Could not find anything about this doing a search here, never heard about this anywhere until now, and supposedly, the video was unavailable until very recently. If inappropriate mods, do what needs to be done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0&feature=player_embedded#
yes, the video/commentary is set up in such a way to not give .mil any slack what so ever.
As usual, hindsight is 20/20. Would you have done the same?
In the moment and at that point in time I’m sure our guys did what they felt was the right thing with the information that they had available to them. However, taking two children into that area immediately following the incident was beyond stupidity.
100%. You can see at least one guy carrying at least a rifle. Hard to tell exactly what it is from the video but it ain’t no camera, otherwise the niffty captions would’ve pointed out that it was a harmless little stick bunny.
The message I put up:
Bad decisions all around. Dont know what the pilots saw, but I did not see any RPGs, but perhaps 1 or 2 AKs…and the reporters made a bad choice in hanging out there. You cannot expect to get footage from the “front” and not be put at risk of being shot at.
Remember the pilots are trying to make sure everything is safe for soldiers on the ground. We can armchair quarterback this all day, but they have only seconds to make the call.
This is why we embed reporters with our guys right? So they don’t go out on their own and look suspicious and wind up getting killed. The cameras present don’t really mean anything, the terrorists record their actions all the time from what I have seen.
And also, like irish said, wtf is up with taking kids right down to a spot where guys just got blown up by a helicopter cannon? Keep them inside maybe?
When you try to get some good photos of hell, sometimes you get burned.
We should have been backing the secular sunnis from the beginning instead of the shia religious nutjobs. Forgive me for speaking frankly, but firing at a vehicle trying to evacuate a wounded guy is something the Japs or Viet Cong would do to us, or the Germans and Soviets would do to each other.
-It seemed as if those involved were a little “trigger happy”. Like they were clawing at the ground just waiting for someone to give them the ok to light this group up.
-The group fired upon didn’t appear to be up to anything sinister
-They seemed to jump very quickly to “He’s got an RPG!”. I would have expected them to hold off a little longer, and continue surveillance to actually confirm beyond a doubt that it was an RPG. Obviously, its easy to say that from here though.
-I’m not sure about firing on the van that pulled up
-I’m also surprised about the kids being given off to someone else. I’m sure the base had plenty of wounded to attend to, but lighting up a van that’s picking up the wounded/dead, and then handing off the kids to the IP sends the message that the US does what it wants, and then gives the mess they create to someone else to deal with.
Fog of War.
We apologize for killing your reporters embedded with bad people. We’re sorry for killing bad people’s kids too. Maybe they should have been better parents.
if I was to live in a war zone I would be careful when I go out and never carry anything that looks like a weapon ? I would not go out and pick up wounded who just go hit with my kids in the car !!!
heck I would move I guess or try to make sure I was under cover
sadly I have heard from some in the know that these idiots dont mind putting their kids in harms way cause they know if something happens it will reflect badly on the U.S. and they are OK with that ?
as far as camera people its kinda like anything you take risks and sometimes crap happens
I guess in WWII I wonder how many allied cameraman hung out with the japanese or the Nazis ?
as a photographer I would never take sides with the enemy to get a story
I would tell the story from our side not the enemies
the comments on the video page are kinda pathetic and typical sadly
I guess I look at it like most of the world likes to point blame at us so we should just to ahead and do what they think we are and take over all the oil fields and call them ours 
No red cross or ambulance markings that I could see. Also were picking up weapons.
Group of armed men close to a patrol. What else would they be doing?
I can see how the pilots could confuse the camera for an RPG but even if they saw it as a camera doesn’t mean anything. They like to film their shit and put it on the internet. In fact Id take that as a clue they were about to do something and were planning on filming it.
Like I said the van didn’t have any red cross or ambulance markings. Plus they were trying to pick up the weapons. Medical workers don’t do that.
Part of handing off control to Iraq is letting them treat their own. They aren’t going to advance if we do everything for them.
Also without getting into specifics the ROE can be changed based on the conditions on the ground and the current threat intel. There is a general ROE, and then supplements can be made to either restrict it further or loosen it up. Take the Battle of Fallujah for instance. The ROE was changed for that mission.
Although it does suck they were killed they were stupid for embedding themselves with insurgents, and basically looking the part. We’ve killed tons of those guys, and I would not want to place myself on the receiving end of the US military. They took the risk to get the story. Lots of reporters have died by putting themselves at great risk to themselves to get a story no one else is willing to do. Natl Geographic had a special on where they went out with some SF soldiers in Afghanistan, and some of their staff was wounded/killed by an IED blast (along with US mil). Some reporters have the mentality rules don’t apply to them, and because they are journalists they get special treatment even in the middle of a war zone. You cannot expect our military to be able to make that distinction on the spot 100% of the time, and in this case they got mixed in with the wrong crowd.
The “rpg” was actually a camera with a telephoto lens. I see two guys who are carrying long items like you can carry an AK but the video is too blurry. I do however see multiple cameras, camera bags, and at least one tripod-like object being carried like a tripod.
It doesn’t help that the guy(s) on the radio were sickeningly begging to kill everyone in the van and nearby when I didn’t see a single rifle slung on anyone’s shoulder. While the first part is pretty much a case of false id, the second part with the van is just messed up.
I have heard from others that the company the photographers were working for were known in the past to embed themselves with enemy combatants. Although what led up to this event I’m unaware of. The video clip as it is makes it seem rather unprovoked.
But we can all play armchair commandos on this all day long. None of this would have happened if we weren’t there. Hopefully that changes very soon.
Those guys in the air? They’re Soldiers. When their fellow Soldiers are on the ground getting shot up, they come in and do their duty. Their duty is to kill anything in the beaten zone that may cause harm to their fellow Soldiers. When they make “Those Bastards” dead, they’re protecting and saving their fellow Soldiers lives. They will not hesitate while their friends are dying. They’re angels of mercy if you’re on the right side of the battlefield. If you’re on the wrong side, they’re angels of death.
The reason they use language like that is twofold. They’re excited to be saving their fellow Soldiers. They’re also somewhat dehumanizing their targets. You can’t continue to kill people in a protracted battle without incurring some psychological damage. You have to find a way to mitigate the damage it inflicts, or you will not survive the tour of duty in one piece. Your fellow Soldiers are counting on you to bring the fire when they need it, so you suck it up and do what you have to do to survive.
Sometimes foolish people intercede where they should not. They die, life goes on. Let the grieving grieve, but it’s nothing that should in any way deter our Soldiers from their duty, which is to drive the enemy from the battlefield. Whether they’re driven with a white flag over their shoulder or in a meat wagon is up to them.
Unlucky.
I was in Northern Iraq in '07. Our aerial scout weapon platforms could not engage unless they had positive ID from ground forces. Incidents like this one would have been blamed on the ground commander. I’m not sure how they fought in Baghdad but in Mosul our pilots were not free to just engage without someone on the ground directing fire.
While the video is damning, we have to understand that the pilots seemed to be in a bit of a hurry at the time, and the houses and walls were in the way of taking a good image. The Apache crew seemed intent on protecting the US forces located to the west of this group. They looked at the group approaching the intersection and had mere seconds to decide if they were hostiles.
What were they doing at night, flanking a US position in the middle of a firefight? Taking pictures or maybe setting up an ambush using what was mistakenly identified as an RPG. What would any of us done with the information they had at the time, honestly?
its seems more exonerating than damning, to me… there’s obviously people with weapons, the “RPG” sure as shit looks like an RPG… one guy appears to be shooting around a corner of a building with the guy with the RPG coming up from behind… they engage the moment they’ve swung back around and cleared the buildings where the group is huddled as though in a loose, poorly trained stack, with Americans in the vicinity…
what more do you need? looks like a good shoot to me.
If you look closely at the tip of the reported RPG, at around 4:14, just before the helicopter swings around, you’ll see the entire profile of the camera with the telephoto lens. But we were trained by the intro to look for that telephoto lens. These highly trained helicopter pilots were looking for threats that could ambush their buddies on the ground. So they saw AK-47s and an RPG. That is my point. THIS video is damning because it tells us what these guys were holding before we are allowed to make the judgment ourselves. These guys were under alot of pressure, not sitting in their homes watching YouTube videos like me.
As I said even if it was correctly ID’d as a camera it doesn’t change anything. Insurgents love to video their “missions” for propaganda.
As someone with photography experience with telephoto lenses and dSLR cameras I can tell you for sure that it is a telephoto lens you are mistaking as an RPG. Maybe your screen is small or you’re not looking. I thought it was pretty clear as day that it was a camera and the “rpg” claim over the radio was frightening because I knew they were just about to mow down a bunch of photographers.