Soldier arrested in WikiLeaks classified Iraq video case

[sgreger1]

Y`all remember that wikileaks video showing the apache gunning down that camera crew that was chilling with insurgents? Well the army figured out who it was and arrested them.



http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Militar...raq-video-case

The Manning case marks the third time during the Obama administration that authorities have arrested a suspected leaker.

( I know, csmonitor is terrible but they have the story first)



Discussion: Do you think it is wrong to arrest him for showing this attack on civilians, or do you believe that the army is doing what it must to keep classified information classified by stopping leaks.

[AtreyuKun]

Well I can't imagine the army or whoever it was getting in many people good graces by arresting someone showing how they murdered people.

[sgreger1]

Well I can't imagine the army or whoever it was getting in many people good graces by arresting someone showing how they murdered people.

Lol, you think?

Theres a whole debate about whether they made the right call or not. As a fire support specialist FO (the one who normally would make the call and give the cleared hot signal to the heli) I would have cleared it. Some had weapons, there was a firefight down the street and the insurgents hade moved into this area, bunch of guys with shit slinged around their back, at least 1 guy with an rpg, ducking behind buildings and stuff. It's tough to say but in war it pays to lean towards assuming they fit the decription of the bad guy. Sucks, I know. Eveyone was like "they killed 2 little children in the van!" The soldiers couldn't know there were two little kids in the ambulance. Insurgents routinely try to police up their dead or wounded so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that that's what was happening. I say it's the guys bad for bringing two small children into a firefight to collect dead bodies, as a father I think that was a bad move.

Plus, as a war journalist, there is an inherent risk associated with walking around with insurgents to photograph them, might just get you shot.

[AtreyuKun]

Right or wrong. Murder or no, all I know is I'm glad I don't have to make that call.
There's a reason I never went into the military. Stuff just like this.

[sgreger1]

Right or wrong. Murder or no, all I know is I'm glad I don't have to make that call.
There's a reason I never went into the military. Stuff just like this.

This is why we need to stop this war thing, especially wars fought in surburban areas. When your tasked with killing a needle in a haystack, anything that may vaguely resemble a needle gets shot.


Think about all the sucky decisions one must make in a war. Maybe you just lost the guy standing next to you to some shots you SWEAR came from that bus over there, and inside the bus it looks like a guy has a rifle and you shoot, but it turns out to somehow be a war reporter and the rifle was really a camera bipod, or an innocent father of 5 whose family will now starve without his presence. It would destroy me. I was just trying to point out that it's easy to say what should or should not have happened, but no one knows how they would react if in any given situation like that.

[Frosted]

If it was British Army (just say) the soldier would be banged up for a long time - official secrets and all that. It would be fine if someone else did it though.

Unfortunately Sgreger I'll be brutal - British soldiers look at that and go "tsk - typical Americans". Americans do have a name for themselves as being trigger happy - like it or not that's a fact. The past blue on blues reinforced that. Now I'm not going to be drawn into an argument about who did what in whatever war etc. All I'm saying is that this is how the U.S is perceived and you're not far off on Israel as far as world perception goes. In the political world America is seen as a friend - but the perception by civilians and military is different - they're much more wary.

Personally - I'd make absoloutely certain - absoloutely certain that there was a rocket launcher - then I'd just take him down and wait to see what unfolded. Usually if they're up to something other arms appear.

[wadetheblade]

Me and my girl argued (discussed) about this last night. I'm not sure what I what do in that case, I think transparency is important as far as our military goes dealing with things that could be considered war crimes and such, but at the same time I could see not disclosing information that may be damning if it were to put Americans or our military at risk. There are so many different scenarios that could be taken differently, but honestly I don't know. Thats a good question.

[sgreger1]

If it was British Army (just say) the soldier would be banged up for a long time - official secrets and all that. It would be fine if someone else did it though.

Unfortunately Sgreger I'll be brutal - British soldiers look at that and go "tsk - typical Americans". Americans do have a name for themselves as being trigger happy - like it or not that's a fact. The past blue on blues reinforced that. Now I'm not going to be drawn into an argument about who did what in whatever war etc. All I'm saying is that this is how the U.S is perceived and you're not far off on Israel as far as world perception goes. In the political world America is seen as a friend - but the perception by civilians and military is different - they're much more wary.

Personally - I'd make absoloutely certain - absoloutely certain that there was a rocket launcher - then I'd just take him down and wait to see what unfolded. Usually if they're up to something other arms appear.

How can I put this bluntly Frosted.. we here in America, are from the wild west. It's in out roots. This is why they havn't managed to take all of our guns (yet) or disarm our police officers.

I know exactly how the rest of the world feels about American soldiers (i've trained with soldiers from several other countries, some I didn't even know existed), and they are absolutely correct in calling us trigger happy. The guys in my old unit probably would have smoked those hajis for fun, because they signed up to kill people and for nothing else. That is the sad fate of the world, some people genuinely enjoy killing others, and wars give them a way to rationalize in their minds that they are actually doing something good by killing someone in a different uniform.


Now, as far as this event, you know as well as I do Frosted that we don't know the whole story of what went on there. All we know is a firefight broke out, the insurgents moved to a nearby building and that is where this video begins. The soldiers werent just picking off random people, they were pursuing a group that had fired on them. I don't know what the circumstances here were.

What I do know is that my MOS, 13f fire support specialist (also known as a forward observer) was creating specifically to make sure this kind of thing didn't happen (in other branches they are called JTAC's or other things but army is 13f). The observer is the guy on the ground that must make a visual on the target, then coordinate any indirect fire support assets such as artillery, fast movers or helicopters. I control the assets, not the pilot, he must do as I say and not fire unless I directly authorize it. I even tell him what altittude to fly at and what direction to egress from. This acts as a safety since there are potentially two people verifying what is being shot at.
I don't know if they had an observer in this situation but it sure as hell didn't look like it, though I recall someone on the radio giving him the cleared hot signal (menaing he is free to engage the target).

So I don't know why this happened. When I am coordinating a jet, there are certain restrictions, called levels of observation Ror some things it is required that only I see the target and I just tell the jet where to drop the oridnance, with more expensive/powerfull ordinance it may require myself and the pilot to have a visual on the target as well as other restrictions. With helicopters that is different and there is less safety. With so many heli's on station at any given time in iraq, it has evolved over the years to where the helicopter could call up an FO that may not even be in the area and say "Hey i see some dudes with guns, can I shoot em?" then the FO relays that on the FIRES network up to the fire support officer who approves or disaproves of it. If a heli says they saw something, usually they are right, so usually they will get the go-ahead. This lax (lack of) control is what leads to situations like this.



So in closing, we don't know the circumstances, and you know damn well you cannot always be"absolutely certain" before pulling the trigger, but given that they were in a helo and there wasn't any real immenent threat accept the rpg, I wouldn't have been so quick to pull the trigger, it wasn't like a split second decision needed to be made imo.

[lxskllr]

I'm, for soldiers leaking information in the event of an unethical coverup, but otherwise military business needs to be kept in house.

[Frosted]

So in closing, we don't know the circumstances, and you know damn well you cannot always be"absolutely certain" before pulling the trigger, but given that they were in a helo and there wasn't any real immenent threat accept the rpg, I wouldn't have been so quick to pull the trigger, it wasn't like a split second decision needed to be made imo.

I agree with everything you've said. You've also got to bring in the human factor like - did the JTAC panic? I believe in this situation there wasn't one.
The best point you make and was my main concern is the above comment. In a helicopter you're not really under an imminent threat - I feel they should have watched and waited and as I've said just took down one target they could be reasonably sure of and watched to see what unfolded. It was definately overkill.

[sgreger1]

I'm, for soldiers leaking information in the event of an unethical coverup, but otherwise military business needs to be kept in house.

Even having sided with the soldiers in this video, I think this was in fact an unethical coverup and therefore should have been leaked. The orriginal story that was released was WAY off base afteryou watch the video. Headlines read "American heros kill terrorists i small gunfight" in the official report (i made that up, but basically sums it up), meanwhile the events transpired ina questionable way.

[Frosted]

I'm, for soldiers leaking information in the event of an unethical coverup, but otherwise military business needs to be kept in house.

Personally I wouldn't trust a soldier with being judge and jury as to what is ethical and unethical in war. A lot of them are pretty thick.

[sgreger1]

I agree with everything you've said. You've also got to bring in the human factor like - did the JTAC panic? I believe in this situation there wasn't one.
The best point you make and was my main concern is the above comment. In a helicopter you're not really under an imminent threat - I feel they should have watched and waited and as I've said just took down one target they could be reasonably sure of and watched to see what unfolded. It was definately overkill.

Overkill for sure. Most guys want to get as much triggertime as possible for bragging rights. You got guys in their 20's flying apache longbows and shit, they want to pull that trigger.

The thing is that the only threat was the rpg, and frnakly that is not much of a threat. From time to time you will hear of an apache getting shot down but it's rare, every AH-64 Apache (and AH-64D Apache Longbow) is equipped with an AN/APG-78 millimeter-wave Fire Control Radar (FCR) as well as a Radar Frequency Interferometer (RFI) which are housed in a little dome ontop of the main body near the center. This allows them to know when something is beign shot at them and some even automatically counter enemy fire, it is hard to shoot one of these things down, and considering RPG's are single use rockets, the odds of hitting it with only one rpg (especially without the element of surprise) are pretty low. Imo there was no threat, no observer, and trigger happy teens flying a helicopter. Things like this get leaked, but be aware that for every 1 time it gets leaked, it happened 100 times unreported. You know that as well as I do.

[Frosted]

ROFLMAO - just shows what we know. It's a bit like when we were talking about Norovirus and then you got it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/sou...a/10274262.stm

[sgreger1]

ROFLMAO - just shows what we know. It's a bit like when we were talking about Norovirus and then you got it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/sou...a/10274262.stm

Yah it happened when they landed which makes them a sitting duck. Also I didn't read what kind it was, but with 4 people dead in the crash i'm guessing it was a blackhawk or something and not a cca helicopter like an apache or a kiowa that is better equiped for evasion and countermeasures. When your landing your an sitting duck, theres a sweet spot on nearly every helicopter where the engine is, it's essentially where the fuel pump is and if you can hit it, even with a 7.62 round from an AK, the whole thing is going to explode in a fiery mess as it's not heavily armored due to weight restrictions. You could probably take out one of those choppers witha rifle if you were close enough and they were landing.


But this goes to show, they aren't afraid to kill you, and soldiers are constantly on their toes in fear of this happening, so don't be surprised when they pull the trigger too soon sometimes.