Collateral Murder
Out of context: Reply #20
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- locustsloth0
"Lots of people avoiding talking murderous attack on the van/wounded; strawmanning camera/rpg confusion as the issue" (from the WikiLeaks twitter)
i don't think anyone is avoiding talk of a murderous attack. In fact, this thread is a testament to the fact that people recognize how horrible it is to see a man crawling for his life, seeing that man picked up into a van to rescue him, only to have the van torn to shreds by another round of bullets. The murder aspect of it is, in fact, the current slant of the story. i guess maybe they're talking about govt officials who may be trying to explain away, but that's their job. They (as far as i have read) are expressing regret and acknowledging that the situation was extremely unfortunate, but that the soldiers acted as they should have with the info that they had.
And i don't see the confusion issue as being a straw-man. It's a legitimate issue. Replace the journalists with RPG carrying insurgents and this would be a somewhat different discussion. It would be "Dramatic Footage of the Elimination of a Potential Threat". It's still shocking and it's still graphic and, technically, it's still murder. But it's war.
It's the situation that these people put themselves in, both sides. All sides, actually, for even the journalists had to know that they were putting themselves in danger. It seems they didn't alert the US military that they'd be there. Why would they, as it would limit their ability to document the insurgents. They're not Red Cross or UN, with an emblem on their back.The whole thing stinks; war, death, killing, all of it.