Quote Originally Posted by mendel View Post
If this was a military operation (with uniforms and all), even the drivers would at least have sidearms.
So if the combat cameraman ditches his sidearm he's protected? Recce pilots? How about a MG a-gunner or tank driver? Obviously not; they're combatants. They bring sidearms along because there's no reason not to, not because they're likely to be useful.

My view is, if they didn't bring weapons, they're noncombatants. Your view seems to be, if they're in the vicinity of an RPG, they're combatants. That's where we differ.
If they're executing a combat mission, they're combatants. That includes the guy standing next to the guy with an RPG as he prepares to fire (on a US convoy), the guy who's holding the extra round, the drivers, scouts, messengers, and the camera guys. The most logical reason not to carry extraneous weaponry is that they have to escape afterward, possibly through checkpoints (which is also the most logical reason for the kids); that doesn't mean they are noncombatants, it means they're "unlawful" combatants.

Then the situation with the camera looking around the corner develops, where the Apache crew states (20:40) "yeah, we had a guy shootin'", and BM comes back with "negative". From the further unfolding of events, I think that didn't really get through to them, because from then on they seem to operate on the assumption that any delay is going to cost friendly lives (they then fire into a group of ~10 men, 5 of whom they have PID'd with weapons, if we're including the two cameras - they may not even have misidentified them).
Those conversations aren't related: from context the ground radio transmission is obviously to the other ground unit (somewhat stepped on in the recording by the intercom). And the implication that they should hold fire on an ambusher because the enemy might've brought some unarmed men to the ambush site strikes me as eyerollingly ludicrous. (And, like some of the other disputed changes to the GCs, likely to produce a battlefield even more dangerous to civilians rather than more civilized.)

Would more detail have prevented them from mistaking a lens flash for a muzzle flash as their flight path made them lose sight of the cameraman? Hard to say, but I doubt it. I want to know what made them miss the fact that ground said there was no shooting, and what made them see the van as a legitimate target.
I don't think there's any evidence to support the "lens flash" theory either. The lens remains pointed at the ground and the chatter afterward is that the RPG is "getting ready to fire." As to the ground guy's radio comm, he takes responsibility at ~15:25 into the long vid, and it's clear he vectored the Apaches onto the target, not that he was trying to warn them off. Finally, a van removing combatants from a battlefield is a legitimate target.

I find this overanalysis fun (obviously), but essentially meaningless. The guys actually in contact had to operate with far less information, with far more stress in far less time, and the arguments for their misconduct even with hindsight are underwhelming. The glaring things to me are that the insurgents were playing the ROE like a Stradivarius, and correctly prioritizing the propaganda mission above casualty production. Their allies and fellow travelers still are. And the biggest takeaway is that we need to get our IW act together (starting with better controls over engagement videos).