that you would shoot at. Guess what? THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN.
The military had engaged a target and was coming to mop up with ground troops. This guy drove in during the middle of a firefight as the troops are coming to secure the area. Having a random truck with an unknown content/occupants drive right up as you're doing this prevents the troops from securing the area and is a threat to threat to every ground troop there because you DON'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT IS IN IT. It's common knowledge amongst Iraqis that you don't roll into a firefight like that. A truck coming in sure seems like more insurgents coming to support
On April 06 2010 22:01 Jibba wrote: Van stops, picks up guy, then drives forward and detonates when the driver returns. Alternatively, you don't know if someone else is hiding in the van. Hell, the guy could've been planting a bomb on the corpse. Any creative way you can think of setting off an IED is probably standard practice already.
Is that really so difficult to understand? You don't drive an unmarked van into engaged military personnel. This is common knowledge among Iraqis. It's mindboggling how this isn't getting through to you.
It's apparently a hard concept to grasp
An unmarked van (not an ambulance) rolling on to the scene of a fresh battle will be engaged by troops of any military every single time, and that's about 100x moreso when it's in a war filled with non-uniformed militia. Honestly, talk to ANYONE with military experience in situations like that—what jibba's saying is true. There's about a million ways that could be booby trapped. With ground forces coming in, the heli isn't taking a chance and that's the right call.
So a helicopter guns down some possible enemies. There may be US troops around. A van comes and tries to give the injured people aid. The rational solution is to shoot the people in the van? Can't they just.. I dunno watch them? And then tell the ground forces to stay the fuck away or be careful if its booby trapped or something? Or that somehow the van is going to fly into the air and blow up the heli? How does a van driving up to some wounded people indicate that omg in srs danger gotta kill em.
Because after a firefight, you secure the area, and an unidentified vehicle kind of prohibits you from securing that area?? Telling people to 'watch out, it may be booby trapped!' ain't gonna save their ass when this happens:
if a van like that is fully loaded, it can easily approach the size of that third video without a problem.
Okay walk with me through this thought process. My name is Ahmed and I want to kill some US troops cause I hate America. I've spent about 3 months making/procuring the amount of explosives to seriously kill some of those guys, now all I need is a plan to kill some troops. One day, I hear that my friends have been injured by an unseen force that could be miles away, could be American or could be another Iraqi faction or anyone really because they don't know what the fuck is going on, so I drive my fully loaded van that has been sitting there waiting to be used, to the scene of the action where there are an unknown number of enemy forces that have as of yet not been identified. I immediately get out of the van and start helping my friend into the van because he's injured. After that I will use my van to blow everyone up. While its stationary. And no one as far as I know is nearby. I am an imminent threat to any american troops that are nearby and must be killed immediately as I am sitting stationary helping my wounded allies.
Really?
Read my response to sean g, or any kind of stories about IED and suicide bomber usage in the Middle East... things can be detonated by proxy very easily
Your argument seems to be that VBIED = dangerous, van could be VBIED so shoot van because van is in hot zone. If this is SOP, then doesn't any van in any situation with armed hostiles become a target, no matter what its doing? I can understand shooting a vehicle not stopping at a roadblock, but is shooting an idling van really justified? In any case, if the van was to be detonated by proxy, how would shooting it help? It doesn't remove any explosives inside or attached to the van. I really doubt that that was the basis for the gunners decision to light it up.
If there's a van with people in it during or immediately after a firefight, yes...
And shooting it isn't obviously going to stop it if it's by proxy. I was explaining why the van is a threat, even if the occupent doesn't appear to be in it. But if it is loaded, but not as a proxy, but with a remote on the guy that just got out, if you shoot him, it takes away one of the possibilities. Not too hard to understand!
Ways a van can be a threat to the incoming ground forces. 1) Has armed people inside. 2) Is rigged to explode. In our case 1 is almost surely untrue, at least given the knowledge seen on the monitors. 2 is a possibility but if they waited 30 seconds it would have been pretty clear what the motivation of the occupants were and it definitely took at least a few minutes before the ground forces arrived. At no point in the conversation was IED even mentioned, it was more "damn he didn't pick up a gun earlier so I can't shoot him but now I have an excuse to kill even more people because they're taking him away". You're more or less trying to find and squeeze out whatever defense you can think of to make it seem like what happened is defensible.
Why do you even consider what could be inside? They believed they were killing armed insurgents not civillians and reuters journalists and then some van comes in. What could it be, brave civillians or more insurgents helping another insurgent escape? If you wouldn't come and help yourself in this situation then don't be so surprised this van was attacked. I bet there aren't many people who would just come in and disregard any possible threats, especially with their kids inside.
Because you don't automatically assume everything is a threat. Assuming everything is a threat is what got this whole situation started to begin with. To open fire on someone requires that that the target be designated as hostile. You can't just start shooting anyone near an area where fighting is occurring. Whether or not it makes sense that the occupants of the van came to help the injured is irrelevant, they are a novel target and have to be declared as hostile before you can use lethal force.
If the Russians or Chinese did something like this i highly doubt that you people would be making up excuses for their actions. This is not the first time something like this has happened, nor will it be the last. The UN can do jack-shit about American war crimes, or do anything to prevent them. A list of the crimes the US military committed in the last century would take up 2 pages of this forum in tiny font, this incident is insignificant in comparison. The people who ordered this will probably get a medal or a promotion somewhere down the line. Let's all remember what George W. Bush said when he warned Russia in 2008: "Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century" <---- bullshit
EPT
