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

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

Could also have been security guards for the reporters, but yeah.
What you said.

Godwin violation.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

"So is genocide."


Paft loses.

The van was seen before in the unedited video.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/7928/90016369.jpg
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c1b_1270800204

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

*thumbs up*

[paft.livejournal.com]

da: II said it before, and I'll say it again. If I had been in that situation, I would have fired to protect my men - and suggested to the Colonel that he go get skull-f**ked. I would have been subsequently arrested, as were the soldiers involved, and then released, as they were.

Which is why so many of us civilians consider military "justice" a revolting joke.

[paft.livejournal.com]

m: An unmarked van shows up with 3 men quickly jumping out

Don't see that. In fact, it looks as though at least one of those other men was another passerby who decided to help.

M: trying to take one of the insurgents away. They are shot on presumption of being insurgents transporting combatants.

A badly wounded and unarmed "combatant" who they were hoping would pick up a weapon so they could shoot him some more.

m: The man always drives his children with 2 other men in his vehicle?

As I've observed, at least one of those other men was obviously not in the car, and it's unclear that the additional man was. And strange as it may seem to you, I can easily envision someone who occasionally uses his van as a taxi -- as the children's now dead father apparently did -- having at least one other passenger in the car while running an errand with his kids.

Or do you find it more believable that he decided to take his young children along on trip expressly intended to gather up wounded insurgents after a gun battle?

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

Well as far as I know, the military never described the events that occurred in any kind of detail and they point blank refused to release the video despite FOI requests and despite there being no classified information contained in it. They clearly took pains to avoid people seeing what was really going on.


And besides, if this was a well-known event, then why the huge interest in it now? I mean, how much of the public actually reads accounts like the one you mentioned? Accessibility counts, both from the public's perspective and from those who have a vested interest in keeping things like this, if not secret, then at least out of the public consciousness.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Which does not justify being so eager to kill an already badly wounded and unarmed man that you blow away the people who've stopped to help him.

[paft.livejournal.com]

s: A wounded Combatant is still a Combatant. The fight is not over till you give up or die.

And the Geneva Conventions are quite clear about how wounded combatants -- and those attempting to help them -- are to be treated

s:It is not clean, it is not just, it is War.

Spare us the John Wayne/Clint Eastwood crap.

s: If you are a pacifist and this horrifies you that's fine,

No I am not a pacifist.

My reaction to the murder of that man and the people trying to help him is horror. My reaction to the efforts at justifying it by you and others here is disgust.

And spare me the little lady strut, macho-man. I've known veterans of wars and veterans of combat who didn't engage in the kind of rationalization I'm seeing you and others offer here.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Hey, look who you got defending the soldiers who killed the reporters and those good samaritans! A guy who thinks dropping White Phosphorus on a field hospital is worthy of commendation, and another who thinks the murder of a 24 year old girl is hilarious.

You're in good company.

Re: Godwin violation.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Not in this context.

Your invocation of "Godwin's Law" here is why the man who originally formulated it complained that it was being abused.

[paft.livejournal.com]

"Shit happens"

Another meaningless phrase.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Yakity Sax improves everything, even Roland Emmerich films.

2012 was the worst disaster porn, ever.

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

Actually, if we are talking about military protocol, incapacitating an enemy with wounds is generally considered highly preferable to killing them outright by most technical war-strategy theorists.

The reasoning there is primarily that a typical wounded man takes on average about 8-12 additional individuals to provide treatment for him in order to return him to good health, not to mention a considerable volume of resources that could otherwise be used to fight. This is on top of the PR advantages, including the morale impact of wounded on the enemy force. Bluntly speaking, it is easier to ignore your silent dead (who in this case may have gloriously gone to heaven) on the battlefield and while encamped, then it is to ignore comrades screaming lie bleeding from burns, bulletholes and missing limbs.

Wounding is especially preferable where the enemy has limited rehabilitation capabilities, such as with guerilla militias because the difficulty in treating is greater and the time to rehabilitate significantly longer. The cost to the enemy by wounding their soldiers instead of killing them outweighs the strategic advantage of their being able to eventually return a healed soldier (which is a variable percentage of all wounded) to combat by a massive factor.

It's because of the advanteage of causing major wounding anytime the enemy is hit that the Hague Conventions were created to bans firearm ammunition designed to cause mass wounding to the enemy, such as expanding or explosive bullets, which don't necessarily improve the immediate military effect of being shot. Afterall, whether killed or wounded, once you are shot, you are generally out of the immediate fight eithe way. Adding maiming to mere injury, simply for the strategic advantage is considered inhumane; and virtually all modern military forces abide by these conventions.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Geneva Convention? Oh that treaty we signed that we currently ignore.

Re: Godwin violation.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

Actually, your frivolous use of OMG GENOCIDE is exactly why he invented it in the first place.

That was my point.

[papasha-mueller.livejournal.com]

you've asked about the ambulance, haven't you ?

Nope. It's full of meaning. Or shit.

[papasha-mueller.livejournal.com]

It's just an euphemism to avoid saying what you have but don't want to.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

That's one badass chick.

Oh indeed.

[papasha-mueller.livejournal.com]

Stalin, being "a pretty awful military planner" still somehow managed to make it against the enemy.
Who happen to be second to none militry planner.
I absolutely enjoy every single letter of this, please carry on.

"propaganda-dot-com" (c)

[papasha-mueller.livejournal.com]

Re. the imageshack link.

1. The first pic, saying it is AK-47. Given the quality of the image, it can be anything including the Fox Run kitchenware. The way it is presented - "it almost definitely is" speaks of itself - remove this tag, nobody knows wtf was that.

2. The second pic, labeled as RPG-7. RPG-7 is 15 lbs gear, you can't handle it like shown. You take it by the handle or in the balanced middlepoit, you don't wave it like iron club. Fortunately, we have a video, not still here and you can compare WYS with WYG 'normal' dynamics of carrying a heavy weapon.

Now. You point out that a fight is taking place in close nearby.
I personally find it strange that who is announced as armed insurgents are not taking part in it, but just mind their own business, hanging around, chatting with the reporters, giving interviews, taking no care of GIs proximity and showing no single sign of alert.

I ask myself - why, if they come to insurge, why bother with the reporters, if the come to pose for photo why this dangerous zone was chosen for it.
I see it as they're just locals belonging to this place interacting with the reporters in what they think is out-of-fire area.

It's not that I'm taking this or that side, I'm just pointing you to the weak points in your arguments, FOC.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

"...so many of us civilians..."

...because you know nothing about the military, and you are anti-military to begin with.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, it simply makes them subjects of a Milgram experience that got a lot of people killed. Or alternately it makes them evil. The sociopath has a neurological disorder, the non-sociopaths who bayoneted Jewish babies are the purest form of evil.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The USA never ratified it until after WWII.......

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

You know, the reality is that the WWII powers that *did* ratify the Geneva Convention adhered to it strictly. Germany, Japan, the USSR, and the USA never ratified it before the war, and that very fact that the USSR had never ratified was the excuse Germany used to wage its genocide against the Slavs.

And it hardly depopulated Europe, the USSR took the worst casualties of any European power and unless I'm mistaken the USSR was Europe's largest country by population even after the Russian Civil War, the Stalinist terror, and the Axis-Soviet War.....