Questions on the morality of the actions of the US army[edit]
Hi Randy, I am curious to understand your perspective on the accidental killing of civilians by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. There seem to be a few individuals on Wikipedia (who I generally assume are young American Republican males, but I could be wrong) who tend to jump to the defence of the US army even in cases when they have killed civilians. I am interested to understand this perspective and wonder if you would not mind helping by answering a few questions. My first question: do you think the fact that one member of a group is holding an RPG is sufficient reason to open fire on the entire group, even if the weapon is not pointed at US troops, and if the group are not displaying any aggressive or evasive action, or even to have noticed the US troops? Gregcaletta (talk) 06:55, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It shouldn't be young American Republican males alone. I find it difficult to believe this is an issue. From my perspective, one cannot care at all about human rights without also respecting the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war.
Why shouldn't the laws of war apply? It all depends on where they are. If some guy with a machine gun walks around a peaceful area of Boston or Saudi Arabia, then it's perfectly reasonable to expect a cop to demand he set it down and explain himself.
But if they're walking through a war zone as street battles are underway just a few blocks away then there's no question the laws of war apply, and that they're all legal targets. Carrying a machine gun in a war zone is itself an aggressive action. Carrying an RPG is about as provocative as it gets.
They themselves know this. The rules are clear to every Iraqi. It doesn't matter that they weren't targeting anyone at that moment, and it doesn't matter that a few individuals in the group weren't themselves armed. They were all willing to be together. It's not up to U.S. troops to distinguish between the weapons bearers and the otherwise unarmed ammunition carriers, runners, spotters, or even the cameramen who chose not wear press markings. Had this been WWII, and they were captured on the ground, they'd have been executed after (if they were lucky) a very brief tribunal.
You might say that the U.S. should exceed the legal requirements -- except that they're already doing that. The Wikileaks video shows a procedure in place to verify that they had weapons. That's what's required.
I suppose you could still ask the U.S. to see more of its own troops killed by restricting itself even further than it already has. But if critics haven't first asked the insurgents to respect the barest of their human rights obligations then it's going to become obvious to you that this isn't really about human rights at all.
It's important to remember who the enemy is. If you've paid any attention to the critics of the war, you might have noticed some of their blogs linked to an Iraqi woman at Riverbend. Perhaps you've seen it. Links to her site were ubiquitous just a few years ago.
Her last post was in September 2007. She and her family fled to Syria two months before that. It was probably just weeks before that airstrike. They left Iraq because Sadrite militia and death squads made life a living hell for her, her family, and her neighbors. Those were the same Sadrites that the U.S. was fighting on that day.
When you read about the many thousands killed in Iraq since 2003, you should keep in mind that most of that number were killed, not by U.S. troops, but by insurgent groups similar to these.
The point isn't simply that these are extremely bad people, which they are, and that they must be fought. What might surprise you is that Sadrites are on friendly terms with the so-called "anti-war" movement. Supporters show up at their demonstrations, and are invited as guest speakers. At any time, they could have asked Sadr's insurgents to stop fighting (if they really wanted peace), or to wear uniforms (if they cared at all about the laws of war), or to stop torturing people (if they cared about human rights). They chose not to ask for any of those things.
This is why the war goes on, and why Riverbend had to escape from the Sadrites as her erstwhile friends did and said nothing on her behalf. I'd give that a higher priority than I would to the men who hang around a war zone with machine guns and RPGs.
So, I gather from this that you believe that the attacks were not a mistake. Do you think they should have attacked anyway, even if they had known the two journalists were there? Gregcaletta (talk) 20:26, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The attacks on the journalists were obviously a mistake. The attacks on the others were not. I don't doubt the helicopter would have avoided the journalists if they had known they were there.
As a matter of legality, the presence of journalists needn't necessarily have deterred that first attack. But as a matter of practicality, I'm certain it would have changed if or how they did it.
Regardless, that second attack wouldn't have happened at all. That's the real tragedy, IMHO, as the journalists knew what they were getting into. Those kids didn't.
Yes I definitely think the second attack is more tragic. Do you think the second attack was necessary? In the second attack, they did not even claim to have seen weapons. Gregcaletta (talk) 07:09, 31 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
He was still a presumed insurgent at the time. They had to go with their best judgment.
Think about the video. The streets are mostly deserted. There are no women or children visible at all. Everyone is either armed, or near someone who is armed. We can't hear all of it, but we know the sound of occasional machine-gun-fire was in the air from both sides. It's not a normal summer day with people in the streets going shopping. Everybody knows there's a battle in progress.
Civilians in a war zone have the responsibility to separate themselves from the fighting. Fortunately, many had.
The driver of that van knew what was going on. He knew that the insurgents didn't dress any differently than he himself did. He knew they didn't mark their cars any different than his. He knew the U.S. Army was just a couple of blocks away. And he knew he had kids in the car. It was his judgment that was most at fault.
I can't imagine getting kids involved even if the insurgents did wear uniforms.
Well, imagine you are driving your kids to school (which is what he was doing) and you see an unarmed wounded man crawling on the road. You wouldn't stop to take him to a hospital? And would you really expect that someone would fire at your van, not knowing who was inside? Gregcaletta (talk) 02:17, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As I said, think about the video. Everyone knew what was going on, and they all knew what the rules were. In the U.S., we often close the schools on snow days. That looked a lot worse than a snow day to me. It was a war zone.
Yes, I might help that man but only if I didn't have kids in the car. My car doesn't have a red cross on it. There's nothing to distinguish it from the insurgents' cars. So, I would know I was taking a big risk.
Keep in mind that you know he's a reporter. To that driver, the odds were that he was a wounded insurgent. Is the life of a wounded probable-insurgent worth risking the lives of two innocent kids? Absolutely not.
Don't you think citizens have any responsibility to separate themselves from the fight? The laws of war say that they do.
OK, so perhaps you are right and the man should not have stopped. However, this avoiding the question of whether the helicopters really had to open fire, on a wounded unarmed man ("insurgent" or not), a few other unarmed men, and a van, not knowing who was inside. Is there any way to morally justify the helicopters' decision? Gregcaletta (talk) 03:06, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That depends on what the odds are. They believed he was an insurgent, so then he needed to be captured or killed. Mahdi Army thugs made life hell for people in Baghdad. Remember what I said above about Riverbend. It's not like letting a shoplifter off with a warning.
The only question in my mind is, what are the odds that he'd be picked up by a van with kids in it? I would guess the crew thought it a near impossibility. If they thought there was somewhat reasonable chance of it then, no, that's something else. It's only morally justified by the odds of this kind of tragedy being extremely remote. (Legally is still a different issue.)
Well I don't think it was morally necessary to take the risk; a wounded unarmed insurgent is not enough of a target to justify opening fire on him, unarmed men attempting to rescue him, and a van with unknown occupants. But I would like to move on to one last topic because I don't think I am going to change your mind on this (I was going to ask you about the destruction of an entire building with families inside, purely because some people entered the building with AK-47s, shown in the last part of the video, but I think by now I have enough of an understanding of your general attitude towards pulling or not pulling the trigger). The main point I haven't touched on yet is whether you think it was right for the Pentagon to hide this video from us. Reuters had applied for the video under the Freedom of Information Act since 2007 and had been refused. Do you think the Pentagon refused to release the video mainly because it would be bad publicity, and do you think it was right for them to have done so? Gregcaletta (talk) 03:53, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The deaths of innocents is what happens when friends of one side of the war refuse to ask them to follow the laws of war. Say what you like about that helicopter crew, but they're the only side that respects the Geneva Conventions. And that means they're the only side that cares about human rights.
I don't see how it's morally necessary to release the video. The Army has already learned from this. Their 2007 report ended with a recommendation that the incident be used for training. And Reuters was able to see the video privately.
Bad publicity alone should not stop its release. It would not even be legal to stop it for that. Nor do I think the Army's lawyers would hesitate to approve the FOIA request if it was the legal thing to do.
It needs to be withheld to keep the rules of engagement secret. It says "SECRET" right on the ROE document for a reason. When insurgents know precisely what the limits are then they'll plan for it, and more people will die -- including women and children.
It should also be withheld to prevent the terrorists from using this for fundraising or recruiting, and ultimately killing more people. I'm sure you must have heard the argument that through incidents like these we are creating more terrorists than than we kill. Well, a film of the event can only amplify that. That video is all over the Arab world now. I wonder if that occurred to Assange as he was speaking on Al Jazeera, or if he was just counting the extra dollars they'd bring in from the Arab world. (Notice that he never asked the insurgents to wear uniforms, or stay away from civilians during a battle, or to support any part of the Geneva Conventions; it's remarkable how no one at Wikileaks cares at all about that.)
The irony is, the release of the video could kill many more people than were killed in the video. That in itself is a good reason to keep it secret.
So, let me ask you a question. Would you still support releasing the video if it had meant extending the war (or wars) by an extra year, or two, or three?
Personally, I would support releasing any material by any institution which is in the public interest and would not be hugely dangerous in the hands of our enemies (for example, I would not support the release of US details on how they make their weapons etc.) I do not think this video is dangerous in the hands of terrorists. I think it is much more likely to shorten the war than lengthen it, by further reducing popular support for the war in the United States. If we are going to support these wars then we need to know at least the reality of what war is, and how it is conducted. This video allows us to address potential problems with the rules of engagement; it allows us to address potential ignorance of the rules of engagement; it allows us to reconsider how we should be training our troops, and whether dehumanising our own men in this way in order to make them into killers is humane or helpful. It shows us that anyone who had a weapon, or is even standing near somebody with a weapon is labeled as an "insurgent" and will be killed. If the reuters journalists had not worked for a major US media organisation, then they too would have been labelled "insurgents" and this would never have made the news. There are many videos online of US troops killing civilians, sometimes with no weapons visible at all, but they never make the news, because the army can call anyone an "insurgent" as long as they are not a young child or a woman, and even when young children and women are killed or wounded, as in this attack, it will barely make the news. (In this video, a young teenager is marking a field at dawn so they can begin to plow it. You can see the tractor on the left and the rows it has been plowing. The teenage boy carries a long object, which does particularly look like a weapon, and drops it on the ground to mark the field for ploughing. The men in the Apache desperately seek permission to engage, and kill the boy and his father. This never made the news, but there is some independent analysis here) The collateral murder video also shows us that innocent bystanders including women and children who are not visible to our troops are likely to be killed and wounded because of the kind of weaponry that we use and the recklessness with which our troops use it. Again, if were are going to support the war, we have to know what it is that we are supporting. Personally, in think that this video shows that the way we choose to wage these wars (I say "we" being Australian) tends to result in huge numbers of civilian casualties, including women and children, and tends to do more harm than good because turn the entire population against us. Even if we think that the best way to fight terrorists is to kill as many as possible, we need change the way we do so, because the current rules of engagement and attitudes of our troops mean we are killing more civilians that actual known terrorists. Gregcaletta (talk) 05:56, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
First, it is dangerous to release the ROE unedited. Keeping them secret is all the more important when people refuse to demand the wearing of uniforms.
There's no evidence that it can reduce U.S. participation in wars. There is plenty of evidence that it increases the enemy's willingness to fight. If you do the math, that means more wars, not less.
I certainly do agree we should know what the war is like, but shouldn't that be universal?
If bringing sunlight was really being used as a means to end or limit war, you would first see Wikileaks showing Americans the results of American actions, as it is doing. But then you would see Wikileaks showing Islamists the results of insurgents' actions (which is really what this is). I shouldn't need to tell you at this late date it has not happened that way. They're firmly taking one side.
(It reminds me of how Orwell once said, "Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist.")
That very video that you linked to is just another example of innocents seen as insurgents because of the enemy's refusal to wear uniforms. As you watch the video with that in mind, perhaps you'll understand why it is that unlawful combatants were traditionally executed in times past.
Neither of these videos really told us anything we didn't already know. We did already know that, when insurgents don't wear uniforms, anyone seen carrying a machine gun or RPG in a hostile area was going to be considered an insurgent. It has always been that way. It was not just invented by the Bush administration in 2001.
I'm not saying U.S. troops shouldn't be careful. As I said, the Army decided to incorporate the New Baghdad attacks in their training. But there is only so much we can do. There comes a time when the other side should be held accountable for causing this.
We don't really know for a fact that the third attack in that Baghdad video had killed more women and children. While it's certainly possible, given their history, all we really have is their word for it. And if they still don't support the Geneva Conventions and laws of war (especially after this), then their word isn't that good.
It's not really true that the U.S. started this particular war. The Mahdi Army is not linked in any way with the government of Saddam Hussein. They were enemies. We actually protected them from Saddam in the '90s with no-fly zones. At best, you can only say we were better off while Saddam kept them in check. Their fight against us is really against the U.N.-sanctioned elected government of Iraq today. The Iraqi government went back after the Mahdi Army the very next year. But I doubt that Wikileaks will get any of those videos.
We already know the results of the actions of insurgents, because this is reported in the news. Wikileaks does not need to release that information, because it is not being repressed by the US government, as this video was. If this video doesn't show anything we didn't already know, then what is the harm in releasing it? Is the fact that the insurgents refuse to wear uniforms a reasonable excuse to open fire on someone, often when no weapons are visible at all, as in the video I sent you and the attack on the van? Unfortunately, we cannot do anything to change the decision of the insurgents not to wear bullseyes on their chests. It is our job to think of what we should be doing differently, not what our enemies should be doing differently.
There is no point in even having rules of engagement if they are not available to the public. How are we to know if our soldiers are following the rules of engagement, if we don't even know what they are? I generally believe that legal principals should follow from moral principles. A fairly simple moral principle when it comes to killing is "killing is justified if and only if it is necessary to defend oneself or others from equal or greater harm". Therefore, what the rules of engagement should reflect is the idea that "US troops may fire upon an enemy if they are an imminent threat to US troops or to civilians, and US troops must take all precautions to avoid harming unarmed men, women and children in the vicinity". I would support the war in Iraq if I believed US troops would stick to a principle like this, but the evidence suggests that they don't. I also don't see how it could be dangerous to make such a principle public, and to hold ourselves accountable to it. Gregcaletta (talk) 01:53, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Both of these situations, the shootings of the journalists and children, and the unwillingness of insurgents to care about the laws of war, were reported in the press. Wikileaks didn't need to report any of them. Like it or not, we can plainly see that Wikileaks made a choice that shows us what they care about, and what they don't.
You misunderstand the purpose of the rules of engagement. It is not a list of what civilians in a conflict have permission to get away with. They already know those things in the laws of the elected government of Iraq, and its emergency decrees when troops are fighting in the area. If the civilians choose not to recognize that authority then they are acting in support of the insurgents.
The Laws of Armed Conflict aren't where an unarmed person can stand beside an insurgent, and then have it called mere civil disobedience. When lives are at stake, they are absolutely required to stay out of the way. Nor can a peaceful person allow an insurgent to enter the home. Once that happens, the home becomes a legal target.
But that is *not* American rules I'm talking about. It's how the LOAC work, as agreed to by a series of treaties which are history's first actual human rights treaties.
The rules of engagement are different. Whereas troops can remain within the LOAC while destroying a building that insurgents had gone into, the ROE will add conditions specific to that country's military. It can change for a particular operation. For example, the video shows that the helicopter crew had to call in for permission to kill those insurgents. That's not in the LOAC.
In this case, the insurgents can now see how the process works, what it takes, and how long it took them to make those decisions. The effect is not benign. If the ROE become less effective after the insurgents take advantage then the military will need to revise their ROE again.
Warfare isn't a matter of civilians being innocent until proved guilty. Troops are required "reasonable certainty." They don't have the luxury of hindsight as in the critical video about that farmer's son. Mistakes will happen in the best of conditions. Wars have always been that way. The Sunnis decided to work within the elected government. The Mahdi Army should have done the same.
It's not true that "we cannot do anything to change the decision of the insurgents not to wear bullseyes on their chests." As I said, the insurgents have friends in the so-called "peace" movement. These activists could certainly complain to their friends about these things if they cared. As a "Second Superpower", it's a bit funny to say they have no influence. Moreover, there are also very strong links through the Venezuelan government, which has a strong relationship with Iran, which pays for many of the weapons. They could protest both sides -- if they didn't favor one of them so strongly.
Besides that, it's not a bullseye to wear a uniform. They can be jungle green or desert tan. The important thing is to distinguish themselves from innocent civilians. They either care about innocent civilians, or they don't.
I agree with you about all the things the insurgents should be doing differently, but again I think it distracts from the the main question of what we should be doing differently, other than just pressuring the insurgents to behave differently. The ideas that Wikileaks is somehow biased in this seems pretty confused to me. Either these videos show us nothing that we didn't already know (in which case there is no harm in Wikileaks releasing them) or they show us something which was not previously known (in which case it is morally necessary that Wikileaks release them). I don't think we are going to get much further with this discussion (as far as i can tell, your understanding pretty simplistic: the US army are the "good guys" and Wikileaks, by educating the public about what war actually looks like, are threatening your idealisation of the US Army, and so they are lumped in with the "bad guys". I don't think I will be able to change your mind on this) but thank you for taking the time to discuss this with me. Gregcaletta (talk) 02:19, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I very much agree that the question of what we should be doing is very important, but don't forget who we are. If you're going to include you and me and all people who want to care, then it also includes the "peace" activists, and their Islamist friends who attend their demonstrations -- for whom the top leaders of the insurgency are often just a phone call away.
When I said these videos don't show anything that we didn't already know, I meant that we already knew that innocent people sometimes get killed. The exact process was still secret. I'll concede that, for the average public, knowing it goes on is not as strong as seeing it on video. But then there is also the matter of this getting into jihad videos to recruit suicide bombers.
I'm less idealistic than I once was. I used to be a member of Amnesty. But, yes, the U.S. Army is the good guys -- warts and all. I don't think the video threatens that assessment, nor would I agree keeping it secret if self-image was the only reason. Note that the Army did investigate this incident to see what they should be doing differently. That surely is part of what you want.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Sorry to bother it you again, but I'd just like your explanation on this comment about Bradley Manning: "genuine whistleblowers expose crimes or wrongdoing". Most people would probably say that the Collateral Murder video did expose wrongdoing and some would even say that it exposed crimes, but we have already discussed this. What I would like to ask you about instead is the 50-260 000 diplomatic cables that Manning allegedly possessed. With that many cables, how can you say that they don't "expose crimes or wrongdoing" if you have not seen them? Do you really think that of 260 000 cables, none of them would expose wrong doing? Gregcaletta (talk) 05:46, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The actual crime was the insurgents' disregard for the laws of war. Accidents are not crimes. More than that, in any wrongful death that results from perfidy, the blame for the wrongful death is *entirely* on those who allowed and encouraged the perfidy. Don't you support the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war?
We didn't need to see the video for the insurgents' perfidious nature to be exposed.
You can certainly make the case that the vast majority of critics of the war do support these types of war crimes by insurgents, and therefore, that kind of war crime should be recognized as acceptable by the public. This is why I always try to name the public figures who encourage it.
Note, too, that the public airing did not change that the aircrew was exonerated.
We haven't seen the cables to know that there was any wrongdoing there. Regardless, he supposedly released an enormous amount, and not merely something that was legally wrong. I've seen nothing that shows he thought he found something illegal. Besides that, there were legal channels available to report that.
Were Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames whistleblowers, too? Maybe the Kremlin thought so, but I don't think you're going to add the category to their articles.
Look at it this way: I don't doubt there could have been some misdeeds by someone in preparing the D-Day invasion. What you're implying is that it would have been okay to leak every secret diplomatic cable there was simply in the mere hope that a handful would have represented real wrongdoing, and then not caring at all that more innocents would die in the aftermath.
Don't ever forget that real human beings were killed because of stupid Koran-in-the-toilet story. Manning was playing with fire, and he knew it.
OK, thanks for your response. Although, I have not seen anything to suggest that the diplomatic cables would place anybody's life in danger. Though you may disagree with what Manning did, everything he has said shows he thought he was doing something that was in the benefit of the the American people and the rest of the world, and WIkileaks then checks each document to see if it should be released. In any case, how do we know whether it is in our benefit to keep these documents secret from ourselves? We can only go by unauthorised leas of documents in the past, such as the release of the The Pentagon Papers. What such documents consistently reveal a secrets designed to protect the Government from us, not to protect us from others. Why not ask an expert? Daniel Ellsberg says
"..any serious risk to that national security is extremely low. There may be 260,000 diplomatic cables. It’s very hard to think of any of that which could be plausibly described as a national security risk. Will it embarrass diplomatic relationships? Sure, very likely—all to the good of our democratic functioning..[Wikileaks] has not yet put out anything that hurt anybody’s national security .. having read a hell of a lot of diplomatic cables, I would confidently make the judgment that very little, less than one percent, one percent perhaps, can honestly be said to endanger national security. ... I definitely feel our national security would be improved if they were put out. [Seeing all the diplomatic cables] would help understand our own foreign policy and give us the chance to improve it democratically. (Jacobs, Samuel P. (11 June 2010). "Daniel Ellsberg: Wikileaks' Julian Assange "in Danger"". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 15 june 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help))
I doubt I will change your mind on this, but thanks for your response. Gregcaletta (talk) 02:20, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I actually agree that most of it won't matter. As Ellsberg says, "one percent perhaps". If we use that number, that's 2,600 cables which could be a threat to national security. (It's probably even less, but 260 isn't very comforting either.)
Then you have to consider that very fact that the security breach will cause nationals of other countries to think twice before trusting U.S. diplomats to keep silent on sensitive issues. That will hurt future efforts.
Those quiet back channels for diplomacy have now been damaged for a while. That's not a good thing for people who claim to oppose war.
I think you overestimate the the potential for real national security damage. I don't think there is historical evidence to support the idea that the release of such information does more harm than good. But thank you for your response. Gregcaletta (talk) 07:05, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Even if we underestimate it, damage is damage.
In the Wikileaks attack video, did that make the Islamists more likely or less likely to hide behind civilians? Obviously more. Will more civilians die? Yes. There's no getting around that.
But, yes, on the larger scale this probably only affects us on the margins. The margins only matter when it's close.
For example, the leak of the Abu Ghraib photos hurt the U.S. image, but the only certain tangible effect I'm aware of was in the taking of Fallujah. The insurgents used it to keep their minions from surrendering. While that probably means more U.S. troops were killed, it hurt many more of the locals, and most of the innocents in that city had evacuated. Whoever remained probably deserved to die anyway. (Juan Cole had once said every man in Fallujah supported the insurgency.)
Even in the case of GTMO detainees being released, most of those who returned to the war only went on to kill non-Americans. I don't know how many U.S. troops had been killed, but there was only one American civilian who'd been killed by a released detainee. She probably favored releasing them anyway.
But in Ellsberg's case, his leak's influence might have been enough to keep the U.S. from supplying South Vietnam after the "peace" accords. There are over a million dead because of that.
I think the damage caused in the world but not releasing this kind of material is much greater than the damage cause by releasing things which should have been kept secret. Most of the world's problems are caused by ignorance, and classifying important political decisions is equivalent to enforcing ignorance. Do you really that the Abu Ghraib photos should have remained secret? And the Pentagon Papers? The Abu Ghraib photos revealed horrible things that the US troops were doing, and thus stopped those horrible things from happening. The Pentagon Papers revealed that the US government had been systematically lying to its own people in order to maintain public support for the war. But I'm now getting the impression that you thought the Vietnam war was an excellent idea, so I don't think I will bother with more questions. Gregcaletta (talk) 01:31, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's more important to end this war. Would publishing the Abu Ghraib photos make the war end sooner or later? I think it made the war more difficult, and therefore, the war lasts longer. Note that the news about the Abu Ghraib photos didn't make our enemies, rivals, or critics start asking the other side to care about human rights. They find torture is perfectly fine when they're doing it.
No, the Vietnam War was not an excellent idea. Wouldn't it have been good if that war never began? But after having started already, wouldn't it have been less bad if it had ended in 1968? It could have ended after the Tet Offensive was crushed. North Vietnam was ready to give stop the war until they got a political advantage. Who gave that to them?
But even if you don't want to accept that, there's no doubt that it could have ended in January 1973. All U.S. troops went home. Why'd it have to start again? And more telling, why did the entire so-called "peace" movement allow it to continue without saying no? The Pentagon Papers did not help then. More Vietnamese died in the war, and then many more after that in "re-education" or while trying to escape.
Your problem is that you see all of America's faults, but don't see that the alternative is worse.
You don't need to answer any of that, of course. But you do need to understand that not everyone believes America's critics have the moral high ground. There are friends of the so-called "peace" movement who are torturing people to death. Their victims only wish they were in Abu Ghraib instead.
So you think the Pentagon Papers prolonged the war? Gregcaletta (talk) 03:55, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It was probably too late for it to stop U.S. involvement. But it did help the war's opponents, which then prevented Nixon from resupplying South Vietnam. This gave the green light for the war to resume in 1974.
As I said, the war would have ended for good in January 1973. Whether or not the Pentagon Papers were what tipped it over the edge, I don't know.
The Pentagon Papers showed that the government was systematically lying to its own people, so it was damaging politically, more than militarily. How can we have a functioning democracy if we do not even know what decisions our political leaders are making, because all the important decisions are kept confidential? How do we know what we are voting for if our politicians are allowed to lie to us a get away with it? And how can we correct abuses if we do not even know they are going on? Gregcaletta (talk) 05:04, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I know that politicians will lie about wanting peace. That didn't start with LBJ or Truman or FDR or even Wilson. The more they say they want peace, the more likely it is that they're lying. That doesn't only apply to politicians either. There's a reason I use the phrase "the so-called 'peace' movement."
The U.S. has had secret military operations since its founding. It's always been recognized that secrecy was essential. Nevertheless, they're on orders from the president who must frequently consult with Congress. That way there is accountability to the voters without making us all sitting ducks while the rest of the world does what it wants.
There is no way to operate a government without some secrecy, especially in foreign affairs and war. FDR had ships running secret missions in Japanese waters well before Pearl Harbor. But that didn't lead to war. It was our overt actions that bothered Japan. They didn't like the fact that we didn't like the Rape of Nanking, although the so-called "peace" movement was more opposed to the draft (until Hitler and Stalin stopped being allies, of course).
Even the "peace" movement keeps its internal secrets. Do you think Ellsberg told them to open up, too? He's not as open as you think.
I do have to correct you on Abu Ghraib. It was not the public leak of the pictures that changed conditions inside there. They didn't become public until April 2004. They were first sent to the Army's CID that January. Abu Ghraib's general had to step aside a few days later while the Army appointed another one to lead the investigation into the operation of the camp. The soldiers in the pictures were officially charged in February, and then a larger investigation began. That all happened before the public leak which led to those later deaths.
If the "peace movement" you refer to is secret classifying documents too than I do not support that, and I would support their release to the public. I think history shows quite clearly that material is classified because the institution is aware that what they are doing would be opposed if it were made public. In other word, by classifying material, institutions are generally giving of a signal that they are engaging in immoral behaviour, and that the material shows that. I think you highly overestimate the amount of material that is actually classified to our benefit or to the benefit the world. But I appreciate your apparently well-informed POV on this. Gregcaletta (talk) 02:09, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'd only agree that nothing should be classified if it was classified to avoid embarrassment of a public official. I'm not even certain that would be legal. Military secrets are different. There is no good that comes from telling an enemy what our plans are.
I'll give you one example: The Army started replacing some hummers with MRAPS. They're designed to let the crew survive if it drives over a mine or IED. They take pictures when that happens to study the damage. Those pictures are classified because they don't want the terrorists knowing how it was affected by the blast. Otherwise they will learn where the vulnerable spots are. I can't see why you'd want that to be known. A lot of classified material is like that.
Keep in mind that, regardless of which administration is in power, there are Republicans and Democrats in Congress who always have access to highly classified materials. Something politically embarrassing could not be withheld from the other party.
In response to your point "I'd only agree that nothing should be classified if it was classified to avoid embarrassment of a public official. I'm not even certain that would be legal." I believe you are correct that it is not legal. It is against the Freedom of Information Act (or it should be). But how do we know whether they are doing it if it is classified? The answer is that we know that they are doing this, because of the things that have been leaked in the past, such as the Pentagon Papers. In fact, the evidence is that governments classify everything that is even the least bit embarrassing to any of their officials (unless they want a reason to have that official sacked). The only information we get on what governments are doing are from official press briefings, by official press secretaries whose job it is to make the government look good, not answer questions. The only document so far which Wikileaks has released which fits Manning's description is [[1]]. It was classified merely because it is mildly embarrassing, (showing that U.S ambassadors have no interest in democracy, only in maintaining hegemony). THe document poses absolutely no threat to "national security", and there is no evidence that any of the diplomatic ables were anything more than embarrassing, or that any of the stuff released by Wikileaks endangers troops (although you have argued that the collateral murder video may have done so, in some very round about way). I agree that details of military technology are one of the few things which can be justly classified. But do you really think Manning would leak something like this? He may have been naive, but he was not completely stupid. Individuals who come forward to release classified information do so because they hope to end what they perceive as wrong-doing in their own organisations. On the other hand, if a terrorist had access to information on military technology, they would not release it publicly. They would want take full advantage of such information, which means not letting on that they had access to it. Wikileaks would certainly not release anything of that nature, even if they were to recieve it. They have not released any such details in the past. I don't believe it is accurate that "regardless of which administration is in power, there are Republicans and Democrats in Congress who always have access to highly classified materials. Something politically embarrassing could not be withheld from the other party". In practice, I doubt this is at all. Gregcaletta (talk) 10:08, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good link. It made me look things up. The document says it's classified for reasons 1.4 (B) and (D). According to the Dept. of State guide, (and you should save that) this means it was classified for these reasons:
(B) Foreign Government Information
(D) Foreign Relations and Confidential Human Sources
It looks like a legitimate classification. It has nothing to do with embarrassment to the U.S. I don't see anything there that's embarrassing to the U.S. It doesn't bother me at all that we don't care if foreign governments want to avoid a referendum. Iceland truly does have serious financial problems.
Manning or whoever leaked this made foreign officials want to think twice before talking with us. That's not a good thing.
You're right that it indicates that this isn't really very democratic. But after going on Al Jazeera and not caring the tiniest little bit about the Geneva Conventions, the term "pro-democracy" it not one I'd apply to Wikileaks.
Moreover, when is it proper for the U.S. to care about how democratic other countries are operating? There are reasons we elect legislators to run governments rather than have a referendum for every controversial issue. They would need to run campaign commercials for everything they do. (Look at gay marriage activists. They don't want democracy. They want freedom. There's a difference.) If interrogation of terrorists was left up to referendum after 9/11, they would outlaw waterboarding only because it wasn't tough enough.
BTW: It's a good thing you gave me that document. Since we didn't have an exact source before, that same link I found does say the law prohibits classification of information in order to:
1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error;
2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization or agency;
3) restrain competition; or
4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.
If someone classified a document solely for one of those reasons then they could be prosecuted for it. We can imagine politicians wanting to do this, but the clerks or soldiers working for them would think otherwise. And like I said, someone in the other political party would also be able to see it.
I would say that democracy and freedom are fairly inextricably. Choosing one's own laws by choosing government is the ultimate freedom. Certainly, there is a greater link between ideal democracy and freedom, than there is between ideal democracy and the United Nations. I am not as familiar with the Geneva conventions; again, I am more interested in morality than I am in law. Essentially, an invasion counts as a "liberation" if the the people of a Iraq actually want us there. Once upon a time, they did want us there (during and at the end of the Gulf War) but I haven't seen convincing evidence that they want us there now, and the collateral murder video gives us an idea of why. Do you have any evidence for the claim that any member of congress would have had access to a video like the collateral murder video? It was locked up in some military information compound in iraq, and there was perhaps also a copy at the Pentagon. I'm not sure that the law says that members of congress can access any classified material. Even if it is true in law, it is certainly not true in practice. And I don't actually believe it is really in the career interest of the two major parties to embarrass each other over classified material, even if they could. Remember that, the war often had support from both parties, even at times when it did not have the support of the American population. Also, the laws you mentioned can only be enforced once someone actually takes the government to court. In order to do this, they must first know about the material (and in the case of classified material, one usually does not, for obvious reasons). In the exceptional case of the collateral murder video, Reuters, did actually know about the material, and requested that it be released under the Freedom of Information Act. The Pentagon did not give a legal argument for the classification, they simply ignored the Reuters request, knowing that Reuters could not afford to take it to court (it recently cost TIME magazine 8 million dollars to take a case all the way to the supreme court). Even upon winning the court case, and enforcing the release of the material, it would be unlikely that anyone would go punished. Nixon himself got a full acquittal after Watergate. I am certain that the collateral murder video falls under at least one of the 4 conditions you mentioned above. Here is our main agreement, and I think it is the weakest part of your argument: you say "nothing should be classified if it was classified to avoid embarrassment of a public official", certainly correct, and this includes foreign ambassadors. The law also says that it is illegal to classify something in order to prevent embarrassment to an organisation, which should certainly include the military or the government itself. You say that the US-iceland cable was not embarrassing to the U.S. But if it was not embarrassing to either party, why would it be kept classified? Your argument with this cable seems to be that embarrassment can hurt foreign relations, which can in turn hurt foreign relations, just as you argue that the collateral murder video hurts the war effort by turning people against the war, but the reason it turns people against the war is because it shows embarrassing (and worse) behaviour by the US military. So I do not think this argument would hold up it court, and I certainly do not think it should. Gregcaletta (talk) 04:35, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The Iraqis do want us there even when they don't say it. Obviously, the guys with the AK-47s and RPGs did not, but many did. The U.S. does not remain in Iraq on its own authority. Shortly after the occupation started, we obtained a UN resolution to stay until the government was established. When that expired, we got a Status of Forces Agreement with the government of Iraq. The people may say they're not be happy about it, but they don't want another civil war. Those guys with the AK-47s and RPGs were not only fighting with Americans. Don't ever forget that the Iraqi people have been put through hell by those insurgents.
The military has valid reasons for keeping the rules of engagement secret. But besides that, I do think the incendiary nature of the video was reason enough to expect that its release had made the war more difficult. Here's the key: It's the incendiary nature as it affects Iraqis and Afghans who could be induced to support the enemy.
I did specifically not say "the collateral murder video hurts the war effort by turning people against the war". I will say it's good to prevent foreigners from being anti-American. But turning Americans against the war is not a valid reason to classify something.
You may believe that video didn't slow the war down one minute, but the military doesn't. I think the "Koran-in-a-toilet" smear and the cartoon jihad make that point pretty clearly. They weren't merely embarrassing. People are dead because of that news.
The embarrassment of a public official probably doesn't include foreign ambassadors. Even so, the point is that those discussions were held in confidence. We can't promise that we'll keep something private only if nothing is revealed that would embarrass their ambassadors or governments. We'd never have any more private meetings. BTW: Gov. Schwarzenegger wasn't afraid to say he opposes a referendum. (It looks like a lot of environmental activists didn't want that referendum.) -- Randy2063 (talk) 01:38, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In spite of its name, Top Secret does not mean they can see everything there is. There are more tightly controlled areas that require special access. In those cases, the House and Senate committees on Armed Services or the ones on Intelligence (or whoever else uses classified information) can see most of that. The Gang of Eight (which has members from both parties) can see everything unless it's about a mission going at that moment. Some have to see it simply because Congress needs to authorize money for it.
Not only can the president see anything he wants, he can also declassify anything. I think (not 100% sure) that cabinet secretaries can also declassify anything that was classified by their department.
But the type of stuff we've been talking about was either Confidential or Secret. A congressman can see that.
The president could surely have seen the video if he had asked for it, but he did not. There a few reasons why he would not. Firstly, he might not know it exists. Secondly, he might not have time. Thirdly, it might not be in his political interest. Obama has not even mentioned the Collateral Murder video since its release, and the White House press secretary only answered one question and very briefly. It is politically damaging, and government officials want to stay as far away from it as possible. All classified material should be checked by an independent authority, democratically elected, but independent of either party and the administration. In the absence of such an official and democratically elected body, Wikileaks and government whistleblowers such as Manning are the best we have, and so far, looking at the material they have released, I would say they have been doing an awesome job of deciding which documents have been unjustly classified. Notice that not even the US government, not to mention significant media organisations, have come out and said that the release of the Collateral Murder video is a threat to natural security.
You say "We can't promise that we'll keep something private only if nothing is revealed that would embarrass their ambassadors or governments. We'd never have any more private meetings". Exactly. Public officials should not have private meeting; they should have public meetings. That is why they are called "public officials". How can we support what our "public" officials are doing, if we do not know what they are doing? Gregcaletta (talk) 02:25, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
President Obama is really in a tough spot here. A soldier charged with crimes has the right to a fair trial. If he's publicly denounced for it by someone in the presiding officer's chain of command, he might cite unlawful command influence and get the case thrown out. Of course, that's not a problem if there's no trial, but it's a losing issue if he can't do anything about it.
I doubt you'd like an elected review board if it actually happened (even if it wasn't unconsitutional). Being accountable to the voters, most of whom still remember 9/11, they'd be very sensitive to the risk that an unpopular decision could mean political suicide. Declassifying that Apache video isn't all that popular now. It's not going to get more popular but there's always the risk that it becomes unpopular in the extreme. An elected official will think of that.
Then you have to think about where these board members would come from. It'll be a Democrat or Republican who promises to keep the country safe. That's just the nature of politics. Americans are never going to elect anyone associated with Wikileaks to that position.
If public officials cannot ever have private meetings then you're putting this country at a foreign relations disadvantage with all others. FDR had to have secret meetings with Churchill and Stalin. The Cuban Missile Crisis was averted by a secret deal that the public might have opposed if they they had known about it. The issues behind the Marshall Plan are similar to the problems discussed in the State memo. I doubt that it, or the Berlin Airlift, could have been successful without some secrecy.
I agree that the democratically elected and independent board I suggested would have the potential for corruption, particularly in military matters, but it would be better than nothing. I would rather anyone deciding whether this stuff deserves to be classified than the military itself. This is even more true with private companies. I do not think a public corporation like BP should be able to keep virtually anything secret from the public, but if they are going to classify some stuff, it should at least be checked by a government authority. Wikileaks have huge amounts of material relating to the causes of the massive BP oil leak, but have not had the time or resources to verify its authenticity, partly because they have been spending much of there resources attempting to defend themselves and Manning.
Manning will almost certainly going to gaol for a long time. He could get off if there were a public uproar, but there will not be because there has been very little media coverage, and his prosecution will be strongly by the Obama administration, based on their current Stalinist attitude towards even the most unambiguous of "whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake attitude. He will not get a fair trial. The trail will take place in Iraq, rather than in the USA, and so far the legal team sent by Wikileaks to defend Manning have been refused access to him.
Remember that people who bring material to Wikileaks do so because they have become upset with something that is going on within their own institutions. It is not out of trying to harm the United States; they are trying to create positive political reform. Gregcaletta (talk) 03:17, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
BP should not keep information from the government if it involves the environment because they don't own the environment. But there's got to be secrets that they need to keep, like plans for expansion or new technologies that they're working on.
I don't think Manning could ever make a case to get enough popular support. His case isn't that popular to begin with. And the government will want to make an example out of him.
If you remember the attempts to make an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in 2000, there was a suggestion that the Clinton administration could offer Israel Jonathan Pollard's release as part of the deal. That offer was never made because a lot of CIA personnel threatened to resign over it. Manning's crimes may not be as bad as Pollard's, but they're pretty serious.
Look at it this way: For better or worse, the voters elected President Obama to run the country's foreign and military policy. He decides what should be classified. Congress can also hold investigations if they like. They can pass laws to revamp some things if they see the need to (as the Church Commission did, to name one notorious example). The people elected the politicians to do these things. You may say that's not enough, but still, they did not elect Manning.
It's little different than the crazy general in Dr. Strangelove deciding to start a war because he believed "war is too important to be left to politicians."
I'll make time to watch the Assange video tomorrow. I had seen on boingboing.net that he was expected to make a speech. I was going to watch that but they got someone else.
I don't think Obama is quite as omnipotent as you seem to believe. It is not as if he personally has seen every piece of classified information. And neither he nor McCain have particularly supported transparency politically, so it wasn't really a "choice" by the voters to have so much information withheld for them. And how would they even know what is being withheld for them, if it were not for conscientious whistleblowers like Manning, Ellsberg and Drake? It seems fairly clear to me that the American people would be against the prosecution of someone like Thomas Drake. But both of the political parties support the prosecution of Drake because of the very corruption that Drake was exposing, and the media have stayed fairly quiet about it. If the public were actually able to vote on whether material such as Manning's should have been made public, they would almost certainly vote "yes", particularly for something like the upcoming Granai massacre video, but before they an make that decision, they have to have access to the material. Remember that when you say this material should be classified, you are saying that it should be kept secret from you.
Assange has been avoiding the US. He was scheduled to appear at a Hacker's conference in America, but there were FBI agents there hoping to detain him. Instead, he did the TED conference at Oxford in the UK. Gregcaletta (talk) 04:55, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the voters who opposed government secrecy that much would have voted for Obama anyway. Those who didn't think Obama was good enough on the issue could have voted for the Green party. They did have choices. They simply thought it was a better decision to vote for the one who had a chance of winning because they knew that the Green party (or whatever) didn't have a chance.
It's okay to keep material secret from me as long as their intent is to keep it secret from our enemies.
My fundamental problem with Drake is the same as with Manning. As the article on Drake says, he reported his gripes internally. That's the way he's supposed to do it. But when they didn't pursue it the way he wanted, he took it upon himself to act as judge and jury. Nobody elected him for that.
I understand that bureaucracies are inefficient. (That's one reason government shouldn't have too much control over our lives in the first place.) That doesn't change the fact that the voters never gave Drake the authority to make these decisions. He might have been the better decision maker (though I doubt it) but that doesn't matter. We simply never gave him the authority to do what he did.
Obama's control probably didn't reach into the designated avenues for whistleblowing internally, but he probably appointed their boss. There could be all sorts of very good reasons they didn't follow Drake's concerns. Maybe the NSA had signed a contract that devoted a fixed amount of time and money to the project. Or maybe they didn't want the contractor to fold, closing up a key facility they'd need to use for the next project. The point is that there could be valid concerns which Drake wouldn't be privy to.
In the end, Drake didn't only tell the press that the project was a worthless bust. He also told our enemies and rivals that its capability is one that we still don't yet have.
The video didn't work for me when I first tried it. I waited a long time until it hit me to check YouTube, which has it, too. It's interesting that Assange takes credit for turning the Kenyan election while these Iraqi insurgents are trying to nullify theirs, and Manning and Drake were trying to nullify a part of ours as well.
You say "the voters never gave Drake the authority to make these decisions", but how many voters actually object to what Drake has done? Almost none. Voters did not give Drake the authority because the voters were not given that option. You say that the voters "simply thought it was a better decision to vote for the one who had a chance of winning because they knew that the Green party (or whatever) didn't have a chance". Exactly. They did not really have a democratic choice in the matter. Political reform is necessary. The only effective way to generate positive political reform is to make new information available to the public. Corporations and government classify material specifically because they know that material would create political reform if it were release. Therefore, the most effective way to create positive political reform is specifically target classified information leaks by dissenters within such organisation, who act out of the strong belief that the material has been unjustly classified. Only one the public have access to the information can they judge if it was unjustly classified. Let's have a vote on whether someone like Drake should go to gaol. I have no doubt that it would not have democratic support. When Drake "reported his gripes internally" they did not do anything. They have no reason to do so if they can continue to hide their corruption and prosecute anyone who exposes such corruption. Gregcaletta (talk) 06:22, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I hate to take up any more of your time, but I would be interested to see what your response would be to something like this article by Glenn Greenwald. Gregcaletta (talk) 06:23, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I do object to what Drake did. I'm sure a lot of people do. I think it was great that he complained internally but it was wrong to go to the press. That's regardless whether or not there was real waste there. That's also whether or not I agree that the project should have been cut at that time.
This case may seem easier to you because you think Drake was correct. Or even if he could be wrong, you think it's not going to affect you as much as the government spending would. But what happens when someone leaks something you do think should be kept secret? What if he had leaked information that wasn't even certain to be true, like the Zimmermann Telegram, and the public outcry would lead to war?
I don't think very many government secrets are of the type that their release would lead to political reform of this government. Some, like the Baghdad video would make the military uncomfortable, but they had already changed their procedures before that video was leaked. I don't doubt that they'd change back if the new procedures weren't effective.
Similarly, Obama had gone along with the Patriot Act and warrantless wiretapping even though he had been critical of them both. I think this indicates that both of those measures would be very popular if the general public knew more of the secrets that Obama had been reading about.
On Greenwald's piece: I don't argue that there's plenty of waste. Government control of anything leads to some corruption. It's important to get rid of corruption and waste, but it's sometimes more important to keep things secret.
If you follow to where Greenwald's link leads to his source notes the graph is a tiny bit deceptive. It's a minor point. The income gap is widening. But it's a mistake to argue it's important with respect to paying for intelligence agencies which really have nothing to do with this. We either need intelligence or we don't. And if it's inefficient then we need to improve it even if the economy was doing well.
BTW: I personally think the widening income gap is a function of the approaching technological singularity. If so, it's going to get wider. If Bernie Sanders thinks we can bring us back to the 1950s then he can only make things worse.
As for the Washington Post special that Greenwald refers, even Ralph Peters found something good to say about it.
I suppose you think that these should have been kept secret as well? Gregcaletta (talk) 04:12, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Of course. Does its release make the war easier to win or more difficult? Do you really think this is going to "generate positive political reform"? It might hurt the U.S. in Europe, but that won't change much. They were looking for any excuse to run out of the war anyway. They didn't have two skyscrapers come down in any of their cities. It won't affect popular opinion in the U.S. As with the video, I don't anticipate that any serious "war crimes" charges will come up against U.S. troops.
The really odd thing is that Assange is claiming that there are war crimes here. Since war crimes are defined by the laws of war, he'd need to begin supporting the laws of war before he can claim to oppose real war crimes.
I'm intrigued by this section: "Hundreds of innocents die in over 140 incidents." It's tragic, although it's to be expected when insurgents are not asked to respect the laws of war. Then compare that to this: "16,000 improvised explosive devices are recorded in the Afghanistan war logs." With such a huge scale of activity, 140 incidents is a small number. The Wehrmacht was a lot better about uniforms and separating civilians, and yet there were still thousands of French civilians killed in the run-up to the Normandy invasion.
Of course it will affect popular opinion in the U.S. I'm pretty sure shooting a deaf and mute man counts as a war crime, as well as many of the other civilian casualties detailed here. But if they do not continue war crimes, then there is a problem with the laws of war, and there needs to be "positive legal reform". Knowing the details of a war is a necessary precondition for deciding what we need to change, or whether we should support the war. It is ridiculous to support the war if you do not have access to information on what is going on. The release of these documents will certainly further decrease the already decreasing low support for the war in the West. Your ability to blame every single thing on the on the insurgents, even blatant mistakes by Western troops leading to civilian casualties, and your refusal to accept a single piece of wrong-doing by the U.S. military, is astounding. The Afghanis already know what is going on in the war. They see it every day. It is people in the west who are ignorant of what is going on, and the military want to keep it that way. The belief that "the military and government know what is best for us, and have the right to tell us what we can and cannot see" is the root of fascism, authoritarianism, corruption, and of most abuse, and it places you in a tiny and extreme minority. I am not sure quite how aware you are of this. I'm not particularly interested in any further response from you, but that you for your time. Gregcaletta (talk) 00:29, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not one to say the government knows best. I just don't believe Wikileaks knows as much. One of the primary reasons I oppose the death penalty is because of my lack of trust in government. The same goes for government controlled health care. But there has never been a war fought the way you propose. There has never been a war without secrets. Wikileaks isn't going to change that.
I didn't say it's always the insurgents' fault. The Granai incident looks like it was an error in targeting. Accidents and mistakes aren't usually Al Qaeda's fault. But accidents and mistakes aren't war crimes either.
The deaf and dumb guy was shot and wounded because he refused to stop when instructed to. That's a sad case, but there is no way to identify deaf and dumb people in a way that insurgents can't mimic. You can't possibly expect any legal reform that allows civilians to ignore commands to stop during a time of war.
"Positive legal reform" is not going to happen the way you'd like. Previous changes to the laws of war were built upon what had gone before. You can't just drop the Geneva Conventions and expect to replace it with a new framework that asks nothing whatsoever of our enemies. I don't think a single first-world country would agree to that. The U.S. won't even ratify Protocol I and II (not that it would change much here when this enemy has no moral standing whatsoever).
The U.N. can make noise but the General Assembly is worthless. Half of them will sign anything that gets their leaders more money and power. On the other hand, each of the five permanent members of the security council has major concerns with terrorism. They're not going to give any more advantages to terrorists than they already have. There's nothing Wikileaks can show that would change that. The way things are going, we're more likely to see the Geneva Conventions slashed than replaced.
Iraqi/U.S. Occupation Law about carry, conceal, etc.[edit]
To begin (and end) with: It's all about RS for the RPG stuff. Get those sources, evaluate them, summarize them fairly, cite them accurately. My mind's not made up on this one yet. Maybe it never will be.
What follows is way too long, but I don't have time to edit down to something more reasonable. My apologies.
Picking up the thread ... regarding this:
Actually, it was permissible to have an AK-47 in your home but I'm not aware of it being okay in the streets.
How about a woman going home on the bus with a pistol in her lap? [2]
Also: I'm still trying to dig up the RS source for something else, a report about life during The Surge for U.S. troops. I do clearly remember being bemused by, then approving of, an episode in it. IIRC, an Iraqi is openly carrying an AK-47 down the street, and a U.S. soldier (possibly after checking the guy's ID to make sure he's 25 or over, and maybe for properly registered militia membership, I don't remember) just waves him onward. He then explains to the embed that this is OK.
It might seem nuts to you. But that one had me beaming, after a moment of puzzlement. It was pure Surge. In a funny way, it underscored every good idea behind that plan. Crazy? Read on.
Bremer's 2003 attempt at legislating small arms did allow for an AK-47-per-home. I haven't looked at the details, but it almost certainly attempted to entirely outlaw carrying guns around. But by early 2007, that's ancient history. The law never had the desired effect.
(Yes, in some cases, in recently captured towns, allied forces utterly expunged all small arms. But this was under such lock-down conditions that even motor vehicle traffic was prohibited. Iraq is very much a car economy -- that's not sustainable, any more than a dusk-to-dawn curfew is sustainable.)
In any case, as an unintended consequence of another Bremer move, the streets had been flooded with AK-47s after he disbanded the Iraqi Army. (One of the stupidest moves of this war, right up there with Rumsfeld committing inadequate troops to the invasion). Iraqis were going to be carrying these around -- concealed in cars, if they weren't allowed to carry them openly. Who would blame them, under the circumstances?
Allowing Iraqis to carry AK-47s openly in places like Baghdad and other Surge areas might seem nuts, but think it through. It makes good sense. Many situations in Iraq underscore the subtle and layered wisdom of the U.S. Second Amendment. To get Iraq under control, allied forces would ultimately need the cooperation of militias, including some who were not so organized as to have uniforms or much formal training. (The Anbar Awakening proved nothing if not that.) At the same time, disarming the people could leave many of them at the mercy of militias in places where militias were not cooperating with legitimate authority. There can be situations where the only check on possible rogue militias, the only way to keep such militias "well-regulated", would be a populace whose right to not just keep but bear arms has not been infringed. (As might have been the case in some parts of the U.S. as well, in the years when a legislator could be two weeks on horseback by the time he reached the nations' capitol, and the Federal army was vestigial.)
The "bear" part is important here. When facing the risk of militia oppression and brutality, to permit only defense of one's home is not likely to be enough. The right to retreat from one's home, still armed, is part of a right to self-defense. The right to move armed through areas of uncertain control (areas perhaps fluctuating daily) while trying to go about one's daily business, is reasonable. The right to bear arms is the right to bring them to others as they might legitimately need for their own defense. The right to keep arms is meaningless without the right to carry them home after you've bought them somewhere. Finally, imagine what must have been a common predicament in Iraq: membership in a legitimate militia that can only afford to have its members armed by relying the arms they already have, which they also need at home. One might be called to assemble by that militia but find that, to do it safely (for yourself and your fellow members) you need to move, on foot, armed, but without a uniform that might signal to enemy militias exactly just who you're affiliated with.
In short, the gun on the streets of Iraq in 2007 was not unambiguously the enemy of peace and freedom in that land, nor is it necessarily the enemy of U.S. forces there. For the most part, quite the contrary. So the question becomes: what was it in this case?
Maybe there would be excellent grounds for suspicion, if what you say is right:
Regardless, everyone knew there was a battle going on just blocks away. There is no law-of-war circumstance that allows civilians to carry weapons at such a time unless they want to be considered combatants.
But I'm not so sure. I see and hear evidence in this video that points the other way.
In this case, it looks like a group of men, some of them armed (though perhaps no more than with permitted AK-47s), were strolling rather casually down a street that you say was practically next door to raging battle. Did they think so? Who else anywhere nearby thought so? We know that, hardly blocks away, a guy was driving his two young daughters children. (Reportedly to some lessons, IIRC -- not exactly a life-and-death mission from which he could not turn back). How did he not know he was driving through -- or very close to -- a war zone? Maybe when the 30mm rounds were firing, he'd just heard dim thunder (windows rolled up, A/C blasting in the van, right?) whose direction he couldn't trace. If he connected it with risk, maybe he thought that, if anything, he was driving away from any danger. Maybe when he first saw Eldeen, all he saw was someone struggling feebly in a littered street, not the bodies further on. Or maybe his daughters children saw that victim first. Maybe his own daughters children even said, somebody's hurt, we have to help him, after he almost turned back upon understanding the real nature of the scene. Maybe he did it because he didn't want his daughters children to think war had robbed him of all compassion for strangers. Do we know for sure, one way or the other?
Notwithstanding what 30mm rounds can do to a body, and the mention of weapons found near the bodies, I don't think the official report ever declared that any of these men, armed or not, were insurgents. [Added: The report, even before its formal conclusion, equivocates between "insurgent" and "military-age male". The investigating officer is tasked with studying an "enemy engagement" in a Jul 13 memo, so the presumption of "enemy" might have already been made.] The report mentions scattered weapons, but that doesn't mean that these men had been carrying all of them. Weapons scattered in a war zone without bodies of their former bearers are probably broken, useless weapons. Especially considering the resale value of functional ones compared to income per capita in Iraq. (Like that old joke: two economists are walking down the street, one spots a twenty in the road, and says "Isn't that a $20 bill", and the other snaps, "No, dummy, somebody would have picked it up by now.")
I listened all the way through these videos and at one point (after the Reuters journalists were dead) somebody reports hearing a shot. Like this was news. In fact, like it was the first shot they'd heard from the ground, the whole time. Like things had been pretty quiet for a while at that point (except for the din they created a little earlier). Something's not quite right here. We could be looking at an incident that's largely the product of reasonable misunderstandings on both sides. As well, bear in mind that, in July 2007, the Surge was still quite a new thing. IMHO this Operation Ilaaj (in execution if not in the spirit in which it might have been planned, at least from what I can see and hear in this video) shows many signs that the tactical habits and ways of thinking Odiorno had identified as not working very well, that were moreover counterproductive, had yet to yield to better thinking.
Battle zone? Bearing arms in a threatening manner? Those can be ambiguous, with combatants in the air seeing it one way, and the people on the ground thinking otherwise. Note that, amazingly, despite how loud a helicopter can be even at a great distance, in one part of the video not long before the shooting starts, it looks like all of those guys on the ground are facing away from the source of noise in the air. Until a few of them reach a corner around which there seems to have been a U.S. position in view -- how far, I don't know -- they don't bother to skulk at all! Experienced insurgents would know what one of those helicopters could do to them. These men moved in the open as if there were no reason to be thought of as targets, despite a line-of-sight to something that could make mincemeat out of them. Was "act casual" a standard insurgent deception? I don't know.
To my mind, then, it comes down to the question of the RPG launcher. In what Wikileaks has called its unedited version (for which we seem to have at least anonymous confirmation of authenticity from U.S. military sources) we hear brief conversations about an RPG, and about a possible live round. So I think chasing that one down would be energy more productively spent than arguing about what did or didn't constitute a war zone at that point, or what did or didn't constitute bearing AK-47s in a hostile manner. With that, all we can report is various POVs. We can't introduce one.
It's all about RS for the RPG stuff. Get those sources, evaluate them, summarize them fairly, cite them accurately. My mind's not made up on this one yet. Maybe it never will be. Yakushima (talk) 09:31, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't get centcom's FOIA-copy link to work, for the report, so I'm using Wired's [3]. From what I've seen so far, every photo purporting to identify an RPG or RPG round is either very blurry or redacted. In one case, they caption a photo taken almost above the item, saying there's an RPG-7 there. It's redacted. Can you think of a national security rationale for this? I mean, it's OK for Wikipedia to show us a picture of this weapon back in 2006 [4] but this report can't show us the RPG-7 they photographed on the ground, in July 2007? Is this Wikileaks' leaked version of the report? If so, and if the apparent redaction of this RPG photo is somehow Wikileaks', wouldn't somebody have gone ballistic over that by now? The AK-47 on the ground gets a complete photo. The RPG-7 doesn't. Can you think of a plausible explanation? Yakushima (talk) 15:46, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The rules for AK-47s changed back and forth. The Iraqi government first said they were allowed in the homes. I think there was a time when they could be taken outside, but not in Baghdad in 2007. By that time it was completely under Iraqi law anyway.
According to this press release from July 2007, "Under Iraqi law, civilians are allowed one AK-47 assault rifle and a 30-round magazine in their homes for protection. Hand guns and carrying weapons on the street are prohibited."
You're right that the Anbar Awakening required armed Iraqis to patrol their own streets. But that in Anbar, and they coordinated with U.S. forces. That's not what happened in Baghdad on that day.
Forming a militia is one thing. Patrolling the streets during a war is another. Even if we were to say there's an inherent right to rebel against a government they oppose, they must then distinguish themselves from the non-combatants (or accept the blame if innocents are killed), and expect to be fired upon if a helicopter flies by.
I don't think the insurgents were aware of the helicopters. Those cameras can see pretty far.
One thing to keep in mind is that a war zone isn't a court of law. They need reasonable certainty to shoot at an insurgent but not absolute proof. The official report called them insurgents because there was sufficient evidence of that. Being armed like that in that area at that time is all the proof they need. The RPGs make it as conclusive as can be.
I've read somewhere that the picture the RPG was redacted because there was a body too close to it. Dead bodies are sensitive issues. It's actually against the Geneva Conventions to display them as some kind of sick trophy. (This became an issue when Saddam Hussein's sons were killed.)
Yes, they were indeed aware that there was a war in progress. It's not like the battle just started while those guys were walking down the street, and while that other guy was supposedly taking his kids to school. Operation Phantom Thunder began three weeks earlier and would continue for another month. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that a battle was underway around Baghdad and the Army was coming through.
Even if the driver of that van somehow didn't watch the news, listen to the radio, or read the newspapers, or hear about it at his mosque, or from his friends, the most we could say is that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and completely clueless about where he was. That would be a tragedy but it wouldn't mean he didn't make himself appear a valid target. Civilians in a war zone do have a responsibility to steer clear.
It's not unusual to use kids (just a few months earier) in ways that could get them killed. I'm not saying that's what was going on this time, but I don't completely assume they were really going to school either.
[Yakushima, posting so close to Gregcaletta that there was an edit conflict, and responding to Randy2063] You need to distinguish between nominal Iraqi law and the real situation. A memo that cites Iraqi law is fairly meaningless when the real law of the land is U.S. military policies. Baghdad in 2007 was not under the rule of (Iraqi) law. I'm sure there were laws against death squads. There was little the Iraqi government could do about them. Moreover, it appeared that some elements of the government were actually running some of them. Guns were everywhere. Control of sales and transport, negligible. Check this out: [5]
[Gen. PETRAEUS: Yes. Yeah. A lot of these, you know - how do you count a militia? I mean, the guy work in - no kidding, we walk through a market with one of the Iraqi generals. And he said, by the way, you know, a lot of these guys are all, you know, they'd be in Jaysh al-Mahdi if they weren't out here selling - it was one of these massive markets where you can buy anything - tens of thousands of Iraqis.
So what you have to do, of course, is you have to get the angry young men off the streets by giving them alternatives to having to hang out on the street corner with an AK-47.]
And here we have, around the same time, Iraqi government officials calling on their constituencies to arm themselves. [6]
Abbas al-Bayati, a Shi'ite Turkman lawmaker, said yesterday that, in the absence of enough security forces, the Iraqi government should help residents "arm themselves" for their own protection.
The call to arms for civilians was echoed by the country's Sunni Arab vice president, Tariq al- Hashemi, who said "the people have no choice but to take up their own defense."
The idea of organizing communities to handle their own defense has been gaining support here after the success that Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar Province have had in driving Al Qaeda from their towns and villages.
Some officer might choose to cite Iraqi law, but it was not incumbent upon U.S. forces to enforce Iraqi law under such circumstances. They'll make their own policies, fit for the situation. (Just like everyone else in Iraq at the time, it seems.)
Was Operation Ilaaj some raging battle? A google news archive search on "operation ilaaj" turns up no stories from that time. Believe it or not, Baghdad at the time qualified as "low intensity conflict". Under those conditions, life still goes on. From an on-the-ground report at the time (my emph. added):
Danger is everywhere in Baghdad; life here is a continuous series of risk assessments. From the moment people wake up, they have to check whether it is safe to leave the house. Is there an unusual amount of gunfire? [In its own report, the U.S. military said there'd been only scattered attacks during the clearing operation] Have strangers been seen driving through the neighborhood? Is there something new to be afraid of? .... The next decision of the morning: Is it safe to send the children to school? Have there been bombs on the school route recently? Do the streets feel secure? Any new fliers that insurgents or militias stuck to the walls of the neighborhood overnight? Most parents I talk to keep their children home at least two or three days a week as a precaution. .... Then you have to think about yourself. Is it safe to drive across the city to go to work? Would it be better to take one's own car or trust a taxi driver? This entails a surprisingly complex calculus....
A "war zone"? Yes, in some sense. But look at that: people are still going to work and back, going to school and back, going to the market and back. Risk assessments leave room for error. Correct risk assessments still leave you somewhat at risk anyway. Maybe sometimes, you get sick of all the risk and all the ambiguity. And you end up taking more of a risk than you should have. Hardly a crime in itself, though, and especially under such (effectively) lawless conditions.
I haven't made up my mind. I still don't see enough evidence for a firm conclusion one way or the other. What makes you so sure of your conclusion? Imagine I'm a juror -- moreover, one who agreed with the goals of the the Surge and who saw it as a success (which I did.) Imagine your job is to remove reasonable doubt from my mind that the men killed with those Reuters employees were insurgents. How would you do it? Yakushima (talk) 05:02, 13 July 2010 (UTC):\[reply]
I know it was rough there. That's the entire reason the Army had to sweep through the city. I've mentioned Riverbend in a previous post. She had to leave the country because of these extremists and their death squads. In that environment, how could an innocent person travel with an AK-47? That either means you're with the Mahdi militia or you're against them, in which case you'd have been killed before this point.
The calls to arm themselves would not include RPGs. You cannot defend your home with one of those. I didn't read anything about carrying AK-47s on the way to work.
I didn't cite Iraqi law to mean that the Army had to enforce it. I only meant that they weren't supposed to walk around with AK-47s. They weren't supposed to have handguns either, but that would make more sense for protection while running errands.
When you say "people are still going to work and back" you should look at the video again. They're all military aged males. I don't see any women. I don't see anyone working. The only kids going to school are the ones in that van. It looks like a city waiting for the Army to come through with a few stragglers who are up to no good.
It's not that I'm so sure of all my conclusions. But I don't doubt that they were carrying whatever RPGs the ground troops reported, and I don't doubt that a group of men carrying RPGs were insurgents. And I'm quite sure the aircrew was doing the best they could under the circumstances.
There is a long object visible in the video which does look a hell of a lot like what you expect an RPG to look like in such a poor quality video. It also looks a hell of a lot like a tripod, which would make more sense, from the way he is holding it, the fact he is near to members of a Reuters photography team, and the fact he causally is resting the end of it in the ground. Fox News are the only organisation to say definitively that is an RPG, and Fox News essentially works for the military on cases like this. In any case, the helicopter do not open fire until a full minute later, at which point no weapons are clearly visible, and certainly not the RPG. The group are gathered around, perhaps looking at the photos on Chmagh's camera (if these guys use digital) or perhaps setting up the tripod? I am pretty sure that the helicopter would have been at least visible, although if it were not visible, then the RPG would be of no danger. In any case, there were a maximum of three armed men in the group of at least nine men, and it seems fairly obvious that the few who were armed were there to protect the journalists from insurgents; they were not insurgents themselves. Interestingly, the major media organisations have been using the whole debate about the RPG to distract attention from the more horrible second attack, in which no one was armed, one man was wounded, and the helicopter crews did not know who was in the van (it turned out to be two children). The third attack was perhaps even more blatantly necessary unnecessary, in which they destroyed an entire building merely because they saw a couple of armed me walk into the building , and this attack was barely covered by the media organisations at all.
Concerning legal it there is the question of whether it was legal for the men to be armed, and whether it was legal to open fire. Even if it was illegal for them to be armed, that does not in itself make it legal to fire upon them. In fact, this flow chart shows that both attacks should have been considered illegal. In the second attack, they were not acting in self defence and the target was not a "Deliberate Target" (which means that the individuals had not been previously identified as being part of a terrorist organisation). The flowchart shows that the first attack was illegal for the same reason (they asked for permission "before" they believed they had seen an RPG, and the fact that the men do not notice the helicopter, means either that the helicopter is not visible, or the men had no interest in attempting to shoot at it) Even if they believed they were acting in self-defence, it was still illegal because they received permission to engage "five to six individuals with AK-47s" when they were really engaging a group of at least 9 men, of whom 3 or 4 at most were armed. However, it does not really matter what the law says, if the law is not enforced. There is no reason for the military to enforces such laws if they are allowed to keep the investigation and the evidence secret form the public. The question is really whether all of these attacks was moral and I think it is fairly clear that at least one of them, if not all of them, were not, and it was certainly not moral to keep this video hidden from the American public. Gregcaletta (talk) 04:49, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Greg, I think you meant "blatantly unnecessary, above.
Oops, yes I meant unnecessary. Gregcaletta (talk) 02:42, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Randy: Greg has his assessment of the Rules of Engagement flowchart and possible Crazy Horse divergence from it, but I'm not nearly so sure. I agree with him about Iraqi law under the circumstances. I don't agree with his talk of morality. Crazy Horse might have been within the Rules of Engagement and the people killed might not have been insurgents. I don't see why those two possibilities are mutually exclusive. The Rules of Engagement were about balancing a number of considerations. As is official secrecy policy about information collected from the battlefield and participants.
Of course, I'm horrified at much of the dialogue, but the horror is about war. It's not a judgment of the individuals -- the soldiers in the helicopters or the Iraqis on the ground. I don't hold myself above any of these people, because I don't know what I'd do differently if I were them, I don't know enough about them, what they've been through, or about what it's like to be them, in that situation.
A wounded man struggles feebly on the ground, badly wounded, and what you hear said about over the radio about him sounds utterly heartless. But to the man on the trigger that day, that wounded man is already someone who might otherwise escape and become deadly and dangerous again -- perhaps doubly so, for having lost some comrades.
If I were in that helicopter, and had lost a number of friends in battle over a deployment or three, and seen too many civilian casualties dead at the hands of insurgents and rogue militias, and was capable of firing 30mm rounds, and had adrenalin coursing through my veins, and anger and hatred and fear built up over many battles and personal losses ... what would I say, seeing that man struggling on the ground? What would I do? I don't know. And I'm not sure I'd believe anyone who says they do know, however much they might believe themselves when they say it. I know from talking to Israeli Defense Force veterans that they are asked questions like mine, above, on tests, during their training. The answer marked as correct is often: "I don't know." Yakushima (talk) 17:34, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, I make these points not to judge individuals, but to point out what we should be doing differently. Firstly, military should not be able to decide for themselves whether they keep this stuff secret. A trusted independent third-party, nominated by the public, should have the job to check all materials to see if their classification is really valid. Secondly, we should be training our troops differently. They should know how to tell the difference between a camera and a weapon. If there is any uncertainty, they should know not to shoot if there is no immediate danger to themselves. Most importantly, they should be trained to know that their number one priority is protecting civilians from harm. The worse thing is that the inhuman mentality that these soldiers display in the video is actually part of their training. They are trained to see anyone who is armed as a insurgent, to see people as targets rather than humans, and to feel absolute hatred towards any person that they are attacking or have just killed. They are trained to be blood-thirsty. Unfortunately, this kind of dehumanisation may be necessary just to get a person to kill another person, insurgent or not. If that is the case, then we should be considering whether it is worth engaging in such a war at all. Gregcaletta (talk) 02:57, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'll try to answer both of you here. If I missed something important, let me know.
I'm certain it's an RPG and not a tripod. It was animated here where you can see its profile. Where you say "he is near to members of a Reuters photography team," you can see that its bearer is closer to a guy with an AK-47 than he is to one of the reporters. Then you have to remember that they did find an RPG.
Even if a tripod did look that much like an RPG then it wouldn't be a matter of training the military. It would be a matter of telling reporters to carry something different. Those kids didn't have a choice about being in that van. The reporters could have worn distinguishing clothing (as other reporters do), and they could have carried equipment that can't be so easily confused with weapons. They know what the rules are. They simply don't have the right to expect soldiers to be able to tell the difference when they're standing next to other armed men.
The bodyguard theory doesn't hold up. Reporters are not allowed to have bodyguards armed with weapons that are illegal under local law (even if we ignore the RPGs). Of course, it's still possible they ignored the law, but these were locals who could walk with ease among terrorists -- like Bilal Hussein. And being locals, if they were bodyguards, that would really throw cold water on the idea that this was a typical neighborhood where locals may be driving their kids to school.
You may certainly say you don't think the laws of war are strong enough, and that you want improvements. But you can really only say that *after* the insurgents had been asked to follow basic rules. It doesn't make sense to expect that you could make the rules ever more strict for Americans while never asking our enemies to follow any rules at all.
I don't think anyone ever said those armed men were a threat to the helicopters. I don't see their distance mentioned; they could very well have been a mile away. (These videos can be deceptive in that way.) Note that it takes a few seconds from when you hear the gun firing until you see the bullets hitting. They posed a threat to the approaching troops. That's enough.
In the second attack, I think they had believed it to be the same van that was running around before, which they thought was associated with insurgents. Since Chmagh wasn't identified as a reporter, and was associated with men carrying RPGs in a war zone, it was reasonable for them to believe he was an insurgent. And since he was being pulled out by someone just minutes after an attack, it was reasonable to assume they were together.
You're right, Yakushima, when you say it's "balancing a number of considerations." While these were decisions made at the moment, I doubt they were mere whims of the man who gave the approval to fire on the van. They train for this, read books, and study in classrooms, based on experience gained from past wars. Not letting the guy go was probably the best decision if taken together with all the times they've ever had to deal with a similar case. Some of it may seem ruthless when it's really only the least bad outcome when they're all taken together. We're only seeing one of those outcomes here.
Again, these are the types of assumptions that need to be made when insurgents are allowed to feel that they don't have to wear uniforms. Assange didn't want to think it mattered because he doesn't live in a war zone. Events like this are one reason non-uniformed fighters were executed in previous wars. They should never have been tolerated in this one.
I'll have to look more into that third attack. If it was legal to shoot men with AK-47s then it was legal to destroy a building they thought was under construction that had a bunch of them in it.
Your ROE link says a "reasonable certainty" is required, not absolute proof. There was a group of armed men in the vicinity of American troops who had themselves been fired upon. I suppose there must have been a decision at some point to assume that groups of armed men in that area are considered to be members of one of these insurgent groups. What else do you expect when insurgents don't carry flags, wear uniforms, or follow any rules at all? MacArthur declared Manila to be an open city in 1942. That was to prevent these things from happening there. Unfortunately, the Mahdi Army didn't want the same thing.
I know that troops have some responsibility to look out for the civilians, but the civilians have a much greater responsibility to stay out of the way.
The long object does look exactly like an RPG in that animation. It also looks exactly like a tripod. This is how you hold an RPG. I would be surprised if it were normal to press the rocket end the RPG into the ground as the man in the animation does. And as Yakushima pointed out, there is no reason to trust the military report. They have no reason to be honest, and they have a history of being dishonest. But even it is an RPG, (which is still possible) this does not give you reason (legally or morally) to open fire on someone, just because earlier on they were standing within 10 metres of that person, especially if they are now unarmed, wounded, surrounded by unarmed men, and it certainly does not give you an excuse to fire on the van itself. In any case, permission to engage is requested and received before the word "RPG" is mentioned. And what about the destruction of an entire building later on?
In regards to the legality, just check the flowchart. The first question is "were the unit acting in self-defence". For the attack on the van, the answer was definitely "no". The next question was "were these men a Deliberate Target". The flowchart explains that "Deliberate Target" means that the target has to have been clearly identified as a member of a DTO, (which the reporter was not). Deliberate Target does not just mean "previously the person standing near someone with a gun". So the answer if "no and the flowchart says "do not engage". Even if the answer is "yes", later in the flowchart they still have to have "positive identification", which I believe they did not. Of course, jargon like "Deliberate Target" and "Positive Identification" is deliberately used to obfuscate the legality of such attacks. Nowhere in that particular document is "Positive Identification" defined. Do you know of any official military documents that give a definition of what "Positive Identification" is? I would be very interested to see the a definition. Gregcaletta (talk) 02:49, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
These are just lowly militia members, not trained soldiers. If you look at the guy with the AK-47, he's not holding that firmly either. The RPG guy does have the grenade pointed up, which is better than down.
An RPG wasn't required to identify them as insurgents. It's really just icing on the cake.
Similarly, camera equipment itself wouldn't mean they were reporters. The Army's report on the incident mentions this. The Jawa Report (linked above) often works to get jihadi videos removed from YouTube.
I disagree that "there is no reason to trust the military report." The video shows reasonable certainty (reasonable to military authorities if not to you) that there were insurgents. If only tripods and golf clubs had turned up, and the aircrew simply made a mistake, they would have faced no penalty. Yet, unlike the critics, the aircrew had to file statements that they could have been charged if they had lied. Such a lie would require getting the ground troops (officers and enlisted men, most of whom have probably never even met the aircrew) to go along with falsifying the evidence. Whatever minimal benefit they could get from lying in a report could not be worth the enormous risk.
Has Reuters ever said that these reporters had armed bodyguards?
The building of the third attack was believed to be abandoned or under construction. That had to factor into the decision.
I'm not aware of what their definition of positive ID is. It obviously doesn't mean they would have been looking for uniforms. The only means I can think of is by looking at their weapons. What else is left?
Sure, they might have slowed down their advance. But don't forget that innocent Iraqis were being killed every day by the insurgents. Slowing down is deadly, too.
BTW: This source says, "the helicopter could have been as far as 800 meters away" (about half a mile).
I doubt they were official bodyguards. there is no evidence they even knew the reporters. They may have offered to escort them to a good place to take some photos. The may have simply been following the reporters without consent. One point which we have not yet discussed is that there are initially almost 20 people visible to the helicopter crews, of which the say they an see 2 or 4 weapons (and then they exaggerate this claim to 5-6 when requesting permission, but 5-6 among 15-20 is still not many.) It is unclear which 9 members of the initial 15-20 men are in the group the helicopter opens fir on when they become visible. At the moment the helicopter opens fire, there are no weapons visible, and certainly no RPG, but because the helicopter crews have already obtained permission to kill, they could not care less if these particular men were armed. The flow chart clearly shows that they broke the rules of engagement in several places, but it does not really matter because them military had no reason to enforce the rules. You may be interested in [this report http://www.cnneffect.net/heilbut_wikileaks.pdf]. In 2007, Washington Post reported "During the fighting, an Apache helicopter fired bursts of 30mm rounds toward several people who had been directing machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. soldiers". This is clearly not true from the video, but people take the Wahington Post on their word, just as the Post obediently parrot what they have been told by the military. Gregcaletta (talk) 07:50, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I like the intent of that term paper but he's wildly biased and wrong.
My first impression was to note that the Washington Post article was printed the very next day. Sworn statements had been taken but the Army's investigation had barely started. Then I realized that the part you quoted ("fired bursts of 30mm rounds toward several people who had been directing machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. soldiers") was, in fact, almost certainly true. They didn't have much room for doubt about that line.
We hadn't thought enough about how all this started. If you remember, those Apaches had been requested after ground troops had been taking "small arms and RPG fire" from that area (and this is a sworn statement). The area they looked at was close enough that a picture of the ground troops had just been snapped by Noor-Eldeen. The only real objection at this point is that the helicopter might have been looking at the wrong group of men. You can say you don't think it was enough weapons to shoot them all, but it was indeed more than enough to cause that "small arms and RPG fire." Perhaps you'd feel better if the Washington Post had said "toward several people who they believed had been directing..." But we can say that about a lot of things.
Compare this to the term paper's lack of skepticism of the Iraqis' side. He questions the military report but takes on faith the Iraqis interviewed by Wikileaks who were practically guaranteed to be Shiites either supporting the insurgency or, at least, living under their thumb, and probably wanting condolence payments.
I just looked at the first part of the video again. I do see the guy with the AK-47 when the helicopter comes around to fire. He seems to be leaning on it. The other one may have set it down, or it may be behind him, or he might have stepped inside a building. They probably weren't counting the number of men at that point, but it is the same group. Maybe the remainder of the original 20 or so had gone on to where the third shooting was. They may not have known it was the helicopter that killed the first group.
I think you'd have a better point about only a handful of people being armed if some of the visible people included other than military-aged men. They do look like they're expecting a showdown. If some of them were not spotters but only curious onlookers, or present out of tribal expectations, that's really something they were asking for. The laws of war do matter. You cannot allow the insurgents to ignore their obligations (as Wikileaks is clearly doing) and then expect U.S. troops to pick up all the slack. It's never worked that way before, and it can't work that way now.
It's so ironic that the video begins with an Orwell quote. He would have despised Wikileaks.
I would say it it fairly clear that Orwell would have fully supported what Wikileaks is doing. The statement made by the Washington Post is a plain lie, and I am amazed that you don't see that. Even the Army have not claimed they have evidence that the particular group in question had previously been directing fire at US troops. All they claimed were that there were "reports" of "small arms and RPG fire" hours earlier. There are 3 or so visible weapons in a group of 17 or people and perhaps one RPG, followed by a group of 9 people with only 1 weapon visible and no RPG. It is fairly lame excuse making to be saying things like ""The other one may have set it down, or it may be behind him, or he might have stepped inside a building. If there is one AK-47 visible in a group of 9 men who have not shown any aggressive action towards US troops, you do not open fire. It's a simple as that. How you can defend the second and third airstrikes, and at the same time defend the classification of this video, is increasingly beyond me. Despite your distorted perception of the situation, I have appreciated your information on the subject. Thank you. Gregcaletta (talk) 03:12, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Orwell hated censorship but was not opposed at all to the government keeping military secrets. He was happily willing to distort the truth for BBC propaganda during WWII, and broadcast lies to the world when it could help the war effort. He would not have taken kindly to anyone who'd expose that from within. There were no doubts he wanted Fascism defeated.
I wasn't aware that the "small arms and RPG fire" was hours earlier. This would change things a bit, but that would only make the Washington Post wrong, not a deliberate lie. The military public affairs officer wouldn't know that much more either. On that date, they didn't have all the facts in yet.
I've looked at the debriefings. The wording suggests it had only just occurred. I haven't seen anything that says it was earlier. Maybe this was revealed elsewhere.
Still, there are two types of killings here:
The children were completely innocent. They were in the wrong place because their father (for whatever reason, and probably not a good one) put his kids at risk to get involved immediately after an attack.
It's one thing to say that soldiers should risk their lives to protect children when their parents ignore the laws of war and put their kids in harm's way. The father was wrong but the children were innocent.
But it's completely different to say that soldiers should also risk their lives because grown men are willing to hang around with (and almost certainly assist) those who carry arms in violation of the laws of war. You may not think it is an aggressive action, but it is. They're adults, and they know the rules. They made their choice. No soldiers' lives should be risked for that.
Sooner or later you're going to have to ask why America's critics never ask insurgent groups to take care of their children.
Obviously "America's critics" would like insurgents to take care of there children. it's silly to think that "asking" them to do so would have any effect. But if you are referring to the father of tte children wounded in this attack, there is not evidence that he is an insurgent, or anything other than a good Samaritan. Gregcaletta (talk) 02:57, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How can you think it wouldn't have an effect? If they can't ask the insurgents to observe minimal human rights standards, surely they can ask the insurgents' friends.
Al-Sadr, who started the Mahdi Army, certainly is interested in world opinion. We know this because one of his senior figures was going to speak at a "peace" rally in London until the British government refused him entry. I pointed earlier to a photo at a demonstration with Al-Sadr's supporters in the U.S. carrying banners with his name and picture on it. Al Sadr allies in Hezbollah have supporters among the so-called "peace" movement, too.
Al Sadr received support from Iran, which is itself on very friendly terms with the government of Venezuela. And of course, the so-called "peace" movement loves Venezuela and Hugo Chavez. They can easily ask him to use his influence. They never showed reluctance demanding that European politicians pass their war grievances to Bush. They're fully capable (and probably more capable) of asking the same of Chavez with Iran and the insurgents. They simply chose not to.
Note that I'm not even saying they must demand Chavez make an effort to get Iran to stop supplying insurgents, and get them to seek peace with the elected government of Iraq. But the very least they could do is make an effort to get minimal human rights standards while they continue to fight their war.
It seems according to Ethan McCord in this article that there was actually was fighting going on nearby when the helicopters opened. Although, this does not excuse opening fire on a group nine men when there is only one visible AK-47 at most. In fact, it means makes the RPGs that happened to be nearby even less relevant to that actually attack on this particular group of men. And it certainly does not excuse the attack on the van or the building. Gregcaletta (talk) 05:08, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
McCord also says there was an RPG. Since we didn't see one there, I'm guessing it could have been brought there by one of the other Iraqis who assisted the driver. Or maybe the driver had picked one up on the way to the bodies. Or maybe when McCord says "RPG" he means the grenade itself without the launcher. One thing I realized when rewatching the video is that the other helicopter saw things not in this video.
One armed Iraqi is enough. Those are all men there. If you look at the video, U.S. troops were close by.
It isn't as though the insurgents are operating with greater human rights standards and you're asking that U.S. troops raise their standards to be equal to theirs. The insurgents are the ones entirely at fault here. They should be the ones who are asked to improve their standards to meet ours. Most Iraqi adults are able to read. They know what the rules are.
It would be different if this was still autumn 2003 when the insurgency was only just beginning. You could make a humanitarian argument that they're ignorant of the rules, and that we should risk our soldiers' lives while the insurgents get their moral act together. But they had four years by 2007. They were adults, and they exercised a choice.
They're never going to care about human rights if no one asks them to.
I saw that the wiki-id User:Iqinn directed comments at you that I would have found insulting if they were addressed at me. I believe you really do understand a distinction between "illegal" and "unlawful" that they seem to have missed. I believe you do have a firm understanding of the habeas procedure.
You might not know this. Earlier this year someone using the wiki-id User:Iqinn volunteered that English was not their native language.
I started what I hope will be a centralized discussion, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Terrorism/Guantanamo#"Extrajudicial detention" and/or "unlawfully detained". I think you probably agree with me that if the wiki-id User:Iqinn does not accept that the two of us constitute a consensus, they can't simply ignore that we disagree with these particular edits. I think you probably agree that they should participate in a central discussion of this issue, and try to, politely, make a case for their position.
WRT User:Randy2063#Catastrophes that never quite happened and Y2K, in the lead-up to Y2K I read a spoof
-- a document, ostensibly drafted shortly before the year 1000, that explained the terrible problems society
was going to face at the millenium, due to the Y1K problem.
The document noted that for hundreds of years scribes had been keeping very important financial records in logbooks, in tables, that had only ever required enough room for years that only contained 3 digits, and, when
the year 1000 arrived ever single table that contained a year in its entries, would not have room for years with 4 digits. The same problem applied to tables that recorded births and deaths, indeed to practically every table in existence.
If a massive campaign wasn't set in motion, immediately, to rewrite every single table, come the year 1000, there was going to be complete chaos, and the collapse of civilization.
I might not have done the spoof justice. It was funny.
Up here in Canada, in 1999, CBC Radio had a guy who every week or so would give a report on additional predictions of problems that would be triggered by Y2K problems. He clearly didn't take Y2K seriously, and his reports were quite funny, if you listened closely.
Sometime in late 1999 17-year-old Britney Spears, who was already a big-star, but who was, officialy at least, still a virgin, gave an online interview -- on "AOL" if I am not mistaken. One of the fans whose question was selected for Ms Spears to answer was, "who was she planning to go out with to celebrate New Year's Eve with?"
Ms Spears replied she wasn't going to have a date on New Years Eve, because her mom wouldn't let her go out, because none of the elevators and traffic lights were going to work, and jetliners were going to plunge from the sky.
So, commented the radio guy, not only was Y2K going to cause all those other problems, it had already ruined the hottest date of the last 1000 years. Geo Swan (talk) 10:33, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's especially stunning when you think of how much money Britney Spears had even then.
I can't laugh too much. My mother thought enough about Y2K that she filled bottles with water. But not enough to actually buy bottled water. She just filled some empty ones.
Y2K did hit my brother-in-law in 1998. He tried using a credit card with a "00" expiration date.
The real major computer catastrophe didn't come until years later when Microsoft released Vista.
Back in the 1980s there was a guy who had a funny signature file. It contained a quote, several sentences long, about the beauty of vastness, and how nothing truly beautiful wasn't also truly vast. The quote was attributed to "Napoleon Bonaparte, conquerer of Russia, and early OS/2 user."
Mind you he used it when IBM had already brought out OS/2, but MS hadn't yet rolled out Windows NT.
The first Y2K problem I read about occurred around 1978 or 1979. It involved requests to transmit important files from one coast, to another, to a computer center that maintained a library of backup tapes. Some guys on the west coast kept complaining that some of their backup requests were being rejected, with a cryptic message. The technical guys on the east coast, at the backup center, tried, and failed, to replicate the problem, and basically told the west coast guys they were nuts.
It turned out they weren't nuts. Some of the centers using the backup center used operating systems that allowed indefinite expiry times on files, if the expiry date field was empty, they would never expire. Other computers used operating systems that did not allow indefinite expirty times. All of the files that were rejected had indefinite expiry times. But at some point in being transmitted east the files sat on the file system of computer that didn't allow indefinite expiry times. That computer added the date 99/12/31 23:59:59 PST. When the file arrived at the east coast, and another computer tried to adjust 99/12/31 23:59:59 PST to EST, it generated a fatal date error. The east coast guys coulnd't emulate the problem because their tests didn't require adjusting from PST to EST.
Another funny Y2K I came across was written about about 1000 working days prior to Y2K. The hero worked in the IT department of a large investment company. As he described it, the executives, on the executive floor, had regular meetings where they discussed their expected future earnings. They looked at some printouts, and if future earning were up, it was brandy and cigars, all around. But when future earnings were down, one of the executives was delegated to look into it, and report back.
He was called in when the executives were already in a state of high alarm, because their expected earnings kept dropping, and they couldn't figure out why. He found that, for security, or some other reason, they didn't use the IT department to generate those printouts of projected earnings. They used spreadsheets. One spreadsheet added up all the projected earnings, from all their projects, over the next 1000 working days, and divided by 1000. So when 1000 working days in the future crossed from 1999 to 2000 the days in 2000 stopped counting.
He figured the spreadsheets were a mess, and would be really hard to fix. Because he didn't really didn't like working there, and didn't think he wanted to work there much longer, he applied a simpler fix. He changed the master spreadsheet so it only averaged over the next 500 working days. :-)
The time zone one is the most interesting. I can easily imagine not figuring that out until after I give up and go to sleep. (The importance of sleep should never be underestimated.)
But that last one is the funniest because I know people exactly like that.
It really happened though at the end of 2008, if you had a Zune. Every Zune30 on earth locked up. I know a professional DJ who uses his at gigs. They all reset the next day when the battery wore down then you recharged it. Zune_30Leap year. Z2K9. Batvette (talk) 06:17, 28 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
WRT the "innocence" of the Guantanamo captives...[edit]
Greetings!
You have spoken, convincingly, about the inappropriateness to speak about the "innocence" of Guantanamo captives, when most of them are not held due to a criminal charge.
Your continued patience and diligence in balancing the attempted POV in that article is to be commended. Batvette (talk) 08:23, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but I wouldn't call it patience. The article's scope changed, and I didn't want to contribute while it became a clearinghouse for political mischief.
In fairness, it's not as bad as it could be. Nobody put Obama in there yet. But I was right, in that the real war crimes are already being buried by lesser incidents, some of which aren't a crime of any kind. It won't be long before people start to forget how truly serious My Lai was.
The trivialization of My Lai goes back to Kerry's congressional testimony ("raping civilians, killing babies, beheadings, all under policy and under approval of command") which he was challenged on in an informal debate on the Dick Cavett show, by the officer who assumed command of Kerry's craft when he returned stateside. Pushed into a corner about what war crimes he personally committed or witnessed, Kerry demurred to admitting he "served in a free fire zone" and "directed .50 caliber interdicton fire at civilians" which of course sound horrible to the ignorant- as if you were allowed to mow down civilians at will. "Free fire zone merely means the OIC of the unit needn't get additional permission from command to engage combatants, Geneva ROE always applied. This is what happens when people use war for political capital, and the people whose welfare they pretend to be concerned with are rarely helped by it.
On My Lai, to this day I am not really sure what happened there, however a few years ago I came across the transcripts of the Dellums hearings, and the testimony of one John Sack, who wrote a book on and intensively interviewed Lt. Calley, and this was a powerful story about another side of this event-
SACK: My name is John Sack. I am a writer. I went to Vietnam 5 years ago I wrote about that and, as you say, I have been very close to Lt Calley since then. Lt Calley wants to be here today he wants to testify here today he can't do that, of course, and I am very grateful to the Committee for letting me say something to you about him.
You met those other people from his Bgd, from his company yesterday, very beautiful people. I promise you Lt Calley is a person very much like them.
Idealistic, and intelligent, and sensitive, and I know it sounds strange, but considerate and compassionate.
I remember once at the trial with all of his other troubles, 1 day a fed'l marshal came over and said, "I am serving these papers on you, the people of My Lai are suing you for $400,000,000." and Lt Calley's 1st reaction was concern for the fed'l marshal: "Gee, I hope you didn't have to come far out of your way I hope it wasn't trouble to you." The prosecution witnesses came on and almost all of them Lt Calley invited over to his apartment afterwards for a beer. His girlfriend said to him, "I can't understand it, these people crucify you and you invite them over." and he said to her, "They were ay buddies in Vietnam I don't want them going around the rest of their lives feeling, gee, I really did that guy dirt. I want them to know there is no hard feelings." Finally, Capt Medina testified, and Lt Calley told his lawyers, "Well, if anybody has to be thrown to the dogs, I am glad it is me, and not Medina, because Medina has a wife and children, and if he goes to Leavenworth, his wife and children will lose their allotment." So you take a guy like this, and you ask how could he have done something like that? What was his motive? and it is very strange, sir, because in 4 months of that trial the prosecutor never once brought up the question of motive. What was his motive? You know, was it raping and pillaging there?
There was a lot of rape and pillaging going on in My Lai.
No 1 ever said that Calley participated in this. Calley, was he some sort of monster? You go through the record of the trial, and I think it would probably come a foot-2 high now, and the very worst thing that anybody said about Calley during that trial was 1 soldier said, "I didn't like him I didn't dislike him." Was Calley insane? He had 67 psychiatrists, mili, civilian, defense, prosecution, and all of them said he was sane and normal. and the judge came up to him afterwards and said, "Congratulations, you are the only person in this courtroom who is legally sane.
So what was his motive? Why did he do it? I will tell you why he did it. He did it because the Amer people wanted him to do it. I know the Amer people will say no, no, I didn't want him to do that. I saw those pictures in LIFE magazine I saw those dead women and children. I didn't want him to do that. I wanted him to go to those Vietnamese vills and some of the people there, they are Communists, yes. I wanted him to kill them.
But some of those people there, they are anti-Communist, and I wanted him to say, good morning, and give them a cookie. and some of those people there, they don't know if they are Communists or not, and I wanted him to win their hearts and minds, Pres Nguyen Van Thieu, and the Amer people say I know it is a very hard job these people all look alike they all wear black clothes they are all chewing betel nuts and saying hello, GI.
I never said it would be easy, but all we wanted him to do was win the war, win the war. So what does it mean to Charlie Company, win the war. That company goes into a Vietnamese vill, and there is nobody there but 10 women and children. and a soldier goes up to 1 of those women and says, "Where are the other people in this vill?" She says "Khongbiet," I don't know. The soldier says if she doesn't know, she doesn't know.
They go out of that vill, and when they are 100 meters out of the vill, somebody starts shooting at them with an AK-47, a Sgt is hit and carried off in a chopper. The soldiers maneuver back into the vill and say to the women again, "Where are the VC?" "I don't know." The soldiers say this is a very strange vill, somebody shooting with an AK47, and nobody seems to know about it. and they go out of that vill again and there is noise and soldiers are lying around on the ground. and 1 soldier is there, his name was Wilson, he stepped on a mine and the mine slit him from the crotch up to his chest he had slit in half and fallen on the ground like an exhibit in an anatomical class. All of his organs were exposed there. and then Medina and the medic came and laid out a rubber poncho and put him on top of the poncho. But under the poncho there was another mine and he blew up in the air again and the medic was covered with blood and shaken and crying and the Capt had to slap him, knock him to the ground and very carefully when the medic wasn't looking, take a piece of liver off his religious medal.
and the soldiers saw this happen and they say, they know everyone in that vill knew about those mines. and, nobody in that vill told them about it. and nobody in that vill helped them. and nobody even came to them afterwards and said, "Gee, we are sorry about that." and the soldiers go to the people of that vill and say, "Where are the VC, please." "Khongbeit," I don't know.
and the Amer people keep saying win the war, win the war. and 1 soldier finally says, "All right, I will win this war. This vill, this country, I am going to burn it, every straw, every house, every haystack, I am going to burn it, napalm, I will win this war." and you heard, you know, the testimony yesterday that is what is going on in Vietnam, that is what is going on. and the govt, Army says, "Yes, it is going on, and we found the guy who has been doing it we got him. Calley. We are going to put him in prison the rest of his natural life. We are going to put all our sins upon him and crucify him, Calley Christ." But those soldiers yesterday told you it wasn't Calley who was doing it.
The soldiers yesterday, the beautiful people, when they came to Vietnam, a few months before they came to Vietnam, Calley himself had said, "I am not going to do it any more," had gone up to his Col and, I am quoting, and told the Col, "I don't want to kill these people any more there must be a better way." When those soldiers yesterday came to their Bgd, Calley was the civic action officer, in charge of hospitals, medical aid, helping the farmers, getting them pigs, pig food. and every time there was an Amer attack, going up to the people afterwards and dusting them off and saying, "We are very sorry it happened, but we are really doing it for your own good." So there was 1 congressmen yesterday who said, who asked for amnesty for the draft resisters. Of course, he is right. and for amnesty for the people who are going to Canada, and, of course, he is right. I hope there would also be amnesty for Calley and for the 2 million other "Calleys" that Amer could go to them and say, "Forgive us. You gave us your faith you gave us your loyalty you gave us your service, and we delivered you into evil come with us now and help us to build a country that is dedicated to something higher than the deaths and the massacres of old men, women and children." Thank you.
Omar Khadr has pled guilty to murder and other charges. I have made some changes to his article and Speer's as well, and wanted to let you know. You may want to take some cuts on this. This changes the entire emphasis of these articles, that essentially presume his innocense. Thanks.--Yachtsman1 (talk) 00:55, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I just logged in for the first time in two months. I was on a long wikibreak. It'll take me a few days before I can respond in full.
[7] Noticed this edit, is there a source for that other than the blog? It really seems unlikely to be true that they're running anti-semitic ads without it being picked up by mainstream news.. Just wanted to check with you before I reverted it. WikiManOne 03:20, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It should have been phrased better, and could use a proper source, but that should then be tagged rather than removed.
Code Pink is a fringe group. The mainstream news isn't going to follow every dip into absurdity.
It's true that Hamas has guaranteed their safety. They had developed an association with Hamas before this. They briefly explained it here as the voice of the people.
Fair enough, it just didn't look like a legitimate edit to me and I thought you were probably reverting the removal thinking it was vandalism. My bad. I agree that if there are more sources for it, and everything mention, it should probably be mentioned... don't know whether the lead is the place for it though... Your decision, if you can find enough sources to merit it then I'll support it. :) WikiManOne 05:26, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your input on July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike. If Iqinn does something like this again, [8] let me know and we can take it to an ANI. (he loves to delete other peoples posts)
By the way, how was JN-25 exposed by the press? (as it says on your user page) I thought it was the assassination of Yamamoto that tipped them off.V7-sport (talk) 07:55, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for showing up for clean up duty. I don't have much time this week, and I'm too tired to keep up.
The breaking of the Japanese naval codes was revealed by the Chicago Tribune#History. It wasn't a hostile leak like some of the others. It was simply careless. Fortunately, the Japanese didn't notice. FDR's anger was probably amplified by the fact that the Tribune had been an isolationist, Republican paper.
Howdy again. I've done some editing on the page and I think It's somewhat more balanced, when you get a chance you might want to give it a look. If it's been reverted here's the last diff [9]. Thanks again for your support through this. I see that you have shouldered most of the BS this has generated from the onset. V7-sport (talk) 12:14, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's very good work. I'm extremely glad you came along.
I noticed that you clarified that Assange conceded the Iraqis had weapons. It made me think we could really use names of any notable people who still express serious doubts about this. Those who do tend to remain fuzzy, as Assange tried to do. I'd rather we had firm statements they can't weasel out of later. Or, maybe there are, and I just forgot or hadn't noticed.
I'll keep an eye out, I actually did a cursory search for Assange conceding that there were weapons and that's as close as I could get. The thing is the RPG and the Kalashnikov's would have been apparent to someone who was trained to look for them. By the time the wikileaks video was analyzed and rebutted though, the narrative trigger happy Americans was out there and is probably what most will take away from the incident. V7-sport (talk) 22:18, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Would appreciate your input on the article at your convenience. check the talk page. Thanks- V7-sport (talk) 11:11, 5 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Randy, Thanks for looking into the talk page. I could use your support as this looks to be a tag team effort with Iqinn and Gregcaletta. V7-sport (talk) 09:57, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not violate WP:BLP by inserting unsourced negative (and inane) claims into edit summaries as you did here. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:36, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It was in answer to the person who thought it better to remove the paragraph. With that in mind, it was directed to what might have been his view. You're probably right that I should have left it short.
Inane? Let's put it this way: I fully agree that the subject generally opposes war crimes whenever the U.S. is accused of them. The references will show that.
Claiming someone is a "member of the far left" and hence "supports torture overall" is inane, sorry. Also, your application of "far left" is somewhat surprising to me. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:38, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, they do side with regimes and movements that use torture. Either directly, through demonstrations that include radical Islamists (supporters of Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Sadr), links to regimes such as Iran, Syria, Libya, etc., or indirectly through their alignment with the likes of Hugo Chavez, who still supports those same regimes.
I'll agree there are no fine lines here. The far left is also diverse. A lot of these people do claim to side with "freedom fighters" in Libya, but they have yet to have a serious talk with Chavez about it. A few will act as apologists for the genocide in Darfur. Most don't.
But when you get down to the bottom line, it's not as though history hasn't been moving along for the past decade.
Your world is a lot more black-and-white than mine. Was Nixon a lefty for opening up the dialog with China? Was Gandhi a Nazi because he didn't support the English against Germany? In the late 80s, the same Mujahideen now fighting US troops in Afghanistan were supported by John Rambo and James Bond, the heros of the free world. What changed them from the good to the bad guys? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:02, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, I just acknowledged that they're a diverse lot. But your examples actually show the difference.
There's a difference between opening dialog and selling people out. Gandhi didn't go so far as to visit Germany and show comradeship with Hitler the way that Chavez, Galloway, etc., did for dictators in the middle east.
Siding with the Mujahideen against the Soviets isn't much different than siding with the Soviets against Hitler (regardless whether or not that was before the Mujahideen became as evil as they are today). Sometimes you need to pick a side. Whose side is the far left taking today? Is the U.S. really so evil that they should choose to side with Iran and Syria?
That's the problem. They did pick a side. They sided with dictators against the U.S. In fact, much of the far left also sided with the Soviets during the Hitler-Stalin pact. This goes way back.
"Sometimes you have to pick a side" - well, maybe sometimes. But not always, and certainly not always unconditionally. Politics is not a zero-sum game, and you rarely get to chose allies who are admirable in every respect. Who supported (or even still supports) Middle Eastern dictators like Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and even, during the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein? Or, to go beyond the Middle East, Somoza and Pinochet? Do you differentiate between supporting "Iran" and supporting "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad"? I can support Iran's right to determine its own affairs without intervention from the outside while opposing Ahmadinejad's policies. And on the other hand, I can support western values like tolerance, freedom, and equality before the law, and still protest abhorrent abuses like Abu Ghraib and Camp X-Ray. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:05, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But leaders of the far left have picked a side. They stand with Ahmadinejad. Galloway, Code Pink activists, and others, have visited him to show support. That's not supporting the Iranian people unless one thinks the Iranian people overwhelmingly support him. Even if they do, Iran is currently supplying insurgents in Afghanistan (as revealed by Wikileaks, among others). Most Afghans want those insurgents to stop fighting. This is in no way supporting their right to self-determination. Where does the far left stand? Hugo Chavez stands with the Iranian government. It doesn't matter to them how many children die in Afghanistan. They don't even ask insurgents to respect some of the laws of war.
Abu Ghraib and Camp X-Ray are a different story. I oppose abuses, but that's only so far as abuses go beyond the laws of war. The abuse at Abu Ghraib came out when a soldier reported it to Army CID, and the Army then began its investigation (those infamous pictures weren't leaked to the public until months later). When Camp X-Ray was built, before Camp Delta was ready, the guards had to live in tents so that their quarters could not be better than that of the prisoners. So, the U.S. military does care about the laws of war. Hamas and Hezbollah don't have soldiers who report abuses to their superiors as ours did at Abu Ghraib.
Admittedly, the U.S. (particularly the Bush administration) did try to cut it close when finding the limits of the laws of war. That's why they wanted to know where the legal limits are to the definition of torture. Some techniques were approved, and others were not. Waterboarding was given restrictions, but permitted up to that point.
You can, of course, say you think Bush's limits to interrogation techniques were so badly defined that you think they'd run afoul of the Geneva Conventions. You can say you think they cut it too close, or you can say there shouldn't be any rough interrogations at all. The trouble is, you'd also need to compare that to the far left. They care about the Geneva Conventions only when it suits them. Just ask Gilad Shalit's family.
The far left could work to end the war if they wanted to. They have friends and associates among our enemies. They chose to support their friends.
"I oppose abuses, but that's only so far as abuses go beyond the laws of war." - well, I consider that an imoral, inacceptable, and unproductive position to take. I oppose abuses, fullstop. And, of course, I will be more outraged, and complain louder, if such abuses are performed in my name, by my government or allied governments of the "civilised world". How can we expect "them" to follow any standards if "we" don't even follow our own? As social animals and as moral creatures we should apply the golden rule, or the categorical imperative. The legal framework sets, at best, a minimum standard, not the final goal. Even if we had no Geneva convention, and no Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" run afoul of basic decency. We recognise human rights and human decency because doing so allows us to de-escalate conflicts. As far as I'm aware, most "left" human rights organisations have called for the release of Gilad Shalit, so I may miss your point there. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:00, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"And, of course, I will be more outraged, and complain louder, if such abuses are performed in my name, by my government or allied governments of the "civilised world"."
That's a good start. But the point is, what about when the far left's friends commit abuses? How much did they complain when Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped? And what about the others taken prisoner by that same group? I'm sure various groups filed press releases, but what about demonstrations? What about talking with the far left's friends? They could have been mobilized to demonstrate if they cared.
We do follow our own standards when we follow our law. We've ratified UNCAT but we didn't give away the farm.
We can ask others to respect the laws of war because we do. The detainees at Gitmo could have been genuine POWs if Al-Qaeda and the Taliban had followed the Geneva Conventions. If they only go halfway as far as our limits take us, then that would still be a major improvement.
Going beyond the legal limits is what's what's immoral because it asks nothing of our enemies. Giving our enemies more rights than required, when those enemies don't respect the laws of war at all, only encourages them to commit more atrocities. More than that, it tells others around the world that they don't need to respect the laws of war either. This isn't only about how prisoners are treated. It's also about separating themselves from non-combatants, which they refuse to do. That should have been priority one.
"As far as I'm aware, most "left" human rights organisations have called for the release of Gilad Shalit, so I may miss your point there."
They filed press releases on behalf of Gilad Shalit. But did they personally ask their friends who are sympathetic to Hamas? (And, yes, they do have friends in common.) I didn't see any orange-jump-wearing activists doing demonstrations about it. Press releases don't impress me. I don't think they impress Hamas, Iran, Syria, Libya, George Galloway, or Hugo Chavez either.
It's really very simple. The far left needs to talk to their friends about human rights.
So if you don't give away all your discretionary income to charity, you're in favor of starving children in Africa? There is so many unsound assumption in your argument that it makes my head hurt. Apart from the big whopper "if someone is not visibly active against X, he is supporting X" there is the simplistic dualism between "us" and "our enemies", when the vast majority of people falls into neither category. Then you somehow treat both "the far left" and "our enemies" as monolithic blocks that somehow share responsibility - because some in the left may have "friends" that they don't mobilize, all of them support torture? Because some of our enemies commit atrocities, we get to be as nasty as we can get away with? By that argument, My Lai or the kidnapping of clearly innocent Khalid El-Masri woud justify equivalent retaliation against the US. But an eye for an eye leaves the world blind. Human dignity is an absolute value. You don't get to violate human rights because "the other side" does, too. It now looks like at least 10-20% of Gitmo prisoners are only there because some neighbour didn't like them and snitched on them, or someone got a bounty for denouncing them, or they had a name that looked vaguely similar to that of a real insurgent. How do you justify their treatment? Wouldn't you agree that they and their friends and family have a valid grievance against the US? The west is under no serious risk here, certainly not under any existential risk. There is no excuse for slipping from the highest standards. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 05:57, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's not only "some in the left" with friends among the enemy. It's a lot of those in leadership positions.
If some individual leftist goes to Iran to visit relatives then I would not expect them to stop at a street corner to set up a protest demonstration. But if they go to Iran for a friendly visit with political leaders, that's when they've crossed the line into taking sides, and the members should take a stand against their leaders.
"if someone is not visibly active against X, he is supporting X"
No, I am not talking about being merely "not visibly active against X." I'm talking about being actively aligned with X, and actively supporting X, and X's allies. If someone goes to a purported "anti-war" demonstration and marches beside people carrying banners for X, then they are all turning a blind eye to X's atrocities. There's no getting around that.
Leftist blogger Lenin's Tomb once said of "anti-war" marches, "Every time you go on these marches you're marching through 20 million living rooms across the Middle East". They see what marchers care about -- and in its absence, they see what they don't care about.
We're not "as nasty as we can get away with". We could be much nastier if we tried. But we did try to be almost as nasty as the law says. (Most Gitmo detainees didn't get the rough treatment, and they stopped that entirely by 2003.) Easiness also has a cost. For there to be less interrogation would mean that we'd need to do more ground assaults and air strikes.
Suppose we try the same thing with supporters of the Bush administration. They all oppose torture when America's enemies do it. Would you say that's enough to say they oppose torture?
Let's compare: Bush's supporters oppose eyes being gouged out, drilling into limbs, people thrown into shredders, children being raped in front of their parents, etc., but they're also somewhat comfortable with the CIA's carefully supervised waterboarding of three Islamists eight years ago. Bush's opponents remain stridently, fiercely, and loudly opposed to such waterboarding, while being relatively silent about those other incidents.
Do you remember Maher Arar? The U.S. sent him to Syria, where the Syrians locked him up, and (allegedly) tortured him. People loved to criticize the Bush administration, which got an agreement from Syria that they wouldn't torture him (and, yes, I agree it's really stupid to take any document seriously that's been signed by one of those countries). But the critics had trouble criticizing Syria itself, and they don't have a single bad thing to say about the leftists aligned with Syria. George Galloway probably visited Syria several times while Arar was locked up. Does anyone think he or his supporters care about what goes on in Syria's prisons? I don't.
I'm still reading up on the new reports but I doubt it's "10-20% of Gitmo prisoners" that are innocent. It looks like they're including conscripts as "innocent." Conscripts may not be with the Taliban out of malice, but it's always been legal and proper to capture them.
Khalid El-Masri wasn't so obviously "clearly innocent" when he was grabbed. (He's not clearly innocent now either; it's only clear he's not the same guy they thought he was.)
Do they sometimes grab the wrong person in wartime? Yes, of course. It's going to happen a lot when we have an enemy that doesn't wear uniforms.
Think about the other 80-90% of Gitmo prisoners: Take careful note of the fact that most of the other detainees failed to identify themselves as members or associates of the enemy forces. That's what they're supposed to do under the laws of war. If they force us to figure out who is whom then we're more likely to make mistakes.
The critics of Guantanamo have had 9 1/2 years to start asking their Islamist friends to follow the Geneva Conventions. I think if they cared about the Geneva Conventions, they would have started long before now.
Just stopped in to say hello, hope all is well. V7-sport (talk) 05:52, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Howdy! I noticed you've been busy trying to tame the United States and state terrorism article. You're a braver man than I am. That article was so far off the wall that I usually thought it best to let it drift deeper into Chomskyland. It's not as likely to hurt anyone if it's that obviously extreme. Good luck on it, though.
I'm currently digging through the recent news for more on Moazzam Begg. Then again, I'm always looking for more on Begg. :)
Moazzam Begg has been on my watch list for a while but I had to take a step back from Iqinn. (My block log was getting pretty bad.) The state terrorism article was/is the mount Everest of wiki-crap, however there's something of a window of opportunity now to at least whittle it down to the K2 of wiki-crap. Give it a look if you get a chance.V7-sport (talk) 22:58, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'll take a peek when I'm back this afternoon.
BTW: I once spotted Begg on the site trying to erase entire sections of his article. I didn't know it was him until later, but it was very satisfying once I did find out.
Are you kidding? LOL, I just went through the article's history; Sure enough, and he doesn't look like he's too shy about it either. I like the "There was no bullet-proof vest either. In fact it was a flak jacket used to protect against shrapnel"[10]... See Randy? It's all a just big misunderstanding.V7-sport (talk) 05:33, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That wasn't even the first time. I once came across this column by Begg. There are people linking to his Wikipedia article in the comments, which evidently bothered him. He responds with the handle "Combatant". The article history shows an anonymous IP made a series of deletions at that time. I had started reverting them while he was still in the process, thinking it was just a vandal. (I don't know why I thought then that it was an Amsterdam IP, but WhoIs now says London.) He says in the second page of comments that he doesn't know how to edit Wikipedia but I figure he didn't understand that I was reverting him right away.
Sure enough, it goes back to London. And signing it "Combatant", pretty subtle, huh? Some of these creeps just can't help themselves; they want the presumption of innocence so they can play the victim yet their ham-handed attempts at "dog whistle jihad" couldn't be more obvious. I see that there have been a bunch of UK IP's keeping you busy there.V7-sport (talk) 19:42, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm reverting all of your removals of US massacres you did the other day. Massacre does not have a legal definition as far as I know. I would love to see a definition in the UCMJ, geneva convention, or some other legal code if you can provide one. Check the massacres category for a wikipedia definition of what a massacre is. If the Boston Massacre is any evidence of what passes for a massacre in the US, then clearly all of your removals fit the definition of a massacre as well. If you want to debate the limits of what constitutes a massacre committed by the US then we can discuss it on the talk page for that category. Please go there before entering into an edit war on this issue. Thanks! 108.78.229.94 (talk) 17:43, 3 September 2011 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Joshuaism (talk • contribs) [reply]
You seem to be saying that there are no clear rules, and so we can say anything. I disagree.
A massacre is "a wholesale indiscriminate killing of persons".
The word indiscriminate means "Without care or making distinctions".
The U.S. military has rules for how it engages the enemy which are written while following the treaties in the laws of war. The fact that they sometimes may fail in the heat of battle doesn't change the fact that they attempted to follow the rules. The laws of war do not require 100% certainty or accuracy. Perhaps you remember a few years ago when critics of U.S. policy were claiming to care about the Geneva Conventions. Well, this builds from that.
The items I've reverted were cases where the military legal system looked into the event and decided the rules were followed. Their sources clearly say this.
I believe in each case that I have reverted there is substantial controversy regarding US Forces following the rules of engagement/use of force/LOAC[11]. I'm not saying that there are no rules. I'm saying that there are serious allegations in each of these cases that the military indiscriminately killed non-combatants and engaged unlawful targets. Many of these cases involved initial reports with few or zero civilian casualties, suggesting attempts at a cover-up. You cannot point to a lack of prosecutions or inconclusive investigations by the military as proof that the event was not a massacre. Even in the My Lai Massacre the US would not acknowledge it as an illegal act. There was an attempted cover-up, an inconclusive military investigation, and only one conviction resulted (with that soldier only serving house arrest). I'm just saying that the military cannot get the final say in whether these killings qualify as massacres. All accounts of an incident should be presented. --Joshuaism (talk) 20:32, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, I can indeed point to a lack of prosecutions by the military as evidence that these events were not massacres. The U.S. military has a reasonably good record on investigations. There have been too many airstrikes cancelled by military lawyers to say otherwise. The military is accountable to the President, and subject to investigations by Congress where generals can be called under penalty of perjury.
I know that some might criticize my saying the U.S. military has a reasonably good record. Even so, how does it compare to the locals in Afghanistan and Iraq? These are societies where bribes are part of the everyday cost of doing business, and where children can be used as human shields.
The Mukaradeeb wedding party massacre was at a "suspected foreign fighter safe house." That's all we legally need in a war when the enemy rarely distinguishes themselves from civilians. We can't ask for absolute proof. We should ask that insurgents separate themselves from civilians, in accordance with the laws of war, but that's not happening, and it's rarely asked.
Regardless whether or not you believe there was an actual wedding party, this wasn't a case of pilots wanting to kill innocent people. They were tasked to go there based on the intelligence they had. For planned airstrikes, it's possible that they received approval from a military lawyer.
It doesn't matter for our purposes if that intelligence could have been wrong. It does not become a "massacre" simply because a mistake was made. Errors and accidents are not massacres. The 2010 West Bengal ferry sinking was due to negiligence but we don't call that a massacre no matter how negligent the captain was or how many people were killed.
There are similar problems with all these "massacre" items. The Haditha case has been reduced to manslaughter when the case fell apart. (Among other things, the photographic evidence didn't match the storyline.) It may yet be serious for the marine still awaiting trial, but negligence is not a massacre.
And O. J. Simpson can point to his criminal trial acquittal as proof he did not murder Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman, but his loss in the civil wrongful death case suggests otherwise. The high burden of proof for a criminal case to proceed does not show proof of innocence. For an American investigator it can be professional suicide to bring forward a report that doesn't "support the troops". For this reason all points of view from reliable sources should be considered. It should be noted that currently Iraqi and Afghan courts cannot bring charges against US soldiers. Iraqi and Afghan families cannot bring civil charges in US courts either because US courts do not have jurisdiction over events in foreign countries. So we are not afforded the opportunity of a second review like the O. J. Simpson Case had. Military trials are the only legal venue for these cases and there is a significant opportunity that this introduces bias in favor of acquittal.
An ad hominem attack against Iraqi and Afghan society does little to assuage the guilt of American soldiers. There are plenty of arguments that can be made that US politics is full of the same pay for play action. Or that the military is just a good old boys club where acquittal, and sloppy half-hearted investigations are the rule. If you think that Americans are better than the Iraqis and Afghans then we should hold Americans to our higher standards.
The Mukaradeeb wedding party massacre may have been at a "suspected foreign fighter safe house" but LOAC requires distinction and proportionality. Even if the "suspected foreign fighter" was throwing a "pretend wedding", attacking forces should exercise restraint to limit civilian casualties. Killing 42 civilians just to get one guy does not strike me as proportional. A better opportunity would have arisen at another time if this guy was a important target. An effective fighter can't be partying every night.
I would not consider the West Bengal ferry sinking as a massacre either, but that is because there is no act of military/police/governmental authority force involved. More closely associated would be the sinking of the Ehime Maru although once again, while a military sub was involved, it was not an attack. The Ehime Maru incident is placed in Category:Non-combat military accidents. Perhaps you could place all of these "massacres" within that same category, perhaps the Mukaradeeb wedding massacre was an accident. Even so, these are not non-combat deaths so that category should not apply.
But even if the Mukaradeep incident were a horrible accident, we need to recognize that it DOES matter for our purposes if the intelligence could be wrong. When it happens so consistently that it would appear there is a pattern of negligence on the part of US forces then it is criminal to act on such faulty "intelligence". There is such a thing as criminal negligence. And even if no one is charged, people will be judged on their actions by the populace and the world.
The recent developments in the Ishaqi incident are newsworthy right now, even if it wasn't news when Philip Alston made his report. Even if his was a second-hand account and it only gained traction once anti-war picked it up. Even if these allegations have already been hashed out once, and they all originate from Iraqi sources, they should be included. We should be aware of any NPOV:Anglo-American Focus and bring NPOV:Balance by assigning weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence. The Iraqi government is reopening their investigation of the incident due to the resurfacing of this UN letter and it will bear weight upon negotiations of continued US military presence in Iraq due to military immunity. This has been reported in reliable sources such as the Washington Post[12] and the New York Times[13]. It would be unfortunate if this event and others like it had current effects on US-Iraqi relations and Americans could not understand why because it was not reported and easily cataloged in a ready location. Let it be included in Category:Massacres_committed_by_the_United_States and let the article tell the nature of conflicting reports. Because it is clear that in other parts of the world this event will be categorized as such. Joshuaism (talk) 06:46, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Americans are held to higher standards. Soldiers are investigated all the time. With over 100,000 troops in Iraq at a time, and well over a million total over the years, the Army already looks for the occasional criminal. That's why the soldier who turned in the Abu Ghraib photos didn't have to go very far to find Army investigators to give the pictures. The Army already had CID agents there. The "professional suicide" you're thinking about isn't a concern to them when it's their job to look into things like this. There are plenty of soldiers in prison now for crimes against Iraqis that you never heard about.
The Abu Ghraib photos were handed over to Army CID in January 2004. The investigation started immediately, and there were formal charges against the guards the next month. The 60 Minutes expose that made this famous wasn't until a few months later, and that was after more investigations had already begun.
If there was anything to this "professional suicide" theory of yours, one would think Navy SEALs would be the most immune. But three of then were were charged for punching an Iraqi responsible for the 31 March 2004 Fallujah ambush. Assuming the Iraqi wasn't lying, punching him is as understandable a violation as it gets but the SEALs were still charged. When an American is captured, do you think anyone other than the U.S. military will raise a fuss if he's punched a few times? Of course not -- the rules are very different.
Tragedies such as Mukaradeeb were not occurring "so consistently that it would appear there is a pattern of negligence". This has been a busy war with insurgents who refuse to distinguish combatants from civilians. We could have a hundred times the number of incidents like this, and it would still be a small proportion of the actual combat.
It's really stunning how, doctors can be mistrusted when performing autopsies at Guantanamo, even though they'd face severe penalties if caught lying, would risk their medical licenses, and not even have a personal motive to lie. But autopsies at the Tikrit Hospital morgue are taken at face value in a country where terrorists kill entire families when a person fails to cooperate. It is truly stunning.
It does stir up the Iraqi factions who think they can win if the insurgencies increase after the U.S. leaves completely. You're right that readers should learn what happened but let's not act as though the Iraqi extremists are speaking out now because they care about the dead children. If Wikileaks hadn't released this now then those factions would have picked something else to complain about. It's what they do.
If they cared about dead children (which they don't) they would have separated combatants from non-combatants. It's been almost ten years, and they haven't even started to care.
So, Americans are already held to higher standards; the military investigations are better than most; and the Tikrit morgue can't be trusted even as much as the Berlin morgue during the mid-1930s.
But, after saying all this, it occurs to me now that you're still jumping the gun. Even if the new "investigation" wasn't a sham, the Iraqi government hasn't yet claimed to reach an official conclusion.
We will have to take your word that these investigations happen and soldiers are punished or absolved. Looking at the FOB Ramrod Killings it would appear that it is difficult to get an investigation started without media support. But hey, just because we don't have reliable sources that legitimate investigations are taking place doesn't mean it isn't true. It just means that Wikipedia won't say anything about it.
But that doesn't matter. The courts are not an arbiter of truth. Law enforcement is not an arbiter of truth. Wikipedia is not an arbiter of truth. Wikipedia presents information in a NPOV manner by presenting all points of view presented by reliable sources. Plenty of reliable sources state that these events are considered massacres by local populations or authorities. It makes sense to present these views and allow users to form their own opinion on the matter.
I see that someone has been reverting your talk page as advocacy. I think that person is an idiot. This being your talk page you should be allowed to discuss these matters as they pertain to you. But your talk page does illustrate a pattern of pro-US military/anti-investigative advocacy in your editing practices. I see from your contribs that you make reasonable edits elsewhere, but your record on War on Terror topics suggest Wikipedia:Civil POV pushing. I recommend you tread lightly in these political matters.Joshuaism (talk) 19:01, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You don't need to take my word for it that these investigations were done. Here's an an archive of the original press release from January 2004. So, not only they investigate the matter, they informed the press. The incident didn't become famous until late April.
The courts are not an arbiter of truth but they do make the legal determinations.
I didn't say every investigation is perfect, but that doesn't mean the Army doesn't want them to do their jobs. The Army did a poor job on Nidal Malik Hasan, too. But we certainly don't get perfection from the military's critics either.
Using opinions from "local populations or authorities" would be like (to take your O. J. Simpson example) using Fred Goldman's opinion to call Simpson a murderer. In Goldman's case, he would be morally correct but we're still not using it. Where would that stop? Should we now accept the opinions of neo-Nazis, the Klan or the Taliban?
Or, how about the "local population" who were certain that Leo Frank was a murderer? I don't think so. In what way can you say the local population of Tikrit is any better? Are they even allowed to express an unpopular opinion without getting their heads cut off?
I didn't say I oppose presenting the views of the local populations. It's appropriate to say who says what. This is only about adding categories based on opinions.
I'm not POV pushing. I use appropriate references to give a balanced story when needed. I'm pretty comfortable with how my edits stand over time. I remind you that it is you who is attempting to add categories based on opinions expressed in locations where expressing a contrary position would be extremely dangerous.
In the Ishaqi Incident, US soldiers went in to capture an Al Queda sympathizer. If violent extremists still held great control over the area after the mission accomplished its stated goal then the mission made little sense. Otherwise your premise of undue pressure makes little sense. Until you present a reliable source stating that the Iraqi people and Iraqi investigators are sock puppets for militant extremists then wikipedia cannot give credence to your accusations.
But it is not just the Iraqis calling this a massacre. The French[14], Spanish[15], and Norwegian[16] wikis for the event all label it in their massacre categories. Moreover, plenty of English language sources call it a massacre[17][18][19][20][21]. Are people and news organizations around the world bowing to pressure from terrorists? --Joshuaism (talk) 15:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Of course "violent extremists still held great control over the area." Your Salon link admits that the reporter had to send in an Iraqi stringer because it was too dangerous for westerners.
Although I may very well find one, I don't have to find that source that local populations are intimidated by extremists. But all you've got is opinion. The Iraqis are still claiming to investigate this. There hasn't been a formal finding. But in fairness to the medical examiner, I see it was the local police, and not the ME, who said the men were killed "execution style." The ME only said they were at close range.
It's not that the entire world is bowing to extremists, there are many critics of the U.S. that align themselves with the extremists because they have some shared goals. Critics of U.S. policy such as Chavez, Galloway, Code Pink leaders, and David Duke have all made trips to the Middle East to express some kind of support.
The other Wikipedias could easily be making the same mistakes. They're not RS, of course.
Most of your news links are making my point.
Your BBC link calls it a "massacre claim" and an "alleged massacre."
Your Guardian link uses the word "massacre" once in the headline but it clearly calls it an allegation.
Your Salon link has the word "massacre" in the title, but this doesn't mean anything on its own. Headlines are often inflammatory, and aren't necessarily written by the article's writer. The link itself has "iraq_alleged_massacre" in the name. As with the Guardian, the article itself is clear that there are conflicting views, and they haven't made a final judgment.
Your New American link may be more judgmental but it's probably not RS. If you didn't know, the New American is put out by the John Birch Society.
Your IB Times link has the word "alleged" right in the title. It's also trying to be even-handed.
Headlines may be inflammatory, but that is how these events are remembered. I don't know why you think the world has aligned against the US along with the terrorists. Perhaps they genuinely agree with the Iraqi people in this one instance and it isn't based on a vendetta. My point is SOMEONE is making the claim that it is a massacre and RS sources announce that claim. So it makes sense to put it in that category according to Wikipedia:Category#Categorizing_pages. If you have further issues with this tag then add Template:Category_relevant? and open it up for discussion on the relevant talk page. If you insist on continuing this dialog then clearly we need to open it up to more people and build Wikipedia:Consensus. --Joshuaism (talk) 21:39, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, my point is not that the headlines are inflammatory. It is that the article itself needs to make the case. The links that you gave are basically making my point, and not yours.
The fact that any ordinary "SOMEONE" is making a claim is not enough. It must be someone authoritative. If the BBC isn't willing to call something a massacre then Wikipedia should not be doing so either. Wikipedia's standards are more strict than the John Birch Society.
I'll be happy to take this up in whatever setting is appropriate.
Making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period is almost always grounds for an immediate block.
Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.
If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss the changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. Iraqisth (talk) 12:25, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not the one who broke 3RR.
For somebody who had supposedly gotten a Wikipedia user name just last night, you've rapidly gotten up to speed on the processes, albeit not the spirit.
Hello, Randy2063. You have new messages at Talk:United States war crimes. Message added 19:43, 29 September 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Please forgive this unsolicited contact, but I note that a couple of weeks ago, you participated in a discussion at Wikipedia regarding the proposed deletion of their entry on OccupyMARINES. Of 26 respondents, 24 voted to Keep; only 2 voted Delete. The result was to Keep the article.
However, it has now been nominated again for deletion, and I thought you might be interested.
Here's the URL for the new discussion page:
Randy: We weighed in on this some time ago on the Talk page. I have removed the entire Sullivan rant for many reasons, most notably because it is is an unsupportable position and Sullivan is extreme. [22]
Just thought you should be aware.--Yachtsman1 (talk) 04:28, 20 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Good move. It might have been useful in that delusions and conspiracy theories wrt EIT are also part of history. But, really, its only saving grace was that it was stupid enough to be funny.
I don't think I realized before that in Sullivan's column, the picture of a body packed in ice is not interrogation at all. It's packed in ice for preservation.
Thanks. I try to kid glove these articles because emotions run high, and I really do not want to engage in edit warring or even be accused of it, but it was just too much to bear.--Yachtsman1 (talk) 20:05, 20 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If it weren't the holiday season, one might almost be tempted in one of one's less cheerful moods, to suggest the remote possibility that this discussion is possibly (at least might be imagined as) evidence of solicitation for meat puppetry. But it's the holidays and we'll treat it as a pleasant colloquy between friends.ElijahBosley(talk ☞) 14:49, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wired defines the accusation of being a Meat Puppet on Wikipedia as "someone who does not agree with you".[1] I often think this is true, as the term is most often used in that context. Regardless, Wikipedia does ask its editors to assume good faith, particularly when the discussion involves a subject wherein the two parties have already agreed, and the influence claim is therefore without serious merit. However, because of the happy spirit of the season, I will leave it at that. --Yachtsman1 (talk) 00:26, 22 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, I was a bit too exuberant in saying that the readers nowadays tend to be people trying to recall the glory days of hating the Bush administration. But I was referring to new readers.
Merry Christmas all. And good luck with the pre-Christmas stuff.
BLP? Are you kidding me? I checked the template and policy page. That this was a massacre in NOT unsourced NOR poorly sourced NOR libellous. We are NOT speaking about the "war crime" cat. I found that in the template Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard. Please do bring the issue there if you really believe that would be the case. I think that would be the right way to resolve the dispute. Rura88 (talk) 02:05, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Of course it's libelous. What do you think a massacre is? If it was simply the same thing as any incident with numerous civilian casualties then why not simply move all massacres into the Civilian casualties category? It's because the word "massacre" means something different. Massacres are genuinely different. They are different because intent matters.
Why are you so adamant about using the word if not to cast blame?
An RFC may or may not be just as good as going to the noticeboard, and would keep the discussion in the article. But I may look into one of those. I just don't have time this week.
A massacre is what happened in Haditha according to all the highly reliable sources that i have posted you on the talk page. I do not see any value in further discussion with you here or on the articles talking page. Take it to the BLP noticeboard if you are still in denial and you still can not call the horrific slaughtering of these 24 civilians including may women, children and infant and an old man in a wheelchair what it is - a massacre. For the rest read what i wrote on the articles talk page. Rura88 (talk) 20:58, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And I posted a reply at the article's talk page.
I do agree that there's no reason to talk with you about it any further.
Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is "Granai airstrike". Thank you.
From my perspective, the only thing better might be if Guantanamo had been moved to Thomson, Illinois, and the detainees had gotten this news during a blizzard in the middle of a bleak winter.
In our last interaction I got a bit hot under the collar and was not as civil as I should have been. I would like to apologize for that. It was wrong. I don't think you did anything wrong; rather, I misinterpreted what you were saying, and for that I am very sorry. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:07, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hey man, I know you're familiar with the subject matter and, based on our mutually watched pages, you seem to be a pretty level guy. On that note I was hoping you'd take a look at some recent edits the United States Navy SEALs by SkepticAnonymous. It's the demographics and "integration" issue; the Talk page and recent history pages are pretty straight forward. I'm most decidedly not canvassing for your support, instead I'd just ask if you'd take a look and see if I've overreacted and/or maybe some additional edits need to be made. I'm bumped up to the 3RR and don't want to push it. If you're not interested I'll just kick it over to WP:30 and hope I don't get a total uninitiate. Thanks either way. TomPointTwo (talk) 18:26, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I do see a problem with it. It's fixable, but I didn't have time to fix it. I made a note on the article's talk page. I'll have to take another look tomorrow.
I found a web page, at NYU, with links to documents used to make the book The Guantanamo Attorneys, and I made a table -- User:Geo Swan/NYU lawyers. Since you have done considerable related work I thought you might be interested.
Some of the blue links are to disambiguation pages, or to more famous namesakes. If you use this table, and you find errors, and you are so inclined, go ahead and update the table.
Here is something I thought you might be interested in...[edit]
Here is something I thought you might be interested in --
a briefing document on Guantanamo habeas from the Congressional Research Service. I came across a passage that addresses something we have discussed. I think it confirms you were right, and I was wrong. The portion I put in bold is clear, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a ruling that the captives had a right to be treated as POWs, until a competent tribunal decides otherwise.
While the Supreme Court clarified in Rasul and Boumediene that the detainees have recourse to federal courts to challenge their detention, the extent to which they may enforce any rights they may have under the Geneva Conventions and other law continues to remain unclear. Prior to the enactment of the Detainee Treatment Act provisions eliminating habeas review, the Justice Department argued primarily that Rasul v. Bush merely decided the issue of jurisdiction, but that the 1950 Supreme Court decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager45 remained applicable to limit the relief to which the detainees may be entitled. While more than one district judge from the D.C. Circuit agreed, others did not, holding for example that detainees have the right to the assistance of an attorney. One judge found that a detainee has the right to be treated as a POW until a “competent tribunal” decides otherwise, but the appellate court reversed.
Randy, there are very few contributors here who I can count on to consistently trust that if we disagree I will keep on doing my best to keep an open mind on whether I am wrong and they are right. Thanks for being someone who trusts in my good faith.
Carol Rosenberg just got her hands on the list of 48 captives who it is has been determined can't be charged with a crime, but who are nevertheless deemed to dangerous to release. Commentators might speculate as to how men made it on to this list. I don't think any speculation is necessary in his case.
Wikipedia standards changed, and articles I started, that measured up to those standards when they were started were nominated for deletion years later. I think those deletions went too far. Some challengers weren't bothering to read the articles in question. So we had articles on Provincial governors deleted -- even though they qualify for inclusion under WP:POLITICIAN, and we had articles deleted on some of the rare individuals who actually ended up facing charges before the Guantanamo military commissions. The deletion fora can get into a mob-rule/lynch-mob mode, and I think this happened for articles on Guantanamo captives.
I made a suggestion that the whole subgroup of extrajudicial captives could benefit from being included in one of the specialty notability guidelines, or having a new guideline started about it. I'd like to see the same notability criteria apply to Betancourt, that South American politician who was a captive of guerillas, and to Bowe Bergdahl, as apply to the Guantanamo captives.
I had my good faith challenged over this suggestion.
Anyhow, I thought of you when I re-read al Zahri's statement, as I thought you might think any of the very few captives who actually said they were a threat to the USA would merit coverage largely based on that acknowledgement.
I know I have said it before, but I am going to repeat, I really value your honesty.
I've really appreciated when you have pointed out mistakes I have made. And you can count on me continuing to acknowledge when you are making valid points, and you can count on me taking them into account when I work in article space.
Okay, you've forced me to sign in again! I'm sorry for my absence but I needed to escape.
I'll say right off that the deletions were a disgrace to WP. It's not like having an article on every Bagram detainee. I can see not including the early releases, but not those who've been there for years and had CSRTs. The fact that they deleted some notables, like politicians, just makes it worse.
It is interesting to see al Zahri admit to being an enemy of the U.S. It's also funny to see his lawyer try to dispute the meaning of that.
But there's more ways of looking at this than how many own up to being enemies of the USA. We should also notice how many won't say they oppose the enemies of the USA. I think it's nearly all of them. The nice thing about Zahri is that at least he's honest.
For example, if you read Shaker Aamer's recent essay, you can see him expressing his opposition to the killing of innocents, but he never says he opposes the war itself. Aamer's essay includes a link to his daughter's letter, and she isn't expressly opposing the enemy's side of the war either (and she is, presumably, a British citizen). As her father likely could leave Gitmo when the war ends, how could she not want the Taliban to stop fighting?
If you remember, Moazzam Begg outright supports the "right of people fighting foreign occupation" even when it means killing his own (supposed) countrymen. Bear in mind that most Afghans oppose him on this. We're in Afghanistan only because of the side that Begg supports. Our troops could have been out of there long ago if his friends and allies stopped fighting and supported elections.
Recall, too, when Begg welcomed al Awlaki to a Cageprisoners event via video. This was soon after Awlaki wrote his "44 Ways to Support Jihad." And #28 just happens to be supporting the detainees as Begg is doing. He clearly supports the war. He sometimes makes statements like Aamer's, but only when asked by the press. Even so, I've never seen him call for peace and elections.
(I don't really believe either Aamer or Begg when they say they oppose the killings of innocents, but that's a separate issue. For this point, I'm going by what he says.)
Here's why this matters: Since the Supreme Court ruled these detainees can be locked up until the end of the war, the argument now is over whether it's morally right to keep them locked up when the war looks like it could continue for decades.
People can only make that argument if they want the enemy to end their war. They shouldn't be able to say, as Aamer and Begg apparently do, that they want detainees released but the war to continue. I seriously doubt there is a single detainee on the indefinite detention list who's willing to make a statement calling for the Taliban to stop fighting. Releasing anyone would be absurd if they can't oppose their side of the war.
BTW: Although no longer at Gitmo, one of the four in your link who may fit the bill of wanting the war to end is Ahmed Ghailani. But unlike most of the others, he knew he was going to face trial.
Hello, I feel the lead section of Cageprisoners needs some revisions in order to conform with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines. It would be appreciated to hear any thoughts you have on the article's talk page. Thank you. Djrun (talk) 21:18, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The recent murders of the US journalists was shocking and horrific. I think you have long argued that such acts should be explicitly condemned. I came across this article by accident, and I thought of you
Thanks again for your fair-minded efforts. Geo Swan (talk) 22:16, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for the delay, and thanks for the note!
Yes, it's good to see that Arab and Muslim groups are condemning atrocities. Many always have, but they tend to be from target groups themselves. Muslims were always Al Qaeda's primary victims.
I don't count Cageprisoners on this. Although they've called for the release of Alan Henning, he was apparently serving their interests in the Syrian war when he was captured. Cageprisoners promoted rallies last year for the Syrian war (ostensibly for the humanitarian relief, although it's reported that weapons get mixed in with that). It was the least they could do for a guy they may have put there.
In any case, they need to support human rights for their enemies -- something they never do.
I saw you added a link to the article about Abdul Rauf Aliza. As I tried to reacquaint myself with his case, and the new information about him, I came to the conclusion that the senior Afghan officials have conflated two different individuals. There is an older Taliban official, also known as "Mullah Abdul Rauf", who was never in US custody. The DoD documents contain an estimate that the former captive was born in 1981. They say he joined the Taliban in 1998. They say he surrendered to the brutal General Dostum. Some Afghan captives who were considered members of the Taliban, who seemed to have been simple footsoldiers did become Taliban leaders after their release.
But the press reports that described him as a "Taliban elder", when he would only be about 33 or 34 -- maybe even younger as the age estimates they used at Guantanamo seem to have added a few years to the ages of some of the most youthful captives. Mohammed Jawad was a little guy when he arrived. His height and weight records say so, and there were some unfree photos of him, from that time. Well, after his return, he was taller than his relatives, and of robust build, strongly suggesting he went through puberty, or finished going through puberty, at Guantanamo. His age estimate put him at 17. His relatives said he was 12. I suspect they were right. Could he have gone through a late puberty, at 17. Yes, but, if he had he would have grown to really atmospheric heights. I took a course that was an introduction to Physical Anthropology. I learned that the later an individual goes through puberty, the more significant the puberty growth spurt. My brother's step daughters are (fraternal twins), one went through a relatively early puberty, and is only 5 feet tall, while her sister went through puberty at the usual age and is 5'6" or 5'7".
Anyhow, I am afraid either I won't be able to incorporate my suspicions about the two individuals named Mullah Abdul Rauf in the article on Abdul Rauf Aliza, while still complying with WP:No original research.
I noticed there was a chance of confusion. I figured I was sure it was the same guy when I saw the link I was posting was referencing the NYT's copy of his Wikileaks file. But I agree that his age doesn't really match the bio. I see now that the original NYT story this is based on only quotes someone else saying he'd been a former detainee.
It would be funny if this was a Taliban version of "stolen valor." There are probably a lot of jihadis and jihadi-wannabes pretending to have once been in Guantanamo. It's something we need to watch for.
I'm going to remove the link for now, but may later incorporate the NYT story it references into the section on his being a Taliban leader.
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