You gotta love it. One guy with a camera bag and they point him out as having a possible weapon. 5 minutes later, after shooting them, they state they have RPGs and AK-47s.

God Bless America. That's what you get for fighting a Playstation war.

The fog of war can be very real especially when your thrust into a situation at the rate an Apache can get you there.

Your not getting the whole story here. Their ROE, the intelligence picture, how they built their SA and who was influencing their decisions based on what they percieved was going on, etc.

I would be reluctant to armchair quarterback this one just from the vid. The cameras to me looked like weapons and in a war zone what are your expectations?

Laminate didn't make it in to Lowe's today, maybe tomorrow.

Quoted from necro_nemesis

The fog of war can be very real especially when your thrust into a situation at the rate an Apache can get you there.

Your not getting the whole story here. Their ROE, the intelligence picture, how they built their SA and who was influencing their decisions based on what they percieved was going on, etc.

I would be reluctant to armchair quarterback this one just from the vid. The cameras to me looked like weapons and in a war zone what are your expectations?

Laminate didn't make it in to Lowe's today, maybe tomorrow.

Exactly why I wouldn't make a good soldier, I'm not dying because I didn't "Shoot first, ask questions later.", wouldn't care what the ROE are when I felt threatened.

One guy with a camera bag ....

Hanging out with fighting age males with weapons in a sector enemy fire is coming from......lie down with dogs....wake up with fleas.

Armchair quarterbacks is a great analogy.    

Gotta be tough being a cop or a soldier.   Your every move is video taped, youtubed and analyzed.

Gotta like the internet for bringing this to our attention though.   Gotta dislike the censorship of internet these days though (google, hula, pandora, ...).   ROE or whatnot - the audio track is not professional for sure.

Laminate from Lowe's?  Don't you buy Canadian (Rona's?)?   Likely all coming from China anyways...

I have no patience for armchair anything.  Go fly around in a helicoptor or patrol and put your life on the line and tell me how long you'd wait to react to a situation that could leave you dead, and your kids fatherless.  They were doing their job, and it's unfortunate what happened, but again, hindsight is 20/20 - most of us would have reacted the same way.

No, that's not true, because most of us are sitting here playing pinball and watching youtube.

Call the plays, quarterback!  You're in charge!

Fine, I'll comment too then (And I'm going to regret it .... but I'm a brave armchair quarterback that likes to make people think.  God only knows why since presenting the video link had the effect I was looking for... a lot of interesting reflections here.)

I don't think anyone would argue that; mistakes aren't made in war, hindsight isn't 20/20, soldiers aren't supposed to do what they are trained to do.  Nor would they argue that it would be easy (or necessarily wise to take the time) to tell the difference between a pointed camera and a rocket launcher.

Hey, in reality, that cameraman took a stupid risk crouching around a corner just to get a picture (although the engagement was already imminent) and got all those people killed and injured for nothing, and probably added fuel to the conflict).  I don't pretend to make any useful comment on the web site's purpose nor can I defend the civilians? nor condemn the airmen - I can only thank the whistle blowers for letting me see "inside" the combat, where governments and leaders would rather not have us look.  I am thankful that I live in a country where I am allowed to have an opinion and to react to the footage and voice-over recorded in a less than politically correct fashion. How often do you get to see something real like that? (Maybe too often these days.)

Your mileage may vary (and I respect that), but for me personally it was all the easy escalation of questionable threats, justifications to engage and possibly non-existant weapons and combatants, back slapping over killing other equally valuable human beings, vilifying language and justification of the injury of the children involved that got to me. IT reminded me how easy it is to stretch reality to fit our needfor action. It's no wonder veterans carry such a heavy burden in today's conflicts - they actually have to come home and be judged by their leader's decisions (and their own), instead of coming home heros in the "good ol' days" of "ask me no questions, because the enemy is evil" warfare.

I hope I will never have to know what it would be like to be ordered to take another person's life, nor to decide to "engage" the enemy. I can only believe that I would have to come to hate, or be in fear of losing my own life to pull the trigger.  I got a sense that I was watching Apocalypse Now or another one of those Vietnam movies that show the thin line between sanity and insanity in wartime.  I do know the thrill of the armed and bloodied hunter (22, .404 and single 20 and double-barrel 12 shot guns), I have snapped fowls' necks, bled rabbits and watched deer being dressed. I justified it in my youth by acknowledging that I am human, danger is a thrill that makes you feel alive, and I eat what I kill. But to me this video was a little like watching hunters in blinds shoot ducks in a barrel.  The lives of those killed were truely cheap. There was euphoria over what read like an easy slaughter. [I can see the hackles being raised by those comments. The medium is the message. You had to be there.  Walk a mile in my shoes. It's a dirty job...] I get the point that rocket launchers are a viable threat to Apaches, even at those distances. And that the law of the jungle is "kill or be killed." I'm not saying what happened was wrong, it just doesn't make it any easier for me to swallow.

I guess I find it disturbing to accept how quick we are to use "the fog of war" to describe something that would obviously make us all uncomfortable if we were on the ground and the "enemy" was in the air. How could you not be affected by seeing what we do to each other, no matter what the context unless you distance yourself from the reality of what was happening. I guess I'm just not that Machiavellian. But those soldiers are going to come home to be confronted by this extra media burden. Should we white wash it to save their sanity? The illusion of "the evil enemy" is necessary so that a soldier can get the job done without going insane.


What the video really illustrates to me has nothing to do with the soldiers involved. They were doing their job, if not a little enthusiastically. It shows us just how cheap life really is, how unromantic and how un-FPS war really is. And, quite frankly, how easy it is to take a life. It's not the same thing, but I got the same feeling when we recently had our 14 year old dog put down (he died at home, in my arms).  

I guess "don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes" really was pop fiction fantasy after all.

P.S. It's the armchair quarterbacks that vote to put our soldiers in harms way, and vote to bring them back; so discussion, reflection and questionning why we are there should always be a good thing.  

Pizza anyone?

Rona didn't carry the right brand of laminate to match. I tried them.

Nothing beats Lowes for variety of hardware for pinball repair purposes either.

Quoted from websherpa

Pizza anyone?

Hell yeah. You buying?

Quoted from websherpa

Pizza anyone?

I know we can't compete with the big chains, but there's a place here in P-Dot, called Pizza Shack.  Really good, really cheap.  We do almost every Friday from there, family pizza night.  

Good points, Wayne.  (the non-pizza related ones)

Gerrard's Pizza on the Danforth.  Mmm, mmm.