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by staunch 2586 days ago
> Mark Taylor, an international law expert and a director at the Fafo Institute for International Studies in Norway, told Al Jazeera "there's a case to be made that a war crime may have been committed." He added, "I think what this video shows is really a case that challenges whether the laws of war are strict enough."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstri...

You're free to argue that the laws of war should be stricter. But even if they were changed, it wouldn't retroactively make this incident illegal. It may or may not have been legal (i.e. it's legally questionable), whether you like or agree with the actions is a separate issue.

Contrast this incident with the case of that Navy SEAL murdering a POW. That's not legally questionable, that's very clearly illegal.
1 comments
pytester 2586 days ago
The legality of the incident relies upon the notion that a camera's telephoto lens could be mistaken for an RPG.

Watching the video is enough to dispel that.

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staunch 2586 days ago
No, it's much more complex than that. Some of the men were very clearly armed, which anyone who watches the video can see for themselves. Even Assange acknowledged this fact.

The most legally questionable part (I believe) is firing on the van that was evacuating wounded people. The best ethical defense to that attack was that they didn't know children were in there and the driver is primarily to blame for what happened to them.

But even if it was most likely an ethically wrong decision, that doesn't make it automatically illegal.

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brokenmachine 2586 days ago
Even without children in the van, is it legal to fire on an unarmed person in a van picking up the wounded?

And all these arguments are spurious IMO. Collateral Murder exposed what was being done secretly overseas in US citizens' name.

If it wasn't illegal then there should be no problem showing their people exactly what their war budget is paying for.

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geezerjay 2586 days ago
> Watching the video is enough to dispel that.

Doesn't the video show a group of gunmen who the camera guy was following around?

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