"riverman" wrote in
oups.com:

I came across that video of an Apache helicopter shooting of three
people in a field (google under 'apache killing video'), and for
the past two weeks I have felt a bit nauseus. It was a very
contentious issue, and made the online rounds several years ago,
but AFAIK it was never definitively proven that these guys were
doing anything wrong. Some people insisted such strange
assertations as "if they were innocent, why were they in a field
at night?" or "if they were innocent, why was that one person
running?" Being in a field at night, or running don't seem to me
to be offenses punishable by death, and people's willingness to
accept that 'they were killed, therefore they must be guilty of
something' makes me deeply ashamed

I recall that video. It troubled me too for days. The 50mm cannon
rounds left absolutely nothing behind but the green heat signature
of remains. Those guys were acting very suspicious, as you mention,
and I had read they were 1/4 of mile from a US Army checkpoint. I was
hoping you had found an explanation, but I guess we'll never know.

Putting aside the controversey, it is interesting to see how the
decision is made to kill them, and how the gunner eventually gets
the go code. It was not a fait accompli, nor could you detect any
wink-winkness in the dialogue. For me, this video does not rank
beside the British troops who made the random shoot-up video to Elvis
music that you mention.

An interesting part of the video is the when the gunner opens fire,
but is on 'manual'. The gunship is a few miles away I think, and he
misses, causing one of the targets to "dance". How could the targets
not know they were being shot at? I suppose that with no gunfire
audible or rotar sound they must have written off the thuds of
bullets as something else. The gunner says, "****! Going to auto!",
or something like that. And of course doesn't miss again.

I remember thinking it was just like a video game with a cheat bot
enabled.