What courage?

There are so manyu fake stories about American atrocities in Iraq, the odd real one shouldn't change anything.

And I don't think it takes particular courage to do something that people will celebrate you for.

Didn't terrorists just a few days ago attack a mosque and kill 58 civilians?

Perhaps those soldiers were brutal morons who deserve to be put to prison forever, perhaps they had recently been shot at and were out of control, certain that everyone in the area was an enemy (in which case I would wonder what the journalist wanted in that area).

I don't know any of these things but I trust the US military more to deal with this than a bloodthirsty uncaring public who ignore worse crimes all the time.

Anyway, if 8 dead civilians are the horror that is unfolding than we are really dealing with the nicest war we have ever fought. If American atrocities are really limited to that, despite the fact that tens of thousands of soldiers are deployed, we are dealing with an impressive discipline rarely found among non-Israeli military.

Have Wikileaks ever reported leaks from terrorists?

Well, back up a second and look at it this way- when this event unfolded, the official U.S military statement was that the reuters employees were smack dab in the middle of a firefight with insurgents and were killed in an action along with several other insurgents. This is a lie, plain and simple. The only people engaged in any kind of hostilities was the gunship- the crowd they fired on was all bunched together and just kind of milling about.

The point is, how many other such events have happened that have been glossed over?

Let's look at a few other examples-

-Haditha- an IED went off next to an American patrol which did kill and wound U.S soldiers. The troops were angry so they stormed the homes surrounding their patrol in order to 'secure' the area. What happened when they entered the homes is another matter- they gunned down 24 civillians. This includes womena and children as young as five or six year olds. The only weapon recovered in the area was a single AK-47 in one of the homes, which was allowed as a household defensive weapon as common practice.

However, the U.S military version of events was also a plain lie- it stated that after the IED went off the convoy came under small arms fire, the marines returned fire and killed 15 insurgents. All of this was a lie to cover-up the fact that war is an atrocity-producing situation, regardless of the uniform being worn.

And then we can't forget the private contractors, like what blackwater did on a crowded street when they opened fire- completely unprovoked- and killed 17 civilians because one of their hired guns got spooked and started shooting.

Hi Dr Guy-

Have you seen the video? The "doctored" portion is simply that they shortened it down to about 17 minutes instead of 35. I watched the full 35 minute version and lo and behold here's what you see-

A bunch of people are randomly milling around on the street. Some of them are armed, yes, but most of them are not. Also, there is -no- way of being able to identify the armed people as "terrorists"-

1) they are not shooting at or engaged in combat with anyone

2) they are not organized in any discernible fashion

3) to assume that a handful of people in civillian clothing  carrying weapons in a large crowd of unarmed people are 'terrorists' is ridiculous.

4) Even if the few armed individuals are terrorists, opening fire on them in a crowd of unarmed people is a violation of pretty much every rule of counter-insurgency- that's exactly what the insurgents want is to foment civillian casualties and thereby expand their recruiting base.

Yes, this is a good point. US forces in the general area were involved in fighting that day. However, no one in the video was engaged in fighting, besides the helicopter which opened fire. This helicopter was over a mile away from the scene and basically saw a handful of guys milling around and made a bad judgement call.

That is what bugs me the most about some comments. Some people want to find fault so bad that they will accept anything that will satisfy their search without truly researching the information to verify if it's true or even accepting that this could be misleading or a lie. On top of that they change their opinions as if these different opinions mean the same.

Arty,

You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't describe it as an act of senseless killing and then call it a bad judgment call. You need to decide if you are sincerely accusing them of purposely killing innocent people just for the fun of it or if they made a mistake and killed them as a bad judgment call. or accept that this may be incorrect as DrGuy is claiming. I have to accept his comment as well since I can neither verify or prove to the contrary whether it's real or not.

You're a broken record, Bahu.  Gave me flashbacks.  Nice writing style, though, if you like that sort of thing.

You are wrong.  Edited and doctored.  But then if you want to believe the worst, you are going to use every excuse to believe that.  And so the truth becomes the first victim of your crusade.

Don't be confused by facts.  They will interfere with your jihad to promote the doctored propaganda.

I forgot more more point. I have not made any value judgement about the incident as the place I come from worse things happen and the so=-caLLED  POLITICIANS GET AWAY WITH murder, rape and pillage. So I record my admiration for the institution that kept the video, did not destry it and when confronted with the video did not claim that it was fake and morphed. So the video is not for propaganda and I certainly am not using it as such.

This is essentially what I have also said. The video is not doctored and the fact that Dr Bob Gates has spoken about it in public means that the US Miliotary will not brush this under the carpet. But the more serious issue still remains: both in Iraq and Afghanistan there have been several incidents that have turned out to be extremely damaging to US image and quietly money is paid out and the noise subsides at least until the next big headline grabber. What the US military needs to put in force is an effective overall command and control structure for air borne attacks based on humit.

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/04/06/vo.apache.reuters.journalists.cnn

The link will take you to the full unedited 34 minute version of the incident.

I have read the DOD investigation report and have provided the link to the pdf downloadable version. Like you I too believe that facts are sacrosant and cannot be distorted to suit 'clever" argumentation. Now, the DoD investigation establishes two "facts": First, the two photograPHERS OF rEUTERS WERE INDEED KILLED. nOW they do make the admission that the 2 men may have accompanied the armed insurgents seen in the area. This version is not consistent with the fact that the 2 men were engaged in filming the fire fight in iots totality and was not onesided. Second, the video version taken from the appache helicopter gunship, according to the authors of the DoD report, were not the full range vision available to the pilots. In other words an admission that there could be an error on the part of the pilots. Anyway compensatory claim was made and perhaps settled.