On 22 Mar 2006 00:03:22 -0800, "riverman" wrote:

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.

There have been assertations that they were just farmers, and other
assertations that they had been tracked directly from a car bombing
site, and that footsoldiers later searched the wreckage and found
weapons. However, all I have found is definitve assertations that the
military is being completely silent on this. That makes me fear the
worst.

There is another site that shows footage of a vehicle randomly shooting
at cars on the road to Bagdhad airport, while some jazzy Elvis tune
plays in the background. Several of the cars react in ways that make it
obvious that the drivers were hit, possibly killed. Certainly, in
almost all of these cases, the drivers were guilty of nothing more than
being behind this vehicle and not noticing that they were gaining on
it; I can't believe they all were carrying car bombs.

I would dearly like to think that our military is above wanton killing,

Think it all you want, but it isn't, and regardless of what you mean by
"our"...any time you give a couple of hundred thousand kids under the age of 25
assault rifles and larger weapons, things are occasionally going to go wrong.

and has better discipline than this, but the reality is that an army is
a very blunt instrument,

An army has but one ultimate purpose: to kill people and tear up their ****.
Sometimes, thankfully, it need not do it, but it and its leaders better be ready
to do it at all times. And sometimes, if you'll pardon the pun, somebody jumps
the gun. And of course, you've got a few nutcases that slip in and get their
hands on a gun...

and that 'acceptable collateral damage' has
migrated from accidental killing of people caught in crossfire of
legitimate firefights, to deliberate killing of random indiviuals.

"Migrated?" You think this, should it turn out to be totally unjustified,
illegal killing, or guys like Calley and co. are something new and "American?"

My Lei would not even be prosecuted today, I fear.

VERY unlikely - possible, but VERY unlikely...

All of this shames and sickens me; the random killing, the endorsement of it by many
Americans (and the associated attacks on people who condemn it), and
the absolute impossibility of most of it ever coming to justice.

And just who are these "many Americans" who have endorsed "random killing" and
attacked those who condemn it? And of what incidents are you speaking?

If one were going to base an opinion solely upon what I've read in "news"
reports, I'd agree that something at least suspicious happened and that someone
is trying cover something up, but the "facts" from all sides seem unlikely:
supposedly, the Marines took heavy fire but they only found 2 AKs, there were
only two eyewitnesses but both are young children, etc. Some of the
"after-the-fact" stories from the locals are questionable, too: 4 guys
supposedly herded into a closet too small to fit them and shot, reporters giving
credence to blood spatter pattern analysis opinions from untrained locals, etc.
I'd offer that folks who have nothing more to go on might want to reserve
judgment at this point - as always, YMMV.

TC,
R