After viewing the video, it clearly is an unprovoked massacre.
LINK:This is clear considering they approached the hot zone at the beginning of the video with intel, either from ground troops, or from the another Apache, that there were armed combatants in the area.
The video indicates there was ONE combatant, and that the group of people was NOT him.
@2:49: air: “we had a guy shooting, now he’s behind the building”
@2:52: ground: “Uh, negative, he was uh, right in front of the Brad. Uh, ’bout there one ‘o clock. Haven’t seen anything since then”
LINK:As for the possible observation of an RPG, which some suggest could be a tripod,
The “RPG” @2:32 was clearly a telephoto lens pointed at the ground. I’ve never heard anyone claim it was a tripod, it is clearly a photo camera with a telephoto lens. I don’t see how you can refute this if you examine the frame between 2:40 and 2:41, it is CLEARLY the camera with a telephoto lens that he is holding completely in front of him pointed at the ground.
When the van comes to pickup the target, NO ONE IS ARMED. The CO should never have given them permission to engage unarmed people “for picking up the bodies”, PERIOD. According to the Huffingon Post the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session.
I don't think people do that in combat. If you're ever in combat, or in a situation with armed people who think you may want to kill them, I highly recommend that you make it very obvious you're not armed. If they look at the footage of how you died and say "Oh! If we examine the frame, it looks like he wasn't going to kill us, after all!" I guess you'll be vindicated.
In the military investigation, it is revealed that the man crouching around the corner with the camera was taking a picture of US troops 100 meters away. The timestamped photo was found on the camera later.
So he's in an area where combat has occurred, crouching around a corner, pointing a long tube at US troops. No press is suspected to be in the area. Other men in his group are undeniably armed with weapons. He's a threat by any reasonable standard.
Two RPGs are, in fact, found at the site by ground forces, as is an automatic rifle. There were combatants in this group.
Uh, wtf. The helo is just circling about casually and they're taking their time fixing the targets before firing. How is that combat and an adrenaline rush moment? And that RPG...clearly a telephoto lens. Those supposed AKs look nothing like actual AKs.
I expect a well-trained pilot or soldier to be able to take a second to make sure they're firing on an actual target. If you look at the length of the damned video, you see that the helo pilots had enough time to examine the targets carefully (meaning at least a 10sec glance).
The response was directed to the blogger and his writing, who was not the same person as apache pilot to my knowledge, and therefore had the luxury of examining the video.
LINK:This is clear considering they approached the hot zone at the beginning of the video with intel, either from ground troops, or from the another Apache, that there were armed combatants in the area.
The video indicates there was ONE combatant, and that the group of people was NOT him. @2:49: air: “we had a guy shooting, now he’s behind the building” @2:52: ground: “Uh, negative, he was uh, right in front of the Brad. Uh, ’bout there one ‘o clock. Haven’t seen anything since then”
LINK:As for the possible observation of an RPG, which some suggest could be a tripod,
The “RPG” @2:32 was clearly a telephoto lens pointed at the ground. I’ve never heard anyone claim it was a tripod, it is clearly a photo camera with a telephoto lens. I don’t see how you can refute this if you examine the frame between 2:40 and 2:41, it is CLEARLY the camera with a telephoto lens that he is holding completely in front of him pointed at the ground.
When the van comes to pickup the target, NO ONE IS ARMED. The CO should never have given them permission to engage unarmed people “for picking up the bodies”, PERIOD. According to the Huffingon Post the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session.