3 ms·

> no, the soldiers in the helicopter should not be tried Oh, I'm sure they won't be. No doubt whatever actions they took are entirely justifiable under whateve

by venus 13y ago

> no, the soldiers in the helicopter should not be tried Oh, I'm sure they won't be. No doubt whatever actions they took are entirely justifiable under whatever legal framework has been whipped up to cover it. Not like there's going to be Nuremberg trials for Iraq. But at the end of the day, the video shows american soldiers in billion-dollar helicopters calmly killing innocent people in a foreign country they have no real reason to be in. That upsets people. And you can quote as many legal justifications as you want but none of that changes the profound injustice, and rock bottom morality, of what happened that day. TL;DR: if the outcome of your legal process is profound injustice and innocent people killed without reason or consequence, your legal process sucks.

rayiner 13y ago
None of these are legal justifications. The law isn't even relevant here, since the conduct happened in a theater of war. The video shows soldiers in helicopters shooting at a group of people, some of whom are armed with AK47s and RPGs, in the midst of a firefight in which their comrade's are getting shot at nearby. In the process they mistakenly hit two reporters who are carrying equipment that reasonably could be mistaken for weapons from hundreds of meters away. You don't need legal justifications for that. Ordinary morality suffices.
- beedogs 13y ago
  None of the people in that video were armed with AK47s or RPGs. Also, way to completely ignore the van they shot up with two children inside. Which they knew were inside.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    The Army found two RPG launchers, an AK47 and an RPG round under one of the bodies among the first group. Assange later acknowledged as much. "Based upon visual evidence I suspect there probably were AKs and an RPG, but I'm not sure that means anything..." As for the kids, look at this picture and tell me how you think they knew children were inside: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/CollateralMurder.ogv/360px--CollateralMurder.ogv.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Col....
    - rdl 13y ago
      AKs were commonly carried for security reasons at the time, but the RPG was damning as insurgents. (I had a 9mm and an AK most of the time, and a bunch of suspiciously mortar tube like satellite dish stands in the back yard, which always scared me whenever helicopters flew over...)
- venus 13y ago
  > None of these are legal justifications. The law isn't even relevant here, since the conduct happened in a theater of war You keep on repeating "theater of war! theater of war!" like it's some get out of jail free card giving you carte blanche to do whatever you want, for whatever reasons, without consequence. And I suppose, if you're America, it is. But this is not some WWI battlefield. It's a city filled with millions of ordinary people living ordinary lives, with every right to live those lives in peace. "Theater of war" or not, if you're going to go and shoot up foreign cities filled with innocent people then maybe the burden of proof should be on you a bit that you kill the "right" people. Everything you say is founded on a presumption in favour of the military. Their comrades were shot at before! Erring on the side of caution (caution for us, of course)! Hey, that could have been a gun! We didn't know there were kids! Love to hear what all the bloodthirsty war fans would think if those were innocent americans being calmly cut to pieces by some unfeeling foreign gunner. "What's that you say? It's a theater of war? Oh well that's perfectly all right then! Fire away!"
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > The law isn't even relevant here, since the conduct happened in a theater of war. If the law wasn't relevant in theaters of war, we wouldn't have phrases like "war crime".

by venus 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

None of these are legal justifications. The law isn't even relevant here, since the conduct happened in a theater of war. The video shows soldiers in helicopters shooting at a group of people, some of whom are armed with AK47s and RPGs, in the midst of a firefight in which their comrade's are getting shot at nearby. In the process they mistakenly hit two reporters who are carrying equipment that reasonably could be mistaken for weapons from hundreds of meters away. You don't need legal justifications for that. Ordinary morality suffices.

beedogs 13y ago
None of the people in that video were armed with AK47s or RPGs. Also, way to completely ignore the van they shot up with two children inside. Which they knew were inside.
- rayiner 13y ago
  The Army found two RPG launchers, an AK47 and an RPG round under one of the bodies among the first group. Assange later acknowledged as much. "Based upon visual evidence I suspect there probably were AKs and an RPG, but I'm not sure that means anything..." As for the kids, look at this picture and tell me how you think they knew children were inside: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/CollateralMurder.ogv/360px--CollateralMurder.ogv.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Col....
  - rdl 13y ago
    AKs were commonly carried for security reasons at the time, but the RPG was damning as insurgents. (I had a 9mm and an AK most of the time, and a bunch of suspiciously mortar tube like satellite dish stands in the back yard, which always scared me whenever helicopters flew over...)
venus 13y ago
> None of these are legal justifications. The law isn't even relevant here, since the conduct happened in a theater of war You keep on repeating "theater of war! theater of war!" like it's some get out of jail free card giving you carte blanche to do whatever you want, for whatever reasons, without consequence. And I suppose, if you're America, it is. But this is not some WWI battlefield. It's a city filled with millions of ordinary people living ordinary lives, with every right to live those lives in peace. "Theater of war" or not, if you're going to go and shoot up foreign cities filled with innocent people then maybe the burden of proof should be on you a bit that you kill the "right" people. Everything you say is founded on a presumption in favour of the military. Their comrades were shot at before! Erring on the side of caution (caution for us, of course)! Hey, that could have been a gun! We didn't know there were kids! Love to hear what all the bloodthirsty war fans would think if those were innocent americans being calmly cut to pieces by some unfeeling foreign gunner. "What's that you say? It's a theater of war? Oh well that's perfectly all right then! Fire away!"
dragonwriter 13y ago
> The law isn't even relevant here, since the conduct happened in a theater of war. If the law wasn't relevant in theaters of war, we wouldn't have phrases like "war crime".