13-04-2010, 10:32 PM
(This post was last modified: 13-04-2010, 10:36 PM by Helen Reyes.)
Keith Millea Wrote:I think I'm the only person that posts here that has actually been in combat.I have a different perspective than everyone else.For instance,seeing the soldier pick up the wounded child and run as fast as he could to get her to the medic track showed how he tried his best to save this child(which they actually did).I thought to myself,this guy will invision,and have trouble with this horrible scene for the rest of his life.The following interview proves this out.I have not seen nor heard anyone express anything but contempt for the soldiers though(murderers all).
So,I'm not going to argue with anyone here about what is right or what is wrong.I find this interview with a former soldier from that unit to be pretty much in line with how I see these things,so I'll let him speak.And again,from my perspective,Amy Goodman was a complete asshole to keep trying to get him to name names over the public airways.This was about as unprofessional as a journalist could be.......
Getting people to name names is what journalists do
I have no opinion on Amy Goodman, haven't heard her at all. It's possible the 2 Reuters guys were setting up for a photo shoot behind "enemy" lines and the people with tripods or RPGs or whatever they were skidaddled at the first whiff of canon fire. The resolution just isn't good enough for me to say. The helicopter crew would have had a better view, but that also means they killed the wrong guys and saw the kids in the van, most likely. I didn't watch the full video with the same guys killing civilians in an apartment building later in the day, but there are some stills up of that at cryptome.org today.
The most obvious conclusion from the film is the military's engagement policy was/is to kill them all and figure it out later. That's a war crime, btw, even if it is policy. You aren't allowed to target civilians under any of international conventions mainly pushed by the United States. Ultimately it hardly matters to anyone affected what some group of soldiers thought they saw, and just as crooked cops will throw in a gun, so will soldiers, in a pinch, rumage up a grenade to toss in the crime scene.
With all the reporters killed, it looks like the US targeted reporters, and in that case, is the dialogue we're listening to in the leaked video real at all, or is it just bad acting to cover up that policy of executing reporters in the arena? Is it unpremeditated murder, or is it murder with malice aforethought? I don't know. It's not manslaughter, though. Not with that imbalance of firepower. imo.