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If you have 17 minutes of your life to spare: watch THIS video on Wikileaks.org. I will warn you, the video is... disturbing, to say the very least. It looks like a Modern Warfare game... but it's not. It's real life w/ real people dying. And it's our boys killing them.

While I don't really support the war, I have always believed in the idea that we must support our troops: they are our military, they are our men and women out there fighting for us; they don't need ppl protesting the airports where they're coming home from a long tour.

But this video? It disturbs me bone deep. Now I realize that this could be edited, it could be a plethora of diff. things but... what if it's not?

I know there's a lot of military ppl here on bloop so I thought I'd bring this up.

I just don't have an opinion on this, so for people who can't watch the video, I'll provide some facts.

There were a couple of photographers with some civilians in a courtyard. These photographers worked for Reuters. Whether or not these people were ACTUALLY armed remains the subject of debate, however, the video doesn't seem to show any clear signs of weaponry. Whether or not the soldiers in the aircraft knew/thought there were any guns or RPGs with the men in the courtyard is also unclear.

The soldiers in the aircraft asked and received permission to engage the men, and they did. Killing all but two people.

A van came to collect bodies, a fact confirmed by one of the soldiers in the aircraft. They engaged the van, which showed absolutely zero evidence of hostility, and killed two children and a few other men in the van.

I'll let you guys decide for yourselves.

I should also mention that when the video was submitted to Wikileaks, the video was encrypted manually.

What killed me was that at the end you can actually see the kids heads... right there. I just... I don't understand it. I'm willing to look @ it objectively, but so far, I haven't seen anything to contradict it. :-\

Wow. All I can say is that not much turns my stomach. But this sure does.

I cried pretty much the entire video. I support my troops as well, and I am for War if we need it, but this? This is just sick. How can this be justified? How can we let these shooters, these guys, get away with killing? I thought we were not supposed to shoot unless shot at or threatened. I am disappointed.

I'm with you on this one queenbutterfly. WOW. I seriously... I duno.

I'd rather be naive & not know what's happening over there.

This upsets me. Not because of what those men did (though, I'm not justifying it), but because people see this and automatically think badly about our military, when they shoot at us just the same. They do suicide bombings, and kill several men, women, and children (they send their OWN children to do it). They hide IEDs so our men and women will drive over them and die. They come to our gates with cars/vans filled with explosives, throw mortars at us daily. When they do that, it's just overlooked, but when people see videos like this, it's turned into this huge thing against our military. Most of our men and women fighting and dying for our country were just as innocent as the men and children standing in that street. Thousands of men, women, and children die daily over there because of them, not only because of our military. This is a tragedy, but having known good men to die over there because someone decided to hide an IED or start a random fire fight, it's difficult to look at the other side of it.

Right and I'm not justifying that at all. I hate that our men and women are dying over there and the war has technically been over for years. I hate that they're over there dying for things they may not even believe in, but they have to b/c it's orders.

What bothers me is that from what we can see, those ppl are just as innocent as our soldiers who are just doing their jobs. Those kids were in a car that was just picking up bodies, possibly loved ones. It bothers me that they were... so excited to kill those ppl. B/c that's the same thing that suicide bombers must feel. Excitement, that they're going to kill someone for their religion. That's what bothers me. And that there doesn't seem to be any response from our gov't about this. Those soldiers didn't fire on those ppl w/o orders.

There is no clear black and white about anything in this situation. Too many ppl are dying for the shittiest reasons; this just shows another. :(

That's not what's bothersome about the video.

What was bothersome was that these were civilians, and instead of coming out and admitting that killing these men was a mistake, they encrypted it and pretended like it never happened. Wikileaks is reporting that the file was completely deleted out of Pentagon servers.

That's assuming anything Wikileaks is reporting is true. That's assuming that that video was real. You have no proof of either. Whether they were civilians or not should not be an issue at all...civilians kill our military daily.

You know, I'm a skeptic, but I'm not that skeptical. It's been reported on major news networks, and acknowledged by the Pentagon, as noted here, as well as Reuters. There's tons of proof to its legitimacy.

Also, don't lump "civilians" into a single category. Because a few civilians attacked soldiers and even killed some doesn't mean we should start gunning down everything that moves over there.

Also, I really can't blame the government for trying to hide this if that is a fact. Because they know that no matter what good we're doing over there, everyone will look at that one video as the whole picture. We've made so much progress over there, and it goes unrecognized. It's not until we're caught in the wrong that people start paying attention.

People pay attention to events like this because it's a really, REALLY big deal that civilians get killed by the military. This isn't an issue that can be brushed under the rug. Sure, awesome things soldiers do go a little less recognized than I would like, but this is still a really big deal, and the men in the video should be charged criminally, as well as the commanding officers who approved the attack.

Not at all. Most people are smart enough to know that this sort of thing ISN'T the aim of being there, and isn't happening all the time. But the fact remains that what these men did was wrong, and it was covered up. If I kill a patient at work, the government doesn't bury it to protect me (or because patients will assume doctors regularly go around killing people)... I would be held accountable. I don't see why it should be any different for soldiers.

No, that's not the aim of being there, I'm well aware, but what you're obviously unaware of is that it IS happening ALL the time, just not to them, to us.

People aren't trying to kill you just because you're a doctor. People aren't protesting against you and calling you a murderer, or calling every one of your colleagues a murderer. This is ONE video. These are a small group of men, and because this is out, everyone in our military is automatically pegged as being just like these men. The whole mission in Iraq is questioned and turned to shit because of this one video, and a whole bunch of assumptions and unanswered questions. They should take responsibility for their actions, but there's just as little proof that what they did was wrong as there is that what they did was right. Just because these people might have been innocent. They also might have been trying to kill us (though it's not shown in the video, it's as much of a possibility as any other assumption) we kill before we're killed, it's war, it's to be expected, whether it's our aim or not.

but what you're obviously unaware of is that it IS happening ALL the time, just not to them, to us.

WHAT?!? I say that Americans killing civilians is wrong and you ASSUME I don't realise that Iraqui civilians are killing soldiers? I'm QUITE aware of that fact, thank you very much. The point is that two wrongs don't make a right and what these soldiers did was WRONG. It's irrelevant that they are getting attacked by civilians too. That doesn't justify what they did, or change the fact that what they did was wrong! And it certainly doesn't mean that I'm unaware of what is going on over there.

But regardless of the attacks committed by civilians over there, this was a mistake, and there's no excuse for covering it up.

I'm not really going to comment with my opinion on the video. I have conflicted views with this whole thing &I'm not trying to justify what these men did either. But I do know for a FACT that not all of our men &women kill these people without regret, even when they ARE coming after them. Someone really close to me was over in Afghanistan recently, &this man has been extremely distraught over some of the things he had to do over there. [He also was in a humvee that hit an IED. Luckily, he made it, as well as almost everyone else in the truck. Only one died. Still, one too many.]

Anyway, the whole reason I was commenting; a few more examples of things these people do just to kill our soldiers over there: [or, basically any American, seeing as how they hate every single one of us]

-stuffing a dog full of explosives, then sending the decreipt &starving looking dog, which is in extreme pain, over towards our soldiers, then arming the bomb &killing men.
-same thing with the dogs, except sticking these things INSIDE women.
-arming children with explosives, sending them towards our men &women begging for things, &then detonating the children

&there are more, I'm sure, but after he told me about these things, I made him stop, because I couldn't listen to anymore.

I'm so pro-military. My husband is a veteran, and he served in Iraq three times. What can I say, though? Yes, this is disturbing. There's no way around it. Are you really surprised that the gov't hid this, though? Really? I'm not. I'm not shocked that it happened, either. Please, don't mistake this as DEFENDING this. But, it's war. There are no rules. Sure, they SAY there are rules, but if you'd heard the stories *I* have heard from our soldiers point of view...it just makes me sick. SHOULD it have happened? SHOULD they have killed innocent civilians? No, it's terrible. We don't know WHY they were there, and what their actual orders were, either. We don't know the reason they were given the orders, either. And, unfortunately, when they get orders, they have to follow them.

But they weren't just given orders... they were practically jumping out of their seats with excitement at the opportunity to open fire! Their request was approved, but only on the basis of misleading information which they provided (i.e. that the men were carrying weapons), and they couldn't wait to get on and kill them. I don't think this can be excused with "they were just following orders".

Like I said, I'm not defending it. However, it's a war. It is what it is. It shouldn't be shocking.

Apparenty, it's only shocking if it's us doing the killing, they can kill us all they want.

I don't think that's a fair statement, I think it's just as shocking/disgusting that our soldiers are getting killed; however, it's more expected since, well, we're in their country and they mostly hate us, ideologically and religiously. It's shocking that our boys are the ones doing the killing in what seems to be just ppl standing around talking.

That's what I'm skeptical about. Just because they put a little arrow that said "camera" and named these people, they're automatically considered innocent. Had they made a little arrow and wrote "RPG" or "AK 47" there'd be a whole different reaction to this. One of the men even leaned down behind the building and pointed something at the aircraft, posing a threat. It shouldn't be any more expected that they'd kill us than it would be for us to kill them. It's nearly impossible to tell who's going to be a threat. Women, men, children, babies. They're all a possibility, and one slight misjudgement can get one of us killed. Most soldiers go there with a kill or be killed attitude, and when given that option, they're going to kill.