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Originally Posted by hot_pastrami
The fact is that the pilots made no effort to clear the scene of innocent civilians before opening up. These people bleeding in the streets (look for heading "Civilians Killed As Dawn Battle Erupts In Baghdad") are the same people we "saved" from Saddam, and here we are blowing them up unnecessarily, and without warning. Even circling once or twice before firing would have probably done the trick. What is it, exactly, we have liberated these people from? |
here is the thing - we weren't there. we don't know how or why things went down the way the did. we are relying on the reporting that is made available to us. each person has an agenda.
did the pilots just wake up and decide they were going to wack some innocents today? maybe, but it doesn't sound like the actions of any of the pilots i know or have known.
was there some type of warning given that we aren't aware of? we have no way of knowing.
would circling a couple of times opened the helicopters up to rpg fire? we have no way of knowing.
were the people milling around the disabled bradley, on a street involved in a battle really innocent civilians? we don't know.
what i do know is that professional soldiers don't get off on killing people for no good reason. i know that it is a career ender to be found guilty of firing inappropriately. i know that most soldiers do their best to help people, not go out of their way to harm them needlessly. that is my starting point for looking at all incoming information. so i run what little info we have through my life's experiences and come up with the conclusion that A) we don't know all the details so passing judgement is inappropriate B) we will never know al the details unless you speak first hand with people that were on the ground and in the air and take multiple views into account. that won't happen because the military is not going to give interviews. bad shit happens in battle.
each person's experiences will cause them to look at the same info and come to a different conclusion. if your starting point is that gwb started the Iraq war as a neocon adventure and the military is full of incompetence and they have completely lost control of the situation, it would be easy to see the incoming info and decide that these were obviously innocent civilians minding their own business before they were ambushed and killed by a helicopter attack.