Assuming the information coming over the audio of the provided video is correct, how is the initial engagement not justifiable? They had a group armed with rifles and one man with an RPG, taking position at a corner and peeking out at apparently a small detachment of U.S. soldiers in Humvees (roughly at the 4:20 mark of the video).
If these were noncombatant Reuters staff why were they literally running around Baghdad with a bunch of men with AK-47s and an RPG? Holding a camera doesn't mean soldiers won't (or shouldn't) shoot at you.
EXACTLY.
War is always a moral outrage and innocents die, but in this particular case the soldiers acted in proper form and consistent with standard R.O.E.
The insurgents have a long history of exploiting USA's ROE, but using children in warfare, pretending to be journalists or medical workers, using protected sites - mosques, hospitals, etc - to shoot at soldiers.
All liberals should READ THE GENEVA CONVENTION.
Just because an enemy hides among civilians does not make them immune from attack. If that were the case war itself would be criminal in its entirety.
The REAL issue is rules of proportion. This isn't based on body count, but military objective.
In this particular situation, you clearly see an armed combatant. I doubt the helicopter had a clear enough view to pick-out any civilians, so they were in the right to shoot.
Now, if the helicopter was purposefully targeting civilian areas, then yes that would qualify as a war crime. Most of the time Western militaries won't target heavily-fortified insurgent outposts if their loaded with civilians.
I know in Gaza virtually all of the Hamas leadership hid under hospitals in the major cities. Even though Israel could easily level the hospitals, they chose not to because it would probably end up killed 3,000+ inhabitants.
However, the burden of guilt rests on the insurgents. They embed themselves among civilians, they are responsible for their deaths.
You can damn well be sure the attitude of the soldiers on the front lines is: better a million Iraqis, and a million Reuters "journalists" embedded with insurgents die before one American soldier.
And if you think this is bad, go watch some video of the convoys shooting up Iraqi cars on the roads.
I'm sorry, but do you know anything about a military? US soldiers don't go to Iraq to kill themselves. Americans don't have a death wish. It is the responsibility of commanders to protect their soldiers. If they don't, soldiers won't trust their leaders and they'll probably refuse orders.
Civilians are always an issue, but when it boils down to combat - the soldiers live will always take precedence over a civilian living among the enemy.
Far more Iraqis have been killed by other Iraqis than by Americans. Yesterday a suicide bomber blew himself up at a rest-area and killed ~50 people.
Overall America's performance in Iraq and Afghanistan has largely been censored, and typically journalists are embedded among the military, not the insurgents. If USA were to receive the Israeli treatment...dear god....there would not be enough flags to burn.
If YOU WANT graphic footage, go watch innocents being beheaded. Go watch videos of Saudis beheading foreigners who dare to convert out of Islam. Go watch videos of Thai soldiers being captured by Islamists, and getting their bodies chopped into pieces.
Go look at the pictures of 100,000+ pro-French Harkis who were massacred by the Leftist revolutionaries when France pulled out of Algeria.
I mean massacred. Pro-French christians and some Jews forced to eat their military decorations, then buried alive. their families murdered as well. Systematic rapes, killings, UGH DISGUSTING!
Yet no one gives a shit. They're more bothered by the innocents unfortunately killed by American soldiers, but are silent, if not indifferent, about the millions of innocent killed intentionally and deliberately by those who oppose the West.
And for the righties out their - this is not unique to Islamists. The raging Leftist Muslim communists are just as evil and wicked.
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