The Wikileaks collection

[Danny]

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2010/...ateral-murder/

Wings Over Iraq has some interesting viewpoints:

http://wingsoveriraq.blogspot.com/20...important.html

Blackfive:

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2010/0...ntcom-pao.html

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2010/0...aks-video.html

The inevitable tantrums over at Firedoglake and the HP.

I think that this isn't going to go away for some time. I have received some very emotional letters from my post. Some calling me all manner of names, some supportive and even dismissive concerning the incident, but there is much interest and emotion over this issue.

[walrus]

Ken White:

Which is okay, you're both certainly entitled to it but aside from US bashing, you gloss over the fact that war is evil. all war, it begets evil and anyone who thinks you can do it nicely is a bit remiss.

You both also gloss over the excesses and illegalities of the "little brown people" (Walruses words, not mine) to concentrate on whipping the party to the war that, imperfectly and human foible prone for sure, at least tries to do the 'right' thing most of the time as opposed to the opponents blatant disregard for the western norms you both seem to hold dear.

Your opinions are fine as is expressing them and fairness is admittedly a schoolboy concept but I suggest if you wish to speak of hypocrisy, you might give the above a bit of thought.

The Apache crews, as Seabee pointed out, got overexuberant. It happens. The US is not perfect, we make a lot of misteaks (see?) and we do dumb stuff. People do get overexuberant and Nations -- all of them -- foul up on occasion. Get over it, it's a war, it isn't nice and isn't going to be.

Nor should it be. As the guys fighting it on all sides know. Others are offering their opinion and without ever having been in a position of having to determine whether to fire or not, whether to celebrate or cry looking at their first kill and indeed, certainly not being involved directly in an incident under discussion. So I'm not inclined to grant much credence to that noise. I can hear the opinion, accept it, record it as such and move on -- but I wouldn't expend much effort trying to correct a or the 'problem' based on such opinions.

Thank you for your comment.

1. It is sufficient to note that the Military suppressed this video, which confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that this episode was regarded by serving officers as deeply shameful.

2. My understanding is that many Iraqis are armed. I did not notice any signs of furtive activity that might indicate an intention to shoot at troops with the exception of a photographer taking a photo around a corner. I did not notice any concern that they were in range of an Apache gunship either. I am prepared to take advice whether this is a realistic appreciation or not.

3. The attack on the vehicle was premeditated murder in my opinion. Soldiers in other wars have faced a court martial and been shot for less.

4. The content and tone of the voice communication from pilot and gunner suggest a complete lack of any human values at all.

5. As for the "contempt for Western Norms" shown by Jihadists, agreed, however that does NOT excuse us for not upholding them ourselves. Neither does the "War is hell" meme. Two wrongs don't make a right.

I have had enough experience in business of hearing lofty idealistic statements from American management about their commitment to safety, ethics, the value of their employees, the environment, etc., etc. followed by disappointment, to believe that there is an innate propensity for hypocrisy embedded somewhere in the America psyche. The "torture" debate illustrated it rather well.

I am aware of only one successful set of prosecutions for mistreatment of Iraqis - and that was after incontrovertible evidence of abuse, and the abusers, was captured on film at Al Ghraib, and even then it was passed off as "operator error" instead of official policy. Given that the attitudes of the Apache crew are common, and expressed every day on various websites, it is incontrovertible that similar unreported incidents occur and are always condoned.

The official whitewash that occurs each time on of these incidents is independently reported (God forbid that an official report would be made) followed by the hurried retraction when damning evidence is presented, as has just happened again in Afghanistan, suggests that we have a systematic truthiness problem here.

The conclusion must be that the ROE are not there to protect civilian lives, but merely to cover backsides in the dreaded event that the media might find out about bad behaviour.

The second conclusion is that suppressing this video was a mistake, as the incident has been magnified from an "unfortunate incident" into a deliberately suppressed war crime.

[Schmedlap]

1. It is sufficient to note that the Military suppressed this video, which confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that this episode was regarded by serving officers as deeply shameful.

Wow. You have a very low threshold for proof. It seems equally - perhaps even more - plausible that it was not released because it is difficult to explain everything that is happening.

4. The content and tone of the voice communication from pilot and gunner suggest a complete lack of any human values at all.

To be fair, the highly judgmental tone of your post, coupled with such little evidence, doesn't speak very well of you either.

[Ken White]

1. It is sufficient to note that the Military suppressed this video, which confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that this episode was regarded by serving officers as deeply shameful.

I do not know that it was suppressed (not publicly released is not suppression, it is simply non release). It may have been, may not have been. What I do know is that logically, even if it was suppression, that does not prove your 'deeply shameful' assertion.

2. My understanding is that many Iraqis are armed. I did not notice any signs of furtive activity that might indicate an intention to shoot at troops with the exception of a photographer taking a photo around a corner. I did not notice any concern that they were in range of an Apache gunship either. I am prepared to take advice whether this is a realistic appreciation or not.

I cannot advise you on any of that as I was not there and as I'm reasonably sure there is more footage on that tape that we have not seen and which might add considerable context. What I can tell you is that it is unlikely the Iraqis were aware of the Apaches observation of them and that the magnification of the night sensors make those on the ground appear much closer than the probably between 500 and 1,000 meters the birds were away from the target area. Also, their track lock capability keeps the picture fairly steady while the aircraft may be constantly maneuvering in all axes.

I also suggest that even if many Iraqis are / were armed, being armed near a body of other armed folks, particularly a bunch of notoriously trigger happy Americans is likely to attract unwanted attention. As it did in this case.

3. The attack on the vehicle was premeditated murder in my opinion. Soldiers in other wars have faced a court martial and been shot for less.

We can disagree on that. Without being there, we cannot know with certainty.

4. The content and tone of the voice communication from pilot and gunner suggest a complete lack of any human values at all.

Well, of course it does, they're Aviators . Yes, I too am possessed of few human values. FWIW, I recall as much exuberance from an Oz (1/RAR) M-60 gunner outside a little village in Phouc Tuy Province in the summer of 1966. Guys in combat get exuberant at a 'win' because a loss is always rather, er, sobering. Macabre and gallows humor abounds.

5. As for the "contempt for Western Norms" shown by Jihadists, agreed, however that does NOT excuse us for not upholding them ourselves. Neither does the "War is hell" meme. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Sorry, again we can disagree. In my view war is so terribly wrong that there is little sense in talking of right and wrong on individual acts because the potential for those to occur is so great. The overall tenor is the determinant and I'll stack Australia and the US up on the 'they really try to not do wrong' side of that equation (acknowledging that the US due to sheer size is going to have more aberrant acts). Everyone in a war will do some wrong. Everyone (Yes, even moi). It's endemic. The key is to hold it to a minimum, never easy but we and you and most of the west try most of the time. While I agree with you in principle, in practice it is far more difficult than many can envision.

...to believe that there is an innate propensity for hypocrisy embedded somewhere in the America psyche. The "torture" debate illustrated it rather well.

Could be. No question we have a very different approach to many things. Also no question that many nations have reputations they probably don't deserve. For example, I know all Strynes are not Bogans.

The 'torture debate' showed me little other than how people on both sides can twist an issue for political reasons into an unrecognizable and ludicrous interchange that solves nothing. As did the torture debate solve nothing.

I am aware of only one successful set of prosecutions for mistreatment of Iraqis - and that was after incontrovertible evidence of abuse, and the abusers, was captured on film at Al Ghraib, and even then it was passed off as "operator error" instead of official policy. Given that the attitudes of the Apache crew are common, and expressed every day on various websites, it is incontrovertible that similar unreported incidents occur and are always condoned.

Such incidents emphatically do always occur -- and they occur in all Armies at war. All. As to '"always condoned," having seen too many court martialed for offenses even you might call minor, I very much disagree with that. Just because those minor aberrations are not given wide publicity does not mean that nothing is done. There are more out there, I'm sure you could Google up a few -- here's one (LINK). Notice the number charged and the number of dismissals -- for lack of evidence, mostly. The US military justice system has a higher standard of proof than does US civilian law but even so there have been a bunch of charges brought and convictions gained.

...suggests that we have a systematic truthiness problem here.

Again we disagree but I'm not about to waste time on search for punishments and / or the lack thereof. I will acknowledge that the US Army, like any bureaucracy, tries to protect itself and cover up things it should not (think Mohamed Haneef or Utegate ). Unlike you, my experience and observation is that it always comes out eventually. Truthiness in my observation is human proclivity that is pretty much universal (see any Australian politician...).

The conclusion must be that the ROE are not there to protect civilian lives, but merely to cover backsides in the dreaded event that the media might find out about bad behaviour.

I'm not sure I follow that logic. Again you reach a conclusion that does not logically follow the basic assertion. What I am sure of is that you have decided there is evil in the US and its Army and nothing I say is likely to change that -- and that is, as I said, your prerogative...

The second conclusion is that suppressing this video was a mistake, as the incident has been magnified from an "unfortunate incident" into a deliberately suppressed war crime.

Well, I don't think it was suppressed but I do think that whether an "unfortunate incident" or a deliberately suppressed war crime, it will fade from public view as an issue in about two weeks, plus or minus 17%.

Except for the Anti American and / or Anti War crowds, they'll hang onto it long past its shelf date...

[braun]

Obviously, I wasn't there. But I think this incident boils down to this:

The helos were operating in an area of Baghdad which was at the time, a hotspot of AIF activity - an insurgent safe haven is how it has been described to me by folks who were there.

Allegedly US forces had gotten into a contact earlier near the same area, and the Apaches were there for overwatch.

The Apache IDs a group of military-aged males with what appear to be weapons. Indeed, along with the camera equipment carried by the journos, I spotted at least two AKs carried by other men in the group. One of the military-aged males trains a "weapon" in the direction of US ground troops a couple of hundred metres away (and out of frame).

Apache crews ask for permission to engage. Permission is granted. The group of men is engaged.

That is how it started and up to this point IMO it was a righteous decision based on information the Apache crew had at the time. As for the excitable nature of the helo crews... they were doing their job, taking out what they thought were insurgents. They were doing exactly what they should have been doing in order to protect the groundpounders.

I'm not going to comment on the van incident where the children were wounded - that would involve looking at OPSEC material and commenting on it - a no-no regardless of whether the ROE is "historical" or not. I will ask this question - Is it worth destroying a civilian vehicle which is clearly being used to evac a wounded man simply because they MIGHT" be recovering a shot-up AK or two?

I don't like the cut in the video before the hellfire strike on the building - From the comms chatter it appears that a group of insurgents had been tracked to that building. If that's so, then who were the men who were lit up in the first part of the video? 3 missiles to take out a building in a residential area? That whole segment is out of context and proves nothing to me except that the Apache crew had no qualms about incurring collateral damage (civilians near the building).

I believe the video was suppressed by the US DoD and it is going to bite them back - big time.

Yesterday's mad scramble to post the docs up on the Centcom FOI page is clear evidence of either a culture of cover up or total bureaucratic incompetence. Once the initial investigations were over, they could have released this material along with an apology to Reuters and the families of it's employees who were killed, and avoided some of the unpleasantness.

I swear, sometimes the US (and Australian) mil headshed act like freakin' naughty children. Each time there is a backbone failure like this, the more locals get off the fence and pick up a weapon.

[Danny]

Braun makes interesting comments. I am intrigued by them. I guess I have refined my position a bit after studying this more. If it can be shown that this incident violates the ROE, I am at a loss to know why.

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2010/...of-engagement/

In order to avoid the charge of driving visits to my site, I will post my position below. For links, you will have to go to my site - sorry.

Following up from the Wikileaks release of the so-called Collateral Murder video there has been a firestorm of activity over both the internet and television. One self-proclaimed intelligence expert claims that the actions of the Apache pilots violated the rules of engagement.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer … said that based on what he saw in the video, it appeared to be a violation of the military’s Rules of Engagement.

“First rule is, you may engage persons who commit hostile acts or show hostile intent by minimum force necessary,” he said. “Minimum force is necessary. If you see eight armed men, the first thing I would think as an intelligence officer is, ‘How can we take these guys and capture them?’ We don’t want to kill people arbitrarily; we want the intel take.

“Now, most importantly, when you see that van show up to take away the wounded, do not target or strike anyone who has surrendered or is out of combat due to sickness or wounds. So, the wound part of that I find disturbing, being that you clearly have people down, you have people on the way there. Speaking as an intelligence officer, my intent is to capture people, to recover them. That is the idea here. If you’re not really doing that, you’re not really doing precise combat.”

This is a misdirection play. The former intelligence officer was first addressing the issue of violation of the ROE, then switched to the issue of what he would like to see in order to categorize this as precise combat, i.e., capture and intelligence recovery. He offers us no evidence that the actions violated the ROE. He says it and moves on to his pet issues.

There is ample evidence that the actions did not violate the ROE. There are three categories under which these insurgents could have been targeted: (1) TIC (troops in contact) / self defense, (2) deliberate targeting, and finally (3) TST (time sensitive targets).

The AR 15-6 investigation into this incident points out that:

The cameraman raises the camera to sight through the viewfinder and his action appears prompts (sic) one of the pilots to remark “He’s getting ready to fire.” Photos later recovered from the camera show a U.S. Army HMMWV sitting at an intersection, less than 100 meters away from the camera. The digital time/date stamp on the photo indicates that these photos were the ones taken as the cameraman peered from behind the wall. Due to the furtive nature of his movements, the cameraman gave every appearance of preparing to fire an RPG on U.S. Soldiers.

So the actions meet the definition of self defense in the ROE. Next, there is an earlier version of the rules of engagement which has a larger list of potential targets in the deliberate targeting category.

There are six types of preplanned target sets: (1) Non-military elements of former regime command and control and associated facilities, (2) WMD storage facilities, (3) Iraqi infrastructure and Iraqi economic objects, (4) Terrorists, (5) Iraqi lines of communication, and (6) Facilities (associated with Designated Terrorists or Declared Hostile Forces).

But the 2007 revision of the ROE had at least the following list: members of designated terrorist organizations and facilities associated with DTOs. It goes on to list certain DTOs, and as a side bar comment, it isn’t clear to me why Ansar al Sunna isn’t specifically called out. But that has nothing per se to do with this incident, and “other groups or terrorist organizations” covers this operation.

Finally, time sensitive targets (for which there is insufficient time to gain formal authorization) covers the kills at the location of the van which showed up to recover the bodies.

To be sure, this video can be disturbing to those who do not understand that war means enacting and enforcing violence, and can be equally disturbing to those who have had to do so either in Iraq or Afghanistan. Memories can be difficult things. It’s always better in retrospect to learn that the targets you acquired and killed were indeed threats against U.S. forces. This is true in this instance except for two very stupid Reuters journalists embedded with insurgents, and two unfortunate children (who, by the way, lived) who should never have been brought into combat by some very stupid – and dead – insurgents.

[Rex Brynen]

The AR 15-6 investigation into this incident points out that:

The cameraman raises the camera to sight through the viewfinder and his action appears prompts (sic) one of the pilots to remark “He’s getting ready to fire.” Photos later recovered from the camera show a U.S. Army HMMWV sitting at an intersection, less than 100 meters away from the camera. The digital time/date stamp on the photo indicates that these photos were the ones taken as the cameraman peered from behind the wall. Due to the furtive nature of his movements, the cameraman gave every appearance of preparing to fire an RPG on U.S. Soldiers.

Danny is absolutely right to highlight this--it is the crux of any assessment of the initial decision to engage.

The helicopters had a TIC report. They had IDed weapons on the scene (in this, they were correct--although they also mistook cameras for weapons), and IDed an RPG at the scene (and again, although they misidentified the cameraman as having one, there was an RPG found on scene).

This is the photo that the cameraman was taking when the helicopter requested permission to fire:


(h/t, The Jawa Report)

Given that at the time the helicopters believed this to be an RPG, it is hard to see why they wouldn't have engaged the target--because if it had been, that could have been one dead Humvee.

As I mentioned earlier, it is the later decision to enagage the van that was problematic (IMHO)--not the initial decision to shoot.

[Steve the Planner]

In Spring 2008 in Bayji, north of Tikrit, the Salah ad Din governor's teenage son went on a sleepover with some of his frat buddies from school.

A noise was heard outside at night, so the boys grabbed the family AK and went outside---fired up and dead. Very sad.

Nobody was wrong. Everybody was right. But you mix military with civilians, and stuff is going to happen.

I was heartened by Bing West's recent NYT piece. Drop the COIN thing. Go in, clear, hold, turn over to Afghan military/police as rapidly as possible. Let Afghans build if they want to (later).

In the meantime, redirect all US aid around the central government to the places where we determine it will do good. Creating a new and better Afghanistan not part of the mission.

No mystery, no games, no nation-building. Less likelihood of soldiers doing civilian police patrols, and IEDed while doing public works projects. That's where this bad stuff can be trimmed back. WHAM-Bang (or Bing).

I was glad he got a chance to put fresh, independent eyes on Marjah.

[Firn]

Some thoughts about the first scene after watching the video.

The perspective of the pilots:

a) The Apache seems to have been called in to support TIC, which have been fired at from a certain position a some time ago. ( Only a relative position, I doubt that the pilot knew from which direction the attack occured)

b) A group of persons with knowledge of the general location of the TIC is spotted by the Apache in search of insurgents. They seem to be close enough to make them cautious, as one of the cameramen peaks around the corner.

c) The pilots of the Apache who want to support their unit on the ground takes a closer look at the groups of people, searching for insurgents and guns and at once interprets the slung cameras as "guns".

d) These quick "positive" interpretations get confirmed by two real weapons handled by two members of said "group".

e) The handling of the camera gets interpreted thus as a preparation to fire the "RPG". This creates urgency, as the pilots may think that the troops are in his sights and forces a quick reaction.

f) The pilots communicate their interpretations, get confirmations and quickly try to destroy the threat.


If you observe the video sitting in front of your computer while knowing the identity of the "RPG gunners" and the background a lot of things jumb right into your eyes.

a) You know for sure that the people with the slings carry cameras which makes you wonder all the more why the pilots comes up with "guns"

b) You see also that the persons seen as insurgents are rather calm and point the reporters where a fight happened. They could be insurgents just as they could be the self-defence forces of that block or quarter which heard the noise of the fight and want to help the reporters to get a story ( and some money for this information).

c) Nobody of the said person shows any hostile intent or will to engage the US troops. Why should they be insurgents?

d) You see a group of people with two obvious innocents discussing rather calmly something and getting mowed down.

e) The pilots use gibby and macabre language to deride said people and the two innocents.



Most people on the net saw version 2 and screamed murder.


Firn

[Rex Brynen]

Some thoughts about the first scene after watching the video.

Well said.

While regrettable, it is hardly surprising that the helicopters fired on what appeared to be a group of armed men immediately following a report of TIC, especially when one of them appeared to be sighting an RPG (actually a camera) down the street. The pilots, after all, hardly had the luxury of playing and replaying the video to be certain.

However, firing on the vehicle recovering the wounded journalist--which, for all we know, could have simply been a Good Samaritan, or a relative--was certainly a serious mistake. There was clearly no evidence of weapons or hostile intent.

The language used by the helicopter crew? You'll find something similar, I would wager, in every war zone, with every army.

The "cover up" ? More bad PR by the DoD. While I can understand not wanting to release footage of every civilian accidentally killed, it ought to have been clear that the deaths of two journalists required special handling.