This is pretty sick stuff. These people were clearly not armed (unless you can call a video camera a weapon) and what's worse is that it also clearly demonstrates that indiscriminate firing upon unarmed civilians has been the norm in Iraq, and now almost certainly in Afghanistan as well.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/6/massacre_caught_on_tape_us_military

"This video has clearly been portrayed in a light that brings discredit to the U.S. Military."

No, it brings discredit to those who abuse the U.S. military. Military force is a blunt instrument to be used as an absolute last resort, for reasons of true self-defense. It's not appropriate to use it simply because neocon political theory states that a president needs to be a "war president" in order to move their agenda, foreign and domestic, forward.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/06/iraq/index.html

excerpt--

"The WikiLeaks video is not an indictment of the individual soldiers involved -- at least not primarily. Of course those who aren't accustomed to such sentiments are shocked by the callous and sadistic satisfaction those soldiers seem to take in slaughtering those whom they perceive as The Enemy (even when unarmed and crawling on the ground with mortal wounds), but this is what they're taught and trained and told to do. If you take even well-intentioned, young soldiers and stick them in the middle of a dangerous war zone for years and train them to think and act this way, this will inevitably be the result. The video is an indicment of the U.S. government and the war policies it pursues.

All of this is usually kept from us. Unlike those in the Muslim world, who are shown these realities quite frequently by their free press, we don't usually see what is done by us. We stay blissfully insulated from it, so that in those rare instances when we're graphically exposed to it, we can tell ourselves that it's all very unusual and rare. That's how we collectively dismissed the Abu Ghraib photos, and it's why the Obama administration took such extraordinary steps to suppress all the rest of the torture photos: because further disclosure would have revealed that behavior to be standard and common, not at all unusual or extraordinary."

Jeez, I was posed a loaded question, and merely responded with one of the most commonly used examples of loaded questions, "Have you stopped beating your wife." But I guess that went right over someone's head.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/loadques.html

Exposition:

A "loaded question", like a loaded gun, is a dangerous thing. A loaded question is a question with a false or questionable presupposition, and it is "loaded" with that presumption. The question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" presupposes that you have beaten your wife prior to its asking, as well as that you have a wife. If you are unmarried, or have never beaten your wife, then the question is loaded.

Since this example is a yes/no question, there are only the following two direct answers:

"Yes, I have stopped beating my wife", which entails "I was beating my wife." "No, I haven't stopped beating my wife", which entails "I am still beating my wife." Thus, either direct answer entails that you have beaten your wife, which is, therefore, a presupposition of the question. So, a loaded question is one which you cannot answer directly without implying a falsehood or a statement that you deny. For this reason, the proper response to such a question is not to answer it directly, but to either refuse to answer or to reject the question.

Some systems of parliamentary debate provide for "dividing the question", that is, splitting a complex question up into two or more simple questions. Such a move can be used to split the example as follows:

"Have you ever beaten your wife?" "If so, are you still doing so?" In this way, 1 can be answered directly by "no", and then the conditional question 2 does not arise.

"Part of my support of our armed forces involves me accepting that our military men and women are fallible human beings... who sometimes make mistakes in the heat of battle."

Of course, this is the one predictable aspects of warfare-- it is pure chaos and violence. But in this tape, it was pretty evident that the soldiers doing the firing weren't particularly concerned with whether or not they were making mistakes, and I think that is precisely how they have been trained to act.

"And fer cryin' out loud... if these are reporters, journalists "on duty"... WTF are they doin' drivin' around with children in a frackin' war zone?!?!?"

The journalist was the injured guy they were trying to help. Why were they trying to help him? Because he was injured. Why were they there with their kids? Because they live there.

" As gruesome as it is to watch this was a legit shoot within the ROE."

I don't doubt that one bit. When you have ROE that say the first option is to shoot, and the only other option is to shoot with an even more destructive weapon, you end up with lots of dead Iraqis.

I'm not necessarily faulting the soldiers for this. That's what they're trained to do, and once you start the wanton destruction of a country, you find yourself getting shot at a lot, and your survival depends on being not too picky about shooting back. That's exactly why Bush, Cheney and the whole neocon war criminals should be on trial in the Hague.

vertigo (Jesse Crittenden)

You speak the truth. Thanks for sharing.

thanks Jesse! unfortunately Boozo already had its mind made up before this video was released. and its mind is severely stilted.

poor Boozo doesn't appreciate the freedom he/she/it has to carp, that that right was defended by warfighters of many generations.
war is not a tea and crumpets parlor game for gawd's sake!

and I love how Boozo thinks he/she/it has all kinds of expertise to analyze the video. then cites www.democrazynow.com like that's a valid source!

we see idjiots like Boozo calling for bush/cheney/rummy/rove to be jailed, executed, tried as war criminals. and they wonder why we speak so angrily about them shredding the constitution, giving massive coruption that causes your healthcare quality to depend on what state of the union is your place of residence!

btw, Boozo, here you've made at least three of your stupidest comments ever, right up there with your epic failure on the definition of what is profit.