[jordyhoyt]

How does this sound to you as a former marine?

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/bmooi/wikileaks_video_j...

It seems plausible to me that these guys are seeing this situation all the time: they fire on a group of people, some are left wounded, and vans show up to collect weapons, but also grab wounded/bodies to try and look legit from the sky. Being used to tactics like these, I can understand how anxious they were to get clearance to fire on the van; who knows if they are going to fire on the helicopter or speed off. It wasn't clearly marked as a medical vehicle, and it sounds like everyone over there knows that you will be fired on if you do something like this.

[patrickk]

It seems extremely unlikey that the van occupants would fire on the chopper, do you think they would pull up and try to grab a wounded guy if they thought a chaingun was aimed at them? And who says they are grabbing weapons? All that that was visible was a guy pulling a wounded man off the street, who got turned into a human rag doll for his trouble. Do you think any sane person would intentionally go into a combat scenario with a little girl in the back of his vehicle? That unfortunate man was probably nothing more than a good Samaritan. Iraq does't exactly have a highly organised ambulance service.

Also, the original group of Iraqis didn't notice the chopper at all, even though it was circling for a while. They surely would have had a potshot at it had they seen it, as they were supposedly all armed with AKs and RPGs. It's probably quite a distance from the target, with the camera zoomed in creating the illusion its a lot closer than it would appear. Notice the amount of time it takes for the rounds to strike the target. That's why I reckon the van pulled up, he thought the street was empty.

[jordyhoyt]

I don't know firsthand, but I can imagine that the gunner seat in a chopper like this is pretty high anxiety. Your life could depend on shooting the right people at the right time. Not only your life, but the lives of all your buddies flying with you, not to mention the fact that you're protecting a piece of machinery that cost your country millions.

All I was saying before was that gunners like this are used to facing insurgent tactics. When they see vans like this, they aren't looking to give them the benefit of the doubt. They have been trained that, if they do, they may be putting their lives and the mission at risk. This guy is probably scared out of his mind. He has a huge responsibility, and screwing up - as we've seen today - has enormous consequences.

To me, the laughing and joking isn't making light of slaughtering the enemy, it's nervous laughs and desperate attempts to bring everyone out of it. We're human, we don't deal with this shit well. The comments here are good proof of that.

None of this excuses slaughtering innocent unarmed civilians, it's just my attempt at bringing some perspective.

[anthonyb]

From reading the sworn statements of the helicopter crew (http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%2...) it sounds like that van had been active dropping off and picking up insurgents earlier in the day, so they're not necessarily non-combatants. True, they wouldn't have been able to do much to an Apache, but there were other units who it could've fired on.

Not that it makes the situation any more right, but it does make things a lot less clear cut...