American Friendly Fire Video

Wertz · 09-02-2007 09:00PM

Bad enough blowing up allied soldiers but when they start taking out their own special forces and an accompanying team of reporters including the BBC's John Simpson, then you really have to question pilot training methods and ground-based intelligence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAHmqNoLTf8

I saw the full Panorama programma about this a few years back and it really made for horrific viewing.
I don't think anyone for a minute is suggesting that accidents like this are anything but accidents but in this incident too, US army higher-ups declined comment and tried to play down the incident; only Simpson's camera man was there no real "evidence" apart from the gun cameras on the A-10 would have existed.
Amateur video camera footage (not shown in the youtube clip, but shown on Panorama) actually caught the guided bomb as it homed in on one of the press jeeps.

AbusesToilets · 09-02-2007 09:40PM

With respect to the laughing at killing the enemy,it's a reflection of the psychological mindset that militaries employ to enable a person to do their job and kill the enemy.It's the same sort exhilaration you feel when you frag someone in a game of Halo,if to a much greater extent,due to it being a real life situation.
To address a separatte point,about soldiers hoping not to go to war,i'm not sure that i would agree with that.You should remember that,certainly in combat arms,war is their job.It's what they spend all their time training for and,just as any dedicated professional, be it in sports,buisness etc, they want a chance to actually go out and do their job.I'm no saying that they would be looking forward to the prospect of pain and hardship but it's a chance to challenge yourself and experience something beyond the normal scope of things.

InFront · 09-02-2007 10:11PM

KdjaCL wrote:

Soldiers at war are innocent now?

Soldiers subjected to an illegal war declared by the USA without justification don't quite deserve the balme that their American counterparts do. With regard to the US war on Iraq alone, yeah I would consider those soldiers innocent.

faceman · 09-02-2007 10:27PM

InFront wrote:

Soldiers subjected to an illegal war declared by the USA without justification don't quite deserve the balme that their American counterparts do. With regard to the US war on Iraq alone, yeah I would consider those soldiers innocent.

er, what?

Wertz · 09-02-2007 10:27PM

InFront wrote:

Soldiers subjected to an illegal war declared by the USA without justification don't quite deserve the balme that their American counterparts do. With regard to the US war on Iraq alone, yeah I would consider those soldiers innocent.

The UK had and have as much a hand in the illegal war in Iraq as the US did, so how can you consider their armed forces innocent, but the Americans not so?

InFront · 09-02-2007 10:32PM

I was talking about the Iraqi soldiers, may not have phrased it correctly.

Wertz · 09-02-2007 10:44PM

Ah okay gotcha

BTW aren't all soldiers innocent until proven guilty?

Okay I'll leave now...

faceman · 09-02-2007 10:48PM

Wertz wrote:

The UK had and have as much a hand in the illegal war in Iraq as the US did, so how can you consider their armed forces innocent, but the Americans not so?

Soldiers are soldiers. They dont make the decision to go to war.

KdjaCL · 09-02-2007 10:53PM

faceman wrote:

Soldiers are soldiers. They dont make the decision to go to war.

They make the decision to be trained in the art of war and to use when needed. Its like a butcher cutting his fingers off its not like he didnt know it may happen hes a butcher ffs. Soldiers are people who are trained to kill how the **** can they be innocent no matter what side they are on, and in war there are casualties of war from people at weddings to other soldiers to generally people who are in the general area.

kdjac

Wertz · 09-02-2007 10:59PM

Soldiers innocent?

Legally; yes. Acting on orders , chain of command etc.

Morally: hmmmm....perhaps not so much, along the lines of what Kdjacl posted...

One for the philosophy forum really...

*scratches imaginary beard*

InFront · 09-02-2007 11:01PM

Soldiers are soldiers. They dont make the decision to go to war.

No they don't, and sometimes they go to war in good faith based on the information they have.
But considering their free will in entering the army, and the gravity of the war in Iraq, and that it was based on information they didn't have, and was not sanctioned by the UN, I'm not sure to what extent the buck can be passed around between the military and the government.

There is a degree of culpability beginning with the individual serviceman. The greater blame is not his, but I don't believe he can deny his own blame either.

Dyr · 09-02-2007 11:35PM

still, at least the yanks didn't claim that the dead squaddie had nail bombs in his pockets and that their own guys were fired on first

Pigman II · 10-02-2007 08:42PM

Deleted User wrote:

You can tell they regretted it once it happened, i.e. when they said "I'm going to be sick" and the "We're in jail, dude" or something along those lines.

Sounds to me from the tape that they were only showing regret because they knew they were facing time. WRT to human life it didn't sound to me like they cared in the slightest that they had killed friendlies (rather than 'just' enemies).

I'm guessing if policy for shooting friendlies was to simply "go home and think about it" then they'd probably be in the pub now laughing it off right now.

insafehands · 10-02-2007 11:05PM

Pigman II wrote:

Sounds to me from the tape that they were only showing regret because they knew they were facing time. WRT to human life it didn't sound to me like they cared in the slightest that they had killed friendlies (rather than 'just' enemies).

I'm guessing if policy for shooting friendlies was to simply "go home and think about it" then they'd probably be in the pub now laughing it off right now.

Complete sh1t to be honest. How you can suggest that they didn't regret killing a member of allied forces I don't know? These guys may be trained to kill, but they're not heartless...

Judt · 11-02-2007 02:21AM

The pilots were acting on orders, which you don’t question. They asked, more than once, to confirm that there were no friendlies in the area. They were told, repeatedly, that there were no friendlies in the area. They couldn’t question the order to fire anymore as you are trained not to hesitate – if they said “No, I don’t think we should do that, aborting now…” then, for all they really know, there could be a section under heavy fire about to get massacred by Iraqi’s with orange stripes on top of their vehicles.

The responsibility for this goes up the chain of command, to whomever wasn’t well informed enough to know that there were Brit troops in the area. Hell, maybe it was, all told, no one individual persons fault – maybe it was a catalogue of errors. Blaming the guys who questioned the order as much as they are supposed to question the order before pulling the trigger is not the correct answer.

I think that in this case, it's the coverup that was the worst thing about the whole affair.

As for whooping when you’ve gone and killed the enemy, I’d say join the army, go and serve on active duty and come back and tell me how you feel about that. As for whether or not armies and soldiers are innocent or guilty as a matter of course, I’d point out that the same volunteer armies that invaded Iraq have also gone to war in numerous other parts of the world for numerous causes – yeah, the US Army was in Vietnam too, but then I seem to recall they fought in two world wars, as well.

The responsibility for what is done with a Western military rests with the politically, freely elected leaders of our democratic nations. When these democratic nations are threatened, it’s invariably the military that defends them, whooping and celebrating the deaths of their enemies and all.

InFront · 11-02-2007 03:45AM

When they are threatened, yes. Obviously that wasn't the case with America.

Judt · 11-02-2007 06:11AM

InFront wrote:

When they are threatened, yes. Obviously that wasn't the case with America.

I'm referring to the "guilt" of soldiers, who fight in wars "good" and "bad" equally. You sign up and you take what you get, otherwise it'd rather defeat the purpose.

Manic Moran · 12-02-2007 07:27AM

Judt wrote:

What people are ticked about is that the Americans classified the video and denied that the whole thing happened, to save face overall. Mistakes happen in war, but it's the coverup that kills you nine times out of ten.

Not quite. Both the US and UK had their own investigations, the US in 2003, and the UK in 2004. See the bottom of page 19 on this MoD document from March of 2006 where it published the results of those investigations.

http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/nao_reports/05-06/0506936.pdf
Section entitled "Death of Lance Corporal of 16 Air Assault Brigade as a result of fratricide from US Air Force A10 on 28 March 2003 in Southern Iraq"

I don't offhand know if the results were publicised before a year ago, but there is no doubt that the publicly released story is the same as the video shows. Damned if I know what the big deal was about the video though, unless it's just a matter of precedence. I personally think the US gave the video to the MOD, and the MOD didn't release it for whatever reason: If the video were leaked by an American, the Sun would be a very odd newspaper for it to be leaked to. My guess is it was leaked by a Brit.

i was just saying it was amazing that noone has been punished

Who would you punish? Somewhere, between when the British patrol radioed "We are entering grid box 3220" (Or whatever), going up the chain from squadron to battlegroup to maybe brigade, over to the liaison and then down to the American brigade, then FAC, someone dropped the ball. It happens, there's a lot of units and numbers flying around.

but does anyone else find it amazing in an era of all new high-tech advances in military warfare, they still have to look out and see if the friendlies have a bloody great sheet of orange tarpaulin on their trucks / tanks so they don't get blown to pieces?

A point which has not been missed by the lads over on ARRSE (The British Army version of Boards). American vehicles were/are equipped with a tracking system (Blue Force Tracker, or FBCB2 depending on unit, both are similar), which basically puts a 'you are here' icon on a map, and also icons for everyone else on the system. A small number of British units had this gadget, but for whatever reason, the majority of British weren't equipped with it. There are rumblings of penny-pinching over at MoD.

FWIW, one of the ARRSE posters claims to have been present at the time, and says he bears no ill-will to the pilots. A-10s have saved British arses often enough, I think British forces generally keep this sort of thing in perspective.

However, didn't one of the pilots raise the question about the fact that they had orange panels on?

Yes. To that end, the panels worked. They aren't identification in and of themselves, otherwise Iraqi vehicles would be sprouting orange left, right and centre. They're supposed to make the pilot stop and have a think about things before diving right in. That's exactly what happened: "Hey, are they panels? FAC, I think I see panels. Do we have anyone around? No? Hmm. Mustn't be panels so, probably rockets. Let's kill them"

There are plenty of young wo/men who join the army in the hope of getting a career out of it and making a better life for themselves

Yes, they're rarely found in the Combat Arms, however. Death is their career, they just hope that they don't get called to carry it out. I'm a Combat Arm myself, though I'm more an enthusiastic amateur :P.

Soldiers innocent?

Legally; yes. Acting on orders , chain of command etc.

Morally: hmmmm....perhaps not so much, along the lines of what Kdjacl posted...

One for the philosophy forum really...

*scratches imaginary beard*

An issue which has been brought to question by the good 1LT Ehren Watada. His Court-Martial is being rescheduled for mid-March, last I heard. (Mistrial last week).

There is a degree of culpability beginning with the individual serviceman. The greater blame is not his, but I don't believe he can deny his own blame either.

I don't know about Ireland or the UK, but the UCMJ and US Manual for Courts-Martial are pretty clear on the issue. You get told to partake in a war, you go. End of story. Hence Watada's court-martial.

NTM

InFront · 12-02-2007 07:43AM

Judt wrote:

You sign up and you take what you get

I wonder what the Iraqi dead ever signed up for.

With soldiers, which is your point, yes, enlisting is enlisting.
As Wertz says, there is no legal guilt, but there is a moral guilt.

imeatingchips · 12-02-2007 12:46PM

Terry wrote:

There are plenty of young wo/men who join the army in the hope of getting a career out of it and making a better life for themselves. I would call these people innocent victims of war.

Money/career is a very poor excuse for making yourself available to kill.

Terry wrote:

My personal opinion of this particular war is that it is unjust and unwarranted, but I'd say quite a lot of the soldiers there think the same thing. I'm sure they had no intention of killing anyone when they signed up.

I'd agree with you here only I'd guess that the percentage of soldiers there who feel like that is quite low. The depressing thing about this, in particular, is that it's very similar to the Nazi excuse given at the Nuremberg trials: "We are not responsible, we were just carrying out orders".

As we all now know, a person is ultimately responsible for their own actions but unfortunately experiments have shown that most humans are obedient and shy away from responsibility.

see also:
War-related & criminal violence deaths (all Iraqis) Iraq Health Minister:
100,000-150,000
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War

http://electroniciraq.net/news/2619.shtml

Manic Moran · 12-02-2007 04:01PM

imeatingchips wrote:

The depressing thing about this, in particular, is that it's very similar to the Nazi excuse given at the Nuremberg trials: "We are not responsible, we were just carrying out orders".

The Nuremberg argument only applies in the case of blatantly illegal orders (Machinegun that group of women and children) or against the most senior military staff in cases where it was obvious they should have known better. At lower levels, "we were only following orders" is a valid defense, and people are too fixated on the publicity of Nuremberg to realise this. The military won't function without that policy.

From the US Manual for Courts-Martial rule 916(d):

Obedience to orders. It is a defense to any offense that the accused was acting pursuant to orders unless the accused knew the orders to be unlawful or a person of ordinary sense and understanding would have known the orders to be unlawful.

Combined with UCMJ Art 90:

An order requiring the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate. This inference does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime

Following an order to be sent to war is way outside the scope of knowledge for a soldier to reasonably know the order to be unlawful.

NTM

Judt · 12-02-2007 04:47PM

I would point out that war is a perfectly legal exercise... depends on the circumstances, but soldiers just can't go determining those. By signing up you agree to obey legal orders, but are absolved of responsibility for those orders by the chain of command. That is to say if it turns out that a war was "illegal" then it's the Commander in Chief who ordered it who goes on trial.

As for the moral element of things, some people are pacifists and more power to them, but some people aren't. Some people join the army for a career, some of them enjoy the shooting and suchlike and some don't. It would be silly to say that you train for combat and wish for peace and brotherly love to overcome the earth, though nobody really hopes for a big war. Just a little one or two... is that morally wrong? Depends on your outlook. But at the end of the day the buck stops at the top, and in a democracy we all have a chance to change that.

Tell me, would any of you see a moral distinction then between a soldier going to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq, versus one who is defending the homeland from a foreign foe? Say the Soviets had run across the Elbe?

American Friendly Fire Video

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