Because we haven't talked about Iraq enough...

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

This came up on my friend's page this morning.

followed by this .

When Rupert Hamer, the British journalist who served as the Sunday Mirror's war correspondent, was embedded with US forces in Afghanistan and was killed when an IED took out the MRAP he was traveling in, nobody seemed to give much of a shit. No general outcry, no "Those murderers!", no wailing and gnashing of teeth from blogs as different as Balko and BoingBoing.

But when a Reuters journalist is embedded with insurgents in Iraq who are approaching US armored vehicles while armed with weapons specifically designed to destroy such vehicles, and is engaged and killed in their company by a gunship crew who follows rules of engagement and directly asks for permission first, a whole bunch of people just about wet themselves in their eagerness to decry those who killed him.

Why is this?
-"Phanatic"

I have my own take behind the cut but I'm curious about what others have to say.


There is no discernible difference in my eyes, both were killed in action.

The responses to this incident reminds me of the Joker's monologue from "Dark Knight".

Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, it's all "part of the plan"...

...But if one of our Soldiers "The Good Guys", blows up a journalist everyone loses their freaking minds.

An american helicopter crew spotted a group of men gathering near an american convoy.

Weapons are clearly visible, 2 RPGs and a Light Machine-Gun. The standard AQ fire-team everywhere from Afghanistan to Chechnya for the last 15-20 years. Since the insurgents don't wear uniforms this armament and organization is the single best identifier.

They reported the situation and waited for permission to engage.

The enemy was defeated. Additional Insurgents attempted to extract the wounded before they could be captured but in doing so exposed themselves to American forces and were defeated as well.

This is war.

Support it, or oppose it, I won't judge.

All I ask is that you be intellectually honest about it.


Disclamer:
I am an Iraq War vet, and a helicopter crewman to boot, so this story hits a little close-to-home for me.

Edit:
In the interests of "citing sources" here is CENTCOM's official report on the incident.

Comments

Re: But, but, but.......

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

Yeah because what's important is that the people who get paid and equipped and extensively trained and treated specifically to risk their lives and get shot at invading other countries don't get shot at, it's the wogs in T-shirts that picked the wrong country to get born in that do. Isn't that what the rules of war are all about, killing as many enemy civilians as possible while avoiding at all cost military casualties?

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's ironic.

[paft.livejournal.com]

PFT: Unfortunately, we're talking here about reality and nothing like that happened. The people who died in that hotel during the battle were killed by an American tank.
e: Right, because the people inside the tank thought they were being targeted by a long tubular object that resembles offensive weaponry.

If that is the case, the people inside that tank saw a war correspondent doing his job from the very location where they'd been told war corresppndents would be staying.

e: I suppose they could have chanced it and maybe been blown up, but that would not have been the smart thing to do.

Riiiight. The SMART thing to do was to fire on a hotel they'd been told was full of reporters.

e: Yes, that hotel has unimbedded journalists in it. That doesn't give the hotel a pass in a warzone.

When the military officials have been notified that that is where reporters will be staying, and when in fact those same military officials recommend to unembedded reporters that they should stay there, so the military will know not to fire on the hotel, it most certainly does.

e: Might help if those photojournalists would stop using the ZOMG Penis Substitute Lens and stuck with something a little less similar to weaponry.

You really are intent on insulting these dead reporters, aren't you?

[paft.livejournal.com]

I understand it was also invoked during the St. Bartholemew's Day massacre.

Big fan of religious genocide, are you?

[paft.livejournal.com]

In other words, you're scared sh*tless of everyone and wouldn't feel "safe" unless you had permission to kill everybody you deemed remotely suspicious on sight.

Pitiful.

[paft.livejournal.com]

e: So you really think that hotel, by being announced as the official hotel for journalists, made it so that no enemy would have used it as cover for an ambush?

I think that the hotel being announced as the official hotel for journalists made it so that the military should not have fired upon it.

a: Are you really that naive?

LOL! Obviously it's not naive, to think that nothing like that was likely to happen because nothing like that happened. And the reporters who expected not to be fired on, by the way, were by no stretch of the imagination "naive." The two who were killed, in particular, were grizzled veterans of war zones who probably had more experience in wartime environments than many of the young American soldiers firing those guns.

PFT: You really are intent on insulting these dead reporters, aren't you?
e: It's not an insult to speak the truth, no matter how blunt it is.

Of course it's an insult to imply that because a reporter uses a zoom lens, it's a "penis substitute."

e: If they weren't so intent on being elite with their Howitzer Lens, like most photojournalists I've met, they might still be alive today.

If they weren't so intent on doing their jobs, in other words.

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

Much better.

While I can't recall a solitary atrocity in Iraq that's happened without the first military investigative report automatically clearing everyone involved of all wrongdoing for what later wound up being made-up reasons, I agree that when your basic mode of warfare is vaporizing people practically from orbit you're going to have a lot of trouble identifying targets correctly. Where we differ seems to be that you think that means we should make it okay to kill reporters and innocent people, where I think that means maybe they shouldn't be vaporizing people from halfway in orbit if they can't do it properly. The guys directly involved in this don't particularly need to get strung up on the gibbet or whatever the hell, the whole feigned shock everyone's playing at that hired killers actually enjoy their jobs is just surreal; and apparently even lighting up an ambulance is now business as usual for gun crews over there now, but people absolutely should be pushing for correction of the policies and regulations that make shit like this possible.

[paft.livejournal.com]

PFT:Uh, no, firing on the wounded and those trying to move them out of harms way has never been considered "good military protocol."
e: It's remarkably practical, though.

So is genocide.

PFT: This is not a game. These people are not merely little images on a screen.
e: No, they aren't. These people are instead real-life people that are probably trying to kill you.

My god. It must be awful to live in such constant bowel-emptying terror of everyone, including two children sitting in a van and a badly wounded, overweight and unarmed man trying to crawl to safety.

[paft.livejournal.com]

In other words, your idea of warfare comes from sitting on your butt in front of a computer and playing games.

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

Do you have any idea of when the "principles of the civilized world" were agreed upon or why

Hint: when was the Geneva Convention, was it before WWI? You can look that one up on Google if you have to

[paft.livejournal.com]

From your determination to kill everyone in sight.

LIke I said, scared shitless.

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

Edgy.

[paft.livejournal.com]

e: Excellent. I know where to deploy my forces should you operate a war zone. A few anti-tank missiles from the Journalist Hotel and you'll withdraw for fear of hitting innocents. I Win!

I hope you don't imagine that winning video games would make you successful in actual warfare.

PFT: The two who were killed, in particular, were grizzled veterans of war zones who probably had more experience in wartime environments than many of the young American soldiers firing those guns.
e: Then they had gotten fucking lazy in their vigilance.

How so? They were covering the war from exactly where the military authorities had told them they should. What makes you such an authority on being a wartime correspondent that you feel entitled to call them "lazy" or unvigilant?

e: There's technology today that makes those lenses unnecessary. I know it exists because I've seen it used. If these so-called photojournalists want to "get in on the action" and carry easily mistakable equipment instead of not-so-easily mistakable equipment, that's their problem, not mine.

And you know all about war-zone journalism and the proper equipment for it, do you? Does the Gamezone down at the mall carrying a video game where you get to pretend to be a war correspondent?

[paft.livejournal.com]

e: My idea of warfare comes from soldiers who have been in combat.

I've also known soldiers who've seen combat, and every single one of them considered the geneva conventions -- the rules of war that preclude your Nazi-like "tactics" -- a damned good thing.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Naaah, you're right. It can't be real scary sitting in front of a screen blowing away entire populations of imaginary enemies and imagining this can be applied to real life in a meaningful way.

Pathetic is the operative term.

[paft.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but someone who plainly bases his notion of warfare on video games does invite a certain level of contempt.

The actual soldiers I've known -- men who fought in WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq war -- do not share your attitude. They might understand the fear that underlies it, but they don't consider mass murder a viable option, as you do. And I very much doubt they would be real impressed with your gameboy inspired "tactics."

[paft.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. You're one of those people who consider a sociopathic outlook an example of being "dispassionate."

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

You don't "win" by depriving yourself of the resources being fought over, even in games. Scorched-earth tactics are what you do when you're losing.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

"I'm sorry to say it, but I'm the guy who killed the journalists. I'm really sorry, and I feel badly for their families, but I had no choice. My soldiers' lives were in danger."

That's what the Captain, as commander of the tank involved, said after the incident. It was dark, the soldiers were taking heavy machine gun fire, and thought they were returning fire at an enemy forward observer. All of the arrested soldiers were exonerated.

As a former tank platoon leader, I can assure you that tank firing at a target IS a split second decision, done on reflex in response to danger. From target sighting to firing the main gun, you have about 8 seconds to get a round off. If you don't - you're dead. I would have done the same thing.

Declaring a building "off limits" in the middle of a war is a fine thing, but it doesn't always work out.

[paft.livejournal.com]

The soldiers I knew fought in WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq war. They include people who not only saw active combat, but were taken prisoner.

Believe me, they considered the Geneva conventions a VERY good thing.

[ryder-p-moses.livejournal.com]

"Practical reality" being that it's better and easier to fight wars where medics are targeted, both sides use poison gas, genocide is the norm on any battlefield, and anyone unfortunate to be captured will be tortured and killed? The whole point of stuff like the Convention was that fighting lawless warfare using modern tools very nearly depopulated Europe, as in nobody left alive to win and nothing left to be won on any side, and outside of minor violations quickly called to light they've been very religiously held to since.

Are you like fourteen or something?

[thies.livejournal.com]

the 'rpg' was a tripod, I know

[merig00.livejournal.com]

Well how about this if the reporters had their blue PRESS vests on, they might have been alive today.

Did you see an ambulance somewhere in the video?

[paft.livejournal.com]

da: It was dark,

It was during the day, and AFTER most of the heavy fighting. Hardly in the thick of battle.

da: the soldiers were taking heavy machine gun fire, and thought they were returning fire at an enemy forward observer.

There is not a shred of evidence anyone in or near the hotel was firing at them and in fact, most of the shooting had already stopped.

da: As a former tank platoon leader, I can assure you that tank firing at a target IS a split second decision, done on reflex in response to danger. From target sighting to firing the main gun, you have about 8 seconds to get a round off. If you don't - you're dead. I would have done the same thing.

By the soldier who fired the tank's own account, it was not done "on reflex." "I hesitated," he said. He swung his guns towards the hotel and asked his captain's permission to fire. It came ten minutes later. Then he fired.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

The rightness and wrongness of the war is not what this discussion is about.
The coalition forces operate under "rules of engagement" that are to mitigate civilian casualties. The enemy doesn't, hence using hospitals, mosques and "wogs in T-shirts" (oh that's not bigoted) as cover. Sheesh, only Americans have to ask permission to fire, that is not a prescription for a long life in a combat situation.

War is hell, and sometimes the wrong people die, but ask almost anyone who has ever been in combat, or even in a war zone, if it wasn't them, it wasn't the wrong person. Call me selfish, if the ROK guys and whoever else was responsible for protecting the peninsula where I sat at a desk, accidently killed someone they shouldn't have in the fulfilling of their duties, well I confess I didn't really think about it, as long as my butt was safe.