http://www.infowars.com/u-s-troops-apologize-for-wikileaks-massacre-video/


AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE

From Current and Former Members of the U.S. Military

Peace be with you.

To all of those who were injured or lost loved ones during the July 2007 Baghdad shootings depicted in the “Collateral Murder” Wikileaks video:

We write to you, your family, and your community with awareness that our words and actions can never restore your losses.

We are both soldiers who occupied your neighborhood for 14 months. Ethan McCord pulled your daughter and son from the van, and when doing so, saw the faces of his own children back home. Josh Stieber was in the same company but was not there that day, though he contributed to the your pain, and the pain of your community on many other occasions.

There is no bringing back all that was lost. What we seek is to learn from our mistakes and do everything we can to tell others of our experiences and how the people of the United States need to realize we have done and are doing to you and the people of your country. We humbly ask you what we can do to begin to repair the damage we caused.

We have been speaking to whoever will listen, telling them that what was shown in the Wikileaks video only begins to depict the suffering we have created. From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region.

We acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones as we tell Americans what we were trained to do and what we carried out in the name of “god and country”. The soldier in the video said that your husband shouldn’t have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighborhood, and to your family. We did unto you what we would not want done to us.

More and more Americans are taking responsibility for what was done in our name. Though we have acted with cold hearts far too many times, we have not forgotten our actions towards you. Our heavy hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.

Our government may ignore you, concerned more with its public image. It has also ignored many veterans who have returned physically injured or mentally troubled by what they saw and did in your country. But the time is long overdue that we say that the value of our nation’s leaders no longer represent us. Our secretary of defense may say the U.S. won’t lose its reputation over this, but we stand and say that our reputation’s importance pales in comparison to our common humanity.

We have asked our fellow veterans and service-members, as well as civilians both in the United States and abroad, to sign in support of this letter, and to offer their names as a testimony to our common humanity, to distance ourselves from the destructive policies of our nation’s leaders, and to extend our hands to you.

With such pain, friendship might be too much to ask. Please accept our apology, our sorrow, our care, and our dedication to change from the inside out. We are doing what we can to speak out against the wars and military policies responsible for what happened to you and your loved ones. Our hearts are open to hearing how we can take any steps to support you through the pain that we have caused.

Solemnly and Sincerely,

Josh Stieber, former specialist, U.S. Army

Ethan McCord, former specialist, U.S. Army

Oh, BULL Fucking Shit!

I think these two need to remember that the extremists of that area will not make peace until we are wiped from the face of the earth.
There is no go home and send a card to your former foe on the armistice day, there is only death of our way of life. Granted not every Muslim wishes this upon us, but not every Native American wanted us palefaces gone either. History is full of terrible wars that happened so that a group could survive. This unfortunately is ours.

The Apache gunship footage was bull-FUCKING-shit?

Say what you will about your perspective of that war the Bushs have been playing that country politically like a bass guitar at a death metal concert for decades.

Most of the people shooting at our troops are doing it because they want us out, they want us to stop shooting at them.

You make extremists when you commit atrocities. You also make extremists when deep cover operatives start a extremist movement, become the threat the straw man by which you use as an excuse to invade nations, loot them, turn US soldiers into the type of men who will come back and be tin badge god oath traitors.

Tell how we don't do atrocities-ever? That the US government is really good? I'd love to hear this...

Seems to me that the two guys who wrote the letter have a better idea than anyone on this forum whether what they did was right or not...They were there right? Or am I misunderstanding the letter?

If I shoot someone just for the hell of it (not saying that's what happened!) it would be kinda strange for someone who wasn't there to tell me I really did it because I was threatened.

War is an ugly, nasty thing. I can't pretend that American soldiers don't do ugly, nasty things just because they are Americans...

Yes, the video (btw, you have seen ALL of it, right? Not just the part Al Qada released?) is bullshit, if you think the people who got killed were just out for a drive going from the local old-age folks home over to the DQ for a frosty.

It was in the middle of a damned fire-fight. They were carrying weapons (and not personal defense weapons, either - some had RPG's).

Bringing a van full of little kids to a battlefield is horrendous: Not that they got blown up, but because the bastards who brought them COULD bring them. They were hoping for an 'atrocity': Congratulation, you are giving them one. And they didn't need us to become extremists, ask Daniel Pearl about it.

You think that if we just left and quit buying their oil they'd be all friendly with us? Grow the fuck up: These particular fuckers aren't ever happy with anything - the vast majority of Muslims that have been killed in the world in the last 50 years (or pick your own timeframe, longer or shorter) have been killed by other muslims who didn't agree with their version of truth.

And as far as the 'reporters' go, thats just TFB: Being a reporter in a war zone is a dangerous business. When you also work for the enemy it's just moreso.

If they had an honest belief that what they did was wrong, they had the opportunity to a) not do it (disobeying an illegal order is not illegal) or b) reporting it after the fact to the chain of command, IG, whoever.

Why wait 2-3 years, and make their 'apology' in a concerted effort at propaganda?

They're as sorry as John Fing Kerry was (and as honest) when he 'testified' in Congress in the 'winter soldier' bullshit....and this is just exactly the same script.

The Pentagon has been working overtime to suppress this story.

WikiLeaks plans to post video showing US massacre of Afghani civilians

John Byrne
Raw Story
April 12, 2010

The whisteblower website WikiLeaks — which exploded onto the national stage earlier this month after it released a video recording showing US servicemembers shooting two reporters and six others to death — says they plan to release another, even more harrowing clip.

The clip will show previously classified footage from US warplanes that had been tapped to bomb Taliban positions in Farah province, Afghanistan last year.

Adds the UK Telegraph: “The Afghan government said at the time that the strikes by F-18 and B1 planes near Granai killed 147 civilians. An independent Afghan inquiry later put the toll at 86.”

“Video footage of the strike could prove highly damaging to the Nato-led coalition if it showed pilots failing to safeguard civilian lives,” the paper continues.


As recently as today, Afghanis protested the deaths of four other civilians who were killed when US forces fired on a bus on Monday.

About 200 men took to the streets of Kandahar to demonstrate over the killings on a highway outside the southern Afghan city, burning tyres and shouting “death to America, death to Karzai, death to this government”.

Hours later, three Taliban militants wearing suicide vests and carrying guns tried to storm the office of Afghanistan’s premier spy agency in Kandahar, sparking a shoot-out with security forces.

The incidents reflected chronic insecurity in the province of Kandahar, where US-led military forces are preparing a major push to dislodge the Taliban from their spiritual capital.

The Afghan government said a woman and a child were among the dead and 18 others were wounded in the shooting, which occurred when the bus neared a NATO convoy on the highway linking Kandahar and the western province of Herat.

As I understand, and if that letter is true, One of those men is the man seen in the Wikileaks footage. He is the one carrying a child from the van.And he was there.

Now it has been along time since my military training (infantry) But as I remember shooting at the wounded or at aid workers was considered wrong.
Perhaps things have changed. Perhaps honor is no longer a part of training. It has been a long time.

Now to your point of "bringing children to a battle". They didn't.
The battle was brought to their neighborhood, to their home. They were passing by and stopped to render aid.
And again, targeting unarmed aid workers is,,,,,highly questionable.

To me I see little difference between this and the incident at Waco. Just a different neighborhood.

Alright, what exactly happened?

Did they just roll up and start massacring Iraqi civilians?

While this subject is important for various reasons...

We have more pressing issues to deal with here at home.

People better start paying close attention to exactly what time it is.

Yessir.

With all do respect, what do you mean by to look at what time it is, CSC?

I am guessing that we need to be concerned with these same gunships and tactics being used closer to home.
http://www.constitution.org/ocbpt/ocbpt_12.htm

The 'battle' had been going on in that neighborhood for at least 30 minutes (we have that much video footage)....it actually had been going on for more than a couple of hours (all day). I'd leave my kids in the basement if my home was in a firefight like that.

The van was called to the area. Vans like that are not emergency aid vehicles filled with emergency first response medical workers, they're just vans...that are often used to move weapons, fighters, and VBIED's.

And if the alleged writer of the letter was so damned sorry, why did he not 'confess' his crime at the time? Complacency and silence in the face of a crime is a crime as well. I'd give him some credit if he had actually been a man and admitted at the time that he thought what he did was wrong: To wait 3 years afterwards, and then coordinate his bullshit story with a highly biased, limited view release of gun camera footage (that had been already released, pretty much when it happened) for propaganda purposes is craven...and a lie.

We don't even know that the guy was there. We DO know that the stated activities in the short clip, the alleged war crimes, etc are certainly not the whole body of evidence, as such they are not the 'truth'. Looking at the totality of the evidence available (including the 30 minute video) and understanding the tactics the enemy uses, the rules of engagement that were in effect, and the realities of being in a war zone make the stated 'facts' more bullshit.

Im with the doc on this one,the fact that inocents got harmed is a shame. It always is,but it is a fact of war that is unavoidable if you plan to win. Have you ever given thought to what you would do wtshtf? I have,and I know that if we are to take our country back in a situation like that that there may be innocents who get in the way either inadvertly or by purpose of those we are fighting. You have to decide do you not shoot because a few may be injured that dont deserve it and so let the bad guys continue the fight against you unimpeded by any such rules or do you do what is unfortunately necessary and continue your assault to gain the victory? The guy in van,whether it was his neighborhood or not knew what he was doing,Im mean duh there is a big ass chopper shooting big ass rounds into that area. If you have ever been around a apache when she cuts loose there is no mistaking whats goin down,none whatsoever. He chose to go into harms way and he chose to take his kids,if they were in fact his kids and not some poor kids just grabbed up to be human shields. No as unfortunate as this was for the kids,I see no wrong at all here. You had better consider strongly your view on this if you ever believe things will go haywire here and we end up fighting for our lives here,what would you do in that situation? I know what I would do if it meant losing the battle and the advantage.

Doc - First off, I respect your opinion. I don't agree with it but that's one of the reasons I come to this site. To hear different opinions and learn. I'll respect the opinion of anyone who is willing to stand up and fight for the freedoms of others - you are obviously one of those people.

Here is how I take that these guys waited so long to speak up: Years ago, during my first marriage, I cheated on my wife all the time. I was young and dumb and full of >>>, as they say.

I also drank like a fish and drove drunk all the time. I didn't give two sh!ts about anyone else. I had enough testosterone and attitude that I'd say f()ck you to just about anyone, any time.

Now, 20 sum yrs. later I look back and think - Man, I was a friggin ignorant fool. I've apologized to my EX-wife for ruining the life she had planned for us and for just plain treating my marriage vows as worthless.

I think people who drink and drive are idiots and if I ever catch a drunk driver on my street, near my kids, I'll beat their ass till it's unrecognizable.

My point is, perspectives change. Time and maturity give people new insight. Two years ago I'd never have thought that I'd see my own government as a threat to my freedoms and liberties. It's not propaganda - it's experience that has taught me that if I don't defend my own freedoms no one will...

That might explain why they waited so long....but why release the info as part of a staged propaganda opportunity?

Why not just tell the media? The Army (if they believe what they did was a crime)? Their congressmen?

Do we have ANY independent corroboration that these asshats were even there? I recall the media falling all over themselves during Desert Storm about some AF Sergeant claiming that she and hundreds if not thousands of other female military had been repeatedly raped in the sand box....and it turned out she had never been raped, and never even deployed overseas. The media was strangely quiet on that. Just like John Kerry claiming to have committed war crimes - in places he never was.

As far as innocents (if there were any there, except the kids) being killed, WAR SUCKS. Which is a damned good reason to avoid it. If you can't avoid it, you should be pretty good at it.

A bit more from him here,
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wor...kileaks_video_attack_was_appropriat.html

All the more reason to come home.

I really didn't want to get involved with this thread. I saw the video. My opinions have changed while reading this thread a bit. Hind sight is 20/20. I still cant tell for sure if anyone was actually armed but do know that journalists do hire armed body guards when traveling into hot spots. I still am not sure how I feel about air strikes based on infrared cams and no one the ground confirming the target having committed an aggressive act. I watched a bunch of other videos on youtube showing air strikes and one interesting thing to note is types of cover that remove the white body from the cam, and it would be an interesting topic for the training board.

I didn't vote for Obama I voted for Congressman Paul. I try to be optimistic in all situations and I hoped he would keep with his promise of getting us out of Iraq and closing gitmo.

If there were foreign troops on our soil engaging us I would be doing all I could to sabotage their effort and demoralize the advisory. We would agree any act of any sort, similar or not, against the citizens of our great land are guilty of war crimes and would be dealt with appropriately.

If there has been a war crime committed I don't believe it was by the individual soldiers but the puppet masters who wrote the rules of engagement and decided upon the invasion in the first place. That is just in this situation. If a soldier enters a residence kills everyone then saves a teen aged girl to drop a nut then kills her that is a different situation and the individual guilty of a war crime not just following orders.

Thanks,
S

Anyone who has seen the whole video and read the official reports couldnt possibly come to any other conclusion than these guys were bad guys. You run around with bad guys then you are liable to get shot at with them. These guys had rpg's,I've never seen private security carry rpg's but Im not goin to say they dont either. That being said the troops ON THE GROUND requested air support against this target. It wasnt as if these guys just flew up and said "hey heres some ragheads with guns lets shoot 'em" They flew in when requested reported the situation to the higher ups and then requested permission to engage. Maybe you could make a case against higher ups but not those on the ground or in the air. I think some of you guys here are letting your hate of your government color your facts. Whether you like what we are doing there or not has no bearing on what happen here. Our guys are there to do a job given them to do,and I personally cant stand our men and women in uniform being labeled JBT's when most of them have no intention of being such. I have many friends and family in the military currently and none would do anything they felt was illegal or immoral. Do they know of some in the military who would? Yes. But we all know someone like that,military or not. Some people just get a thrill out of weilding any kind of power given them,but thats the very small minority not by any means the majority. Thats my final words on this,I think I spent more than my allowed 2cents.

"Anyone who has seen the whole video and read the official reports couldnt possibly come to any other conclusion than these guys were bad guys."

I've read many "official reports". I don't trust them. I didn't trust them at Wako or Ruby Ridge... Now I'm not sure about the official reports about the bombings in Oklahoma quite a few years back. I will leave the official reports to be analyzed by the official sheeple...

Thats why I didn't want to touch this thread. Some of you sheeple are under the illusion this is a dummycrat and republitard thing. Liberal or conservative thing. It is a people who don't want to be slaves thing. Can I quote Spike Lee? Ya been had. Ya been took. Bamboozled, run a muck... ...

"I was just following orders" didn't fly at the Nuremburg trials. I hope all the jack-booted thugs reading this keep that in mind.

Maybe we are watching different videos because the video I watched showed unarmed men being shot, not to mention the two Reuters reporters.

Apache attack as seen from the ground -

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/201...tm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

I didn't see no RPG. I watched it and all I could make out were a group of people getting shot up by 30mm. Repeatedly.

If they had AKs well, Iraq is literally filled with the rifles-and people who haven't a clue how to do anything more than blindly dump the mag on full auto.

It is a probability that the group the Apaches attacked were the wrong group. Iraqi insurgents fight in civilian dress, mask their heads and then dump their weapons and be civilians again. So that is a possibility as well.

War reporters will cover the war on the battlefield. That means sometimes being among enemy soldiers but the laws of warfare still apply. If this isn't a war then civilian rules of engagement apply-meaning no military it would be a couple SWAT teams.

To write off attacking children because they're in a war zone shows just how corrosive war is to the spirits of our fellow Americans. There have been Americans coming home who still wave the flag in support of the war, and aren't completely rabid. There are Americans who see the war for what it is(BLOODY FRAUD)and are a danger to themselves and others-and a lot of them are welcomed in police departments because their bosses want the American People crushed.

Yeah; this war was begun in lies and fraud and has ended up in the blood of thousands of Americans and over a million Iraqis. YOUR government has stunted an entire nation over a substance we don't have to use for our fuel but whom YOUR government and THEIR MASTERS have forced down our throats by their collective monopoly on manufacturing and technological development.

Alternative energy sources and technology are suppressed in order to maintain a dependency on our enemy-so when they shut down the supply of fuel the collapse will be all the more horrific. All the demons cultivated by this fraudulant war will be HERE engaging US with 30mm cannon fire.

Rambling? No it is all interconnected. See the situation for what it is and think and act accordingly.

Well Doc, I was way off. It looks like this guy was mindf
The guy driving the van was an idiot to get involved with his kids in the back of his rig. I think my first instinct would have been to help a wounded countryman too, but not with my two kids riding shotgun. Pretty foolish move..

What I believe you saw in the film was what I call gamer mentality. The target was assigned by an unknown person to a pilot who engaged the "Target". Then the call went out to get all of them.
It is my opinion that this will be how they handle it if you or I are the men on the street. The driver probably never thought. He just saw friends and possibly family in need and stopped.
Bad decision, but I don't know if you or I may not have done the same. This movie makes the MiLia event in RVN look like a fist fight.

Keep people's minds occupied on foreign wars and you can do what you want at home.

I didn't see any RPGs in the video. There were cameras which to the gunner probably looked like RPGs.

Even if they were people have a right to carry as many AK47s and RPGs as they want. Arabs have as much right to weapons as white anglo-saxons.

I'm not sure where we have the right to limit Iraqi households to 1 AK47. Will the day come when you can own AR15? The socialists can still say they are not restriciting your right to bear arms by letting you own 1 rifle. 1 rifle isn't far from 0 rifles.

The problem isn't they were possibly mis-identified by the gunship but that the military is forced to be there in the first place. The President of either false paradigm "wing" uses the military as the United Nations personal police force. We don't go around the world for US interests but as the globalist muscle.

When you put a bunch of tanks outside a church and tell the soldiers the people inside are raping kids, making drugs, converting guns, building bombs and are a cult worthy of death you can expect a lot of "collateral damage". The same tactics of lies will one day be used against us. Every law cheered by the false right as good because it allows us to kill soul-less arabs will one day soon be used against soul-less patriots.

The Iraqis will keep fighting us as long as we're there.

The government either didn't count the cost before going to war or didn't care. I see the Obama puppet head isn't doing much different in the world compared to the Bush puppet regime. Whatever Obama does Palin or whoever will not undo either.

It's all theater.

You got that right, TR !
Obama is nothing but a front man. A Maytag Repairman on TV. He couldn't have authored so much of the anti-liberty stuff as people give him credit for, any more than Bush made up the Patriot Act.

The evil is behind the curtains. The puppets are willing players. But they are just puppets, after all.

The shooting of the Iraqi's was nothing new. In order to test equipment under diverse conditions, and in order to see how far men can indoctrinate others to change their normal more sensible ways are all a part of warfare. This has been going on for a long time.

But, now there are more and more people pulling the strings behind the curtain than ever in the past.

I am glad most were able to see and decipher what is going on over there and why. A couple posters on this thread had me worried that this board was the home of some neo-cons. I am very happy to see otherwise.

neo-CON = neo-NAZI Both are national socialists.

It can become confusing.

The enemy has it divided among "right" and "left" when it is really enemies and allies.

By continuing the way things are currently if you are on the "right" you have to support the war expanded by Bush. To not do so means you do not "support the troops" or are a liberal commie. If you are on the false left you are opposed to this war.

Where it gets weird is when Bill Klinton did this exact same thing in Somalia and Bosnia the false right (people like Sean Hannity) was 100% opposed to using the military as the world's police force and the left considered anyone who question the President's directives was unAmerikan.

When a RepubliCON is in office the "right" goes to sleep no matter how much tyranny he promotes. The "left" does the same when a DemocRAT is in office.

When Bill Klinton was President I was a Nazi. When Bush was President I was a commie. My views didn't change at all. The globalist agenda didn't change. The decline of liberty didn't change. The destruction of this nation didn't change. Nothing changed when a different puppet became President either.

Remember whoever is the "right" candidate is a total shill. I can boldly state that now years ahead of the election. No matter what rhetoric they will speak they will continue to screw us and destroy this nation.

Exactly my thoughts Total Resistance.