Gates on Wikileaks Video: “Not Helpful” but “Should not Have Lasting Consequences”

Gates shows hes got a knack for making excuses to rationalize the hugely irresponsible war hes conducting half way across the planet.
All thoughts are in sympathy for his troops who are ‘being shot at’ while innocent people get gunned down for having the misfortune of being in the path of American imperialism…. Sorry I mean ‘self defense’.

Gates is an idiot who makes a living out of magical tricks. In this case he tries to make crimes disappear before our own eyes. Unfortunately this magic trick went terribly wrong when an unedited, uncensored, undistorted and unearthed example of the truth on film showed up. Most people know what murder looks like when they see it, and this video shows it.

I watched the entire video on wikileaks. There were no split second decisions going on by the helicopter personnel. From the video, it would seem that there should be charges brought against the men who committed such indiscriminate killing.
From what I saw, one of the Iraq men had a rifle size gun. He was not pointing the gun at anyone. I didn’t see any other weapons. Someone on the helicopter mistakenly identified the camera one respected photographer was carrying as an RPG, and they look nothing alike. They then called in for permission to fire, giving erroneous information. Again, getting the okay took several minutes, there was no split second decision- making going on. After they mowed down the original men in the street, even the clearly unarmed ones running away after the first salvo missed them, the dust cleared enough to see one obviously gravely wounded man lying down and pulling himself slowly away from the area. At that point someone on the helicopter said clearly, I’m paraphrasing here, pick up a weapon so I can shoot you again.
After a few minutes of this injured guy, he was actually a respected reporter, resting and then trying to move a few more feet, a van pulls up. Here someone in the helicopter clearly lies, that the men in the van are picking up bodies and weapons. The two men from the van only went over to the injured man and were trying to put him in the van. In the window of the van are two children. Again the helicopter men call in to get permission to fire, which takes a minute or two. Again, not a split second decision. Again, they receive permission due to their erroneous reporting of the situation and open fire on the van. I believe all the men died and two children in the van were seriously wounded. I don’t know if they survived.
In my opinion, Gates should not be defending the terribly immoral actions of these soldiers, just as badly behaving police should not be protected or priests who are pedophiles. It does great harm to our armed services reputation if criminal disregard for civilian life is not punished. Again, the video shows that this was not an under-fire, split-second decision, in which case mistakes can unfortunately happen. In my opinion it was at the very least manslaughter.

Posted by: nancy | Apr 11, 2010 3:52:25 PM
Those were real innocent people with families and children who were methodically and deliberately slaughtered by U.S. soldiers – they were not ‘paint ball’ contestants.

I thought Obama passed himself off as a ‘moderate’ and promised to ‘end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan’? In fact, how can any intelligent individual when referring to the Nobel Peace Prize place Dr. Martin Luther King and Obama in the same sentence????? The contrast is glaring.

Jake,
Why did you fail to mention the guys with the AKs and RPG launcher? They were CLEARLY part of that group.

At least the rules of engagement at this time had the pilots within line of sight and actually making decisions from the combat theater. Our current president prefers the sterility of indiscriminate drone attacks orchestrated from a video booth thousands of miles away.
Didn’t see a lot of condemnation of that tactic in the comments below.

Unlawful combatants, which the individuals shown in this video clearly are, do not fall under the protections of the laws of war. They received the treatment prescribed for such.

I thought that was pretty good shooting. I think the main gun needs to be zeroed a bit…..
This is a war zone. They were carrying weapons and not in uniform. That makes them a legitimate target. The news guys should have been wearing “Press” bibs. They were not. And did they think they were gonna get a free pass because they were inbedded with the enemy? There’s a risk to being a war correspondent. If a vehicle pulls up to assist the wounded, and does not have any Markings on it to designate it as such, then the vehicle is fair game. Ironically, the wounded newsman, which there is no way of knowing at the time, probably would’ve received treatment had the van not stopped to help. ROE was being followed, there was no shooting unless he picked up a weapon. Then he would become a lawful target. War is not pretty. People actually get killed. They don’t rejuvinate ala video game. Would you people have rejoiced had the RPG gunner taken out the HMMWV that pulled up at the end?

If the above isn’t clear, I support those soldiers actions 100%. Even their comments because that is the reality of combat, something “people” like yourselves have no concept or grasp of.

All you who support the murderers in the helicopter have no business complaining about 9/11 – after all, it’s their own damned fault for being in the towers. I think that attacking people for walking around their own neighbourhood in their own city in streets that were safe before the invasion by the way and saying that they deserve to die is outrageously evil and I hope that people like you suffer horribly for that evil.

Rules of engagement were followed correctly by the US forces.
The video clearly armed personel mixed in with 2 camera-men.
In general, we want to destroy the enemy in place before they have a chance to kill coalition forces.
When civilians want to bring their cameras, kids and whatever else into a combat zone they should take extra care to not look like enemy combatants or the results will be truly tragic.
This is not rocket science. This could have all been avoided by the jouranlists and “ambulance” being properly marked and easily identified. THis is THEIR failure…not US forces.
Tragic none-the-less

These Reuters Journalists knew that embedding with enemy combatants would expose them to fire yet they chose to go into the battle zone totally un-identified (as did the vehicle that came to get them).
Fatal foolishness 100% their fault.

Art. 3. In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following
provisions:
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
(2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.
The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.
The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

this is clearly murder and Mr Gates is just lying through his teeth, as he wants to keep his high paying job, like all the rest of the “administration”. These unarmed civilians are Iraqi nationals and entitled to stand in the streets of their country, after 7 years of war, devastation etc and brutal treatment by illegal occupying forces, searching for non-esisting “weapons of mass destruction” and other crazy lies concocted by Bush and his cronies;it is too easy to believe any propaganda, most of which has been proved to be lies. Murder cannot be justified whether by a false court,puppet government, or by the lies to excuse the murders in this video. Long term these Iraqi will hate U.S. and the western powers and we will all suffer in other ways. There has to be a better way to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people; you can only keep them quiet by force for so long. You have already killed 700,000+ civilians, caused 2 to 3 million refugees and untold suffering, while ruining the infrastructure, with no clean water, sewerage etc. Tough guy tactics are not the answer to winning over the people of these countries and this wanton slaughter of unarmed civilians will only further alienate the Iraqis from U.S. These Iraqi’s are intelligent and know the truth of what is being done illegally to them and their country by an illegal occupying force of “allies”; at least under their dictator they had some sort of basic living.Such occupation justifies Iran,Israel,North Korea etc going Nuclear to deter invasion. It is never too late to make peace with honour and to try and negotiate terms with the Iraqi people and the people of Afghanistan,just as U.S. did in Vietnam and North Korea. Mr Blair now says he was misled by Bush and that in hindsight he had no authority to “believe” the lies about the nonexistent WMD. The world knows the truth, and all the smart ass excuses for murder do not fool anyone.”split second decisions” like in My Lai, Vietnam, just cowardice.

tierra
Those were real innocent people with families and children who were methodically and deliberately slaughtered by U.S. soldiers – they were not ‘paint ball’ contestants.
They were involved in an attack on our troops, that’s why the Apaches were called in.
If they were “real innocent people” then it was dumb luck that they just happened to be in the area with Ak’s and RPG’s when the Apaches were looking for a group in that area with Ak’s and RPG’s.

Lydia
“From what I saw,”
And that’s a problem isn’t it?
“one of the Iraq men had a rifle size gun. He was not pointing the gun at anyone.”
The fact that you have trouble ID’ing weapons does not mean there were no weapons.
Why didn’t wikileaks explain that this group had been involved in an attack on our troops earlier?
Why didn’t wikileaks explain that the Apaches were called in because of that attack?
“I didn’t see any other weapons. Someone on the helicopter mistakenly identified the camera one respected photographer was carrying as an RPG,”
Watch the video again, THIS TIME listen to the radio conversation.
The ID of the weapons, request to fire, and permission to fire, ALL occurred BEFORE the group disappeared behind the wall.
It is completely irrelevant what the guy who pops out from the corner had in his hand as the Apache was circling around to make the shot.
The decision to fire had already been made.

“Killing some civilians”, great choice of words…
I would say:
“murdering many civilians”
racist bull ****

It’s unbeleivable that anyone is criticizing this. These were justified killings, during a war, and the RoE were followed. The embeds couldn’t be discerned from those enemy combatants carring weapons — they knew the risks yet chose to hang with the thugs. Using precision munitions saved many dozens of lives in that situation — perhaps, the military should just go back to carpet bombing the enemy (much like the press and Liberals are attempting to do to the military in the media), eh?

Those soldiers should get an award of something for hitting the jackpot with killing those embedded terrorist-propagandists aka ‘reuters’.
What do you think the morale impact would have been if these terrorist-propagandists could have selling their photo trofees with dead American Soldiers?

Magicky
It is Geneva convention IV.
Article 28 of the IVth Geneva Convention. Please excuse my prior typo.
And no the insurgents are not signiatories.

Lavaux
“Seriously, though, having done a hitch in the Army, I can testify that it’s not staffed with saints and Rhodes scholars”
As far as “Rhodes scholars” the most over rated accolade ever, it depends.
It depends on your ASVAB score.
The old saying “Be all you can be” To be honest it should have been “Be all you can be according to your ASVAB score”

Weren’t these dudes the same type of journalist who happily videotaped the bodies of dead American servicemen as they were being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in 1994?
Or the mutilated bodies of the military contractors hung from the bridge in Fallujah?
Or the videos of American soldiers getting killed by snipers?
Tough crap. Life’s a beotch.

Lydia:
Rules of engagement in this circumstance has not changed. In fact president Obama has added 10x the number of unmanned Predator drones to Afghanistan Pakistan region and they blast “men simply in the streets” carrying machine guns and RPGs at a significantly increased rate over the Bush administration.
If these pilots wait until insurgents shoot more at coalition forces when they could have removed the threat and saved ally( or US) lives…we would have a lot more dead on our side. That is why it doesn’t work that way.
This is one thing President obama appears to actually have right.

According to the audio, the people identified fired on the helicopter. However, we saw no smoke from an RPG nor did we see the posture of people who fired AK-47s at an Apache. So, regardless of what people claim happened before the video, the pilot wasn’t telling the truth, and Gates isn’t, either. Also, in the audio, the pilot labels the van as a bongo truck at the end. He also clearly says the wounded man wasn’t armed and wants him to pick a gun. The men carrying him didn’t appear to have any weapons. They say, seeing is believing. Based on the video and audio, I don’t believe the US military. I don’t believe in the government or military. We have been lied to way too many times. Do you remember Pat Tillman? They lied about him. They tried to cover up Abu Ghraib, bad things in Guantanamo. We can’t believe our leaders. If we could, would we be in Iraq and angry over being there?

This is just another reason why we should not start preemptive wars on lands that just happen to have oil. U.S. soldiers should get out as quick as that can. The military mind is trained to kill. There is no honor in this WAR. We should not be sending our kids to the meat grinder that is war. I feel for all the innocent that are losing their lives over there, both US and Iraqi.

Simple lesson here.
If you are a journalist who wants to report from and film from the insurgents side as they attack coalition forces… have your insurance paid up.
It is amazing to see people who don’t know the US Forces fire back in an ambush.

Saddam Hussein was personally involved in funding and encouraging 9-11. Saddam Husseins intelligence services provided the false passports needed for the 1st WTC attack in the early 90′s too.
He even posted murals all over Iraq taking credit for it.
I know how unpopular this is but some day the truth will come out.

Gates is completely wrong in his assumption that the attack wont damage the image of the US in the world. Gates is clearly not in touch with what is written in the press day after day since the video was released. Not only in alternative media but also in the NY Times, the UK Times and most reputed newspapers around the world. There was noone firing at the US troops at the scene or anywhere near it. That is a FACT. Gates is either horribly misinformed or he is lying.

I do not know what the broader picture was at the time when the video was recorded. I think it is regrettable that the soldiers are laughing after the kill, but suppose this is true to life. However, if everyone including soldiers and authorities is aware that their actions may be examined “through a straw” such as this, perhaps people will be more circumspect and take their actions more seriously? And perhaps if WikiLeaks had been an option at the onset of My Lai or Abu Grharib or Tiananmen or in the Balkans under Milosevich or when Sadam Hussein attacked the Kurds with chemical weapon – perhaps none of these things would have ever happened? Just perhaps? NSA Director Gates is a reasonable man. I am sure he will agree that “not helpful” is a small price to pay to ensure against absolute tyrrany corrupting absolutely.