Talk:July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

Did they survive?

Everything else has been said, but did the kids survive? I really think it would be a relief to know. ~Eye — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.199.8.191 (talk) 20:43, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Okay I didn't show it but I'd really like to know. Does anyone know? Please someone tell me! I know there were many deaths but I don't think that's a good excuse to ignore it. Please? 117.221.182.58 (talk) 07:05, 13 June 2013 (UTC)Eye

They both survived. I expect the boy had substantial and permanent brain damage. Activist (talk) 06:52, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

I am told that when Ethan McCord, the GI who took the siblings from the van went to Germany, he was shown a film where both kids expressed their gratitude to him for their rescue. The sister hopes for a career in medicine and her younger brother, despite his severe injuries, is doing well in school. Activist (talk) 09:11, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Military legal review

Editors - Please do not revert this correction again.

The grammar in the text is problematic. My edit, which was reverted, and which I've undone fixes that.

There is commentary above in TALK dating back to April that appears to be well reasoned.

The picture that accompanies the article is from the report cited. The reporters were no more "furtive" than anyone might be in a situation where there is a great deal of gunfire between opposing combatants. The photo was taken well before in a different area than that in which the 11 men were strafed. Ducking gunfire while photographing combat should hardly described as "furtive" and a reason to kill the Green Zone-credentialed cameramen. There is no evidence that they were 'with' or anywhere near the insurgents, three or four of whom were armed, when the "furtive" pictures were taken. In the pictures, it can clearly be seen that the Canon EOS camera looks nothing like an RPG launcher, any more than a Humvee looks like a Honda CR-V, though they both have four wheels. A launcher is more than a yard long and has a stock and barrel and trigger grips. When loaded with rounds commonly used, it is well over four feet long. You can see the camera dangling from a strap in the photo. It is perhaps 20" long. The camera is hanging over the wall, pointed directly at the ground. (Exhibit C Photo)

The investigating major's report, referencing (Exhibit A Photo) claims "The cameras could easily be mistaken for slung AK-47 or AKM rifles." This is patent nonsense. You can find pictures of either on the internet or even of replicas at the Airsoft site and you can also find pictures of the camera and the longest, hooded lenses. They could "easily be mistaken for slung AK-47s" by Stevie Wonder, maybe.

Then the Major claims, referencing (Exhibit D), "Due to the furtive nature of his movements, the cameraman gave every appearance of preparing to fire an RPG on US soldiers." In fact, the platoon of GI's was out of sight around a corner which was over 100 yards away and the photo of the cameraman was taken from above at altitude through the chopper's gunsight. Obviously, from that angle, there is no such "appearance." If someone was aiming a launcher, the launcher would clearly be much longer and protrude much further ahead and well behind a person firing such a weapon, which blasts fire out of the back end. The photographer was looking through the camera's viewer directly in front of his face and the lens would not extend in front of him as much as third of the distance of a loaded launcher. Even then, in a rare moment of near-candor, the major refers to photos of the dangling camera (p. 18-19) as "Probable Telephoto lens."

He further rationalizes killing the cameramen by writing (p. 14) "The mere fact that two individuals carried cameras instead of weapons would not indicate that they were noncombatants as the enemy commonly employ (sic) cameramen to film and photograph their attacks on Coalition Forces."

The major continues, "The van arrives as if on cue." In fact, the van arrived five minutes after the strafing, per the times on the photos. If it was traveling as slowly as 30 miles an hour, that would mean it was 2 1/2 miles away when the strafing occurred and it was very unlikely the driver would have heard the firing and put his children in that sort of a situation. The major then claims that the van which stopped beside the badly wounded, slowly crawling cameraman, was "joined by two military-aged males." With the kid's father, they try to load the cameraman to take him to emergency care. The major (part 8 - Conclusions) deliberately and repeatedly inaccurately refers to the Reuters' cameraman as a " 'wounded insurgent'." He adds, "It is unknown what, if any, connection the van had to the insurgent activity." He's written this knowing that this was a dad driving his two very young kids to their tutor.

As a consequence of my edit being reverted, I'm looking at the Wikipedia article's referenced major's report, made ten days after the killings of the cameramen, the three good Samaritans, and the actual insurgents. In fact, the WikiLeaks video, which was edited by them or parties unknown, is much clearer than the photos and from the audio it is apparent that the chopper crew is, rather than exercising due diligence, gleefully initiating and prolonging the turkey shoot.

Up until the point of the WikiLeaks release, the Army had refused to release the video despite three years worth of repeated requests by Reuters.

In a handwritten report included (p. 25) by a (company?) captain, he notes, "I observed the 2 children and believed them to be noncombatants. Ages of the children are the reason why I believe this, they appear to be around 4 and 6 years of age."

Nothing in the other cited stories supports the major's ill-founded conclusions, but his task, of course, is to give the chopper pilots the benefit of every doubt. He has consequently stretched the truth. He was not "observing" anything, just reviewing evidence and subsequently making a "claim." My edit was accurate.

The Reuters story, published just five days after the killings and (Exhibit S) in the major's report notes that they had a police report which referred to the incidents as "a random American bombardment."

I might add that a written statement, written two days after the killings, by a first lieutenant (platoon commander?) at (p. 27) of the report claims "...the only non-combatants were the two kids...," though there were only three weapons and one separate ammunition round found among the twelve deceased, plus the two Canon EOS cameras. Activist (talk) 09:29, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

The fact that it was "a situation where there is a great deal of gunfire between opposing combatants" certainly explains *why* they would want to be furtive, but it doesn't make them non-furtive. What was that really supposed to mean, anyway? Well, perhaps it's not too furtive, considering that they were all in a war zone, generally grouped together, and heading in the same direction toward U.S. troops. Are we supposed to think the others were war tourists?

When you say, "There is no evidence that they were 'with' or anywhere near the insurgents, three or four of whom were armed, when the "furtive" pictures were taken," I'm wondering how you measure proximity. Do you think unlawful combatants march in formation? Real soldiers don't do that in hostile streets either.

I think you're being influenced by your POV. That's fine with me, as everybody here has a POV of some sort, but you have to pay some respect to what the law actually says. There's no doubt that the camera was interpreted as being a weapon. The men in those helicopters would have to have been play-acting on the radio, effectively lying to the controllers. Assuming hostility was the natural connection for reasonable people to make. It didn't look like a camera just earlier. They had seen real weapons among them, and they truly believed the camera equipment were weapons.

I get the impression that you expect soldiers and airmen to wait until they have 100% certainty that the target is an insurgent. It has never been that way. The men who compiled the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions never contemplated anything remotely like it.

You're not quite accurate when you say the Army refused three years of requests from Reuters. They didn't release the videos (you might recall we were still at war), but they certainly did allow Reuters to view them privately two weeks after the attack.

Combatants can be more than simply armed men. An RPG-7 uses a two-man crew, one of whom may not appear to be armed. Yes, insurgents certainly do use photographers to create propaganda videos. Jihadi videos often show up on YouTube until someone swats them down. It was not an unfounded assumption to consider them as with the insurgents. The credentials they had in their pockets weren't enough on that day. Neither of them chose to wear the press vests and helmets to identify themselves even though Reuters could certainly have afforded to provide them -- if they really cared.

You're writing this, and first came upon the news of it, with the advance knowledge that that was a camera lens. You have the additional advantage of a still frame, time to examine it without other demands on your attention, and knowing that there's little chance that another insurgent in your vicinity wants to kill you or someone you've been tasked to protect. These are luxuries that those men didn't have.

As with mirages and optical illusions, the brain interprets what it sees and tries to find a pattern. Until we have fully-autonomous weapons (which, interestingly, are opposed by many who usually claim to care about human rights), human imperfections are going to be part of the equation. The laws of war factor that in.

There are ways to reduce these tragedies, and would almost certainly have prevented this one. That's why we have laws of war that demand separation of combatants apart from civilians. Say what you like about what those aircrews said, they followed those laws, even adding risk to their own lives by taking more time than should have been necessary. The insurgents chose not to. The insurgents made the choice not to care, and none of the critics of the U.S. side of the war were willing to demand they change their minds.

You're wrong when you say, "He's written this knowing that this was a dad driving his two very young kids to their tutor." He knew nothing like that at that time. It's still not certain that this was true. All we have now is the family's word for it, and they were demanding payment. There's no word that they were demanding insurgents to respect the laws of war, which they would do if they didn't want this to happen again. In the U.S., we close schools for blizzards and hurricanes. I don't doubt we would do the same for enemy attacks.

Does all of that really make each of them insurgents? It's tough to explain why any non-combatant would want to be that close to those openly carrying weapons, particularly an RPG. Legally, that makes this a reasonable assumption to make. You can believe they were off on a stroll that day if you like, but you shouldn't be making assumptions about what others believe when they were a lot closer to the action.

We don't have to know why each of those Iraqis was there, but we do know that they chose to hang around in close proximity to each other while a war was going on around them. You should understand that much even if you don't support the laws of war.

The edit needs to be reverted. I didn't look into disputing your other edits, but this one doesn't work.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 23:22, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Do I have to remind you two of the WP:No original research policy Wikipedia has? This is not a forum!, and no one cares about your personal interpretation of the chain of events, nor what is furtive, nor what you think the "law of war" is or isn't in U.S. international military campaign called "War on Terror". Go form a blog, argue on social media, or pick up a sign and walk to nearest street, but your opinion pieces with advocacy and propaganda is not welcome here. If the arguments you have for changing this Wikipedia article is not based on what sources says, do not write them here or try edit the article. The above two comments of yours are 2000 words, 11000 characters, and not a single source to be had. A sure sign if ever of the inappropriateness. Belorn (talk) 11:11, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree with your conclusions. When you claim there there is "not a single source to be had," for instance, you've missed my seven page-by-page citations of the actual material in the report that is cited in the article. Your claim that I am engaging in "propaganda" is an unwelcome personal attack. My comments refer to a source that is twice supplied in the article. All I did was provide the basis for cautioning against another reversion of a sentence to a form that was both ungrammatical and inaccurate. I have previously done a considerable amount of work on this article that was at the time quite confusing, especially with regard to timeline and its being out of sequence, and with removing thoroughly redundant passages. Activist (talk) 10:46, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Please note that I don't disagree with your edit in the article, only the discussion here on the talk page. When you write that the quote from the major was "patent nonsense", you comment ends up being as much your interpretation of the report as Randy2063 opinion about "Real soldiers". Using the report as the basis for your opinion is great for a blog post. However on wikipedia, any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not advanced by the sources is original research. For that, there is no single source to be had above, but rather, simply references to seven pages of an report which you have analyzed. Your analyze will thus only end up being viewed as advocacy to those who agree with you, and propaganda by those who disagree, and neither will be good for a constructive discussion. Belorn (talk) 09:09, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

"biased locals" is not a valid argument

One do not get to decide that reliable sourced statements from the local population is biased and should be removed, while reliable sourced statements from the army is unbiased and should be kept. It should not come as a big surprise that no one has the right to selectively remove content simply because they dislike who media is interviewing. If someone want to remove information, you got to do more than a "I do not like them". Belorn (talk) 12:44, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

That wasn't all that I'd said. There were two comments. My previous comment was that the witness statements became irrelevant.

If you look at the source, it was from 2007 -- long *before* the video evidence became public. All those reporters had to go on back then was, on the one hand, the locals' story, which was an area controlled by the Sadrite militia (read Riverbend, who was driven out by radicals just weeks before the attack), and on the other hand, the military's story, which could have brought charges against the aircrew if the video didn't confirm their story. The casual readers of this article will get the misimpression that the source's reporters had already seen the video before they interviewed the witnesses. That's extremely deceptive -- even for Wikipedia.

The article now deliberately misinterprets its sources. It says, "However, this has been questioned, with the media reporting...," which gives the clear (and wrong) impression that the reporters were characterizing the witnesses' total response, even though they didn't see the video, and didn't think it would ever become public.

This isn't fair to the reporters. Imagine if we were to treat this like many clashing sources, and simply attributed perspectives to the reporters within this article. How'd you like to be that reporter knowing that your words from 2007, before you saw the video and could ask witnesses about it, were being misapplied this way?

I'd said in my comment that the line could be added elsewhere, but not in the lede. The lede should be for the basic story as it stands now, not mingling different timelines and pretending they were all contemporaneous.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 18:39, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

If you want to fight for a perceived injustice for journalists, feel free to start a blog or post on social media. It was good that "this has been questioned" part was removed, since such editorial comment was not found in the source (original research). However, rather than implying that anyone who lives under government control is mind-controlled drones with no free wills, you could just have added the time context to the source and removed the OR part. This way, the reader has the same understanding that you and I got, and they get to decide their own opinion about the witnesses. Maybe the witness was similar mistaken about peoples armament as those who thought a camera was an RPG. Neither you or I can decide that for the reader. Belorn (talk) 02:50, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Incidents/NPOV

Don't have time to even begin reviewing/editing this in detail, but there are some serious POV issues in the 'Incidents' section, including considerable speculation about what the Apache crews were 'thinking' and 'expecting'; far too much partisan interpretation of the video. Also, while blocks of text are quoted from the video that support this particular view (that the Apache crews really did think they were acting heroically, protecting colleagues from imminent attack), there are no quotes whatsoever from the more controversial parts of the audio track (e.g. 'Ahahaha!', 'look at those dead bastards!', 'right through the windshield!' and so on...). To me, this section reeks of having been either entirely written by, or heavily edited by, a person or persons with a POV that is strongly sympathetic to the Apache crews and other US forces involved in the incidents. Please could someone try to make this section at least a little more balanced? The whole controversy around the video centred on how shocking and apparently callous the behavior of some of the Apache crew seemed to be, from their comments, laughter and eagerness to kill... trying to dress this up as a simple case of 'civilians' misunderstanding (or WikiLeaks misrepresenting) the incidents is *not* for a Wikipedia page to do.

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