Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Re: un video: elicotteri sparanso su civili in fuga

 POUR L'INFO" LO MANDERÀ IN ONDA ALLE 18.40.
da noi non si può...
Good Morning Vietnaaaaaaam......ricordate il film?

ts'ui wrote:

  Se si tratta di questo, allora e' una storia "vecchia" :
(scusate il testo in inglese)
Io il testo l' ho trovato su Internet mesi fa, e come l' ho trovato, 
cosi' lo riproduco. Don't shoot the messenger.
------------------------------------------
Now, for the news of the day :
Powell says Iraq may not have had WMD
http://www.yahoo.com/s/150963
and below the infamous Apache Video :
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/01/284086.html
Think twice before you download. This is real war.
And if you have children, make sure the kids DO NOT get to see it or to 
view the video clip by accident, now or in the future.
**You have be warned.**
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The video opens with the helicopter tracking a man in a pickup truck 
north of Baghdad early evening on Dec. 1st 2003, one day after the 4th 
Infantry Division engaged in the bloodiest battles with Iraqi insurgents 
since the end of major combat.
The pilots watch as the man pulls over and gets out to talk to another 
man waiting by a larger truck.
"Uh, big truck over here," one of the pilots is heard saying. "He's 
having a little powwow."
The pickup driver looks around, then reaches into his vehicle, takes out 
a tube-shaped object that appears to be about 4 or 5 feet long, and runs 
away from the road into a field. He drops the object in the field and 
heads back to the trucks.
"I got a guy running throwing a weapon," one of the pilots says.
Retired Gen. Jack Keane, an ABCNEWS consultant who viewed the tape, said 
the object looked like a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, "or 
something larger than a rifle."
The pilots check in with their operational commander, who is monitoring 
the situation.
When they tell him they are sure the man was carrying a weapon, he tells 
them: "Engage. Smoke him."
The pilots wait as a tractor arrives on the scene, near the spot where 
the pickup driver dropped the object.
One of the Iraqis approaches the tractor driver.
Then, within minutes, the Apache pilots open fire with the heavy 30 mm 
cannon, killing first the Iraqi in the field, then the tractor driver.
The pilots then fire at the large truck and wait to see if they hit the 
last of three men.
When he rolls out from under the truck, one of the pilots says, "*He's 
wounded*."
The other pilot says, "*Hit him*," and the Apache opens fire again, 
killing the man.
The Apache fires nearly 100 30 mm cannon rounds in all.
Source: ABC News
***********************
So, what do we have here:
An USA Apache Helicopter, armed to its teeth, firing on people on the 
ground that are NOT carrying weapons (the pilot
_assumed_ the first man threw a weapon in a field).
The first man was hit while walking in a field.
Strolling is more like the world.
The situation was non-threatening for the Apache crew.
NOBODY was firing a them, nobody had weapons in their hands.
A guy walking was hit by 30mm rounds from a machine gun.
The second guy, hides behind the tractor, and for a few seconds it seems 
like he is waving something like a shirt or a flag.
Was he trying to signal to the Apache crew "don't shoot, whatever you 
want, I surrender ? "
We will never know, since he got "smoked" as the US pilot put it.
As I would put it, he got massacred.
The third guy hid underneath the big truck.
When the Apache pilot spotted him, he blasted the truck that exploded, 
and while the third guy, injured was crawling on the ground, trying to 
stay alive and maybe hide behind he car, he was finished too.
Note that the US pilot clearly stated: "He's wounded" , before killing 
the man.
People are free to make their own ideas and judgment, about this 
terrible story.
However the sad part is that I spoke with many people, here in the US, 
most of them are good Christians and NOT ONE of
them made any comment on the fact that three human beings got killed, 
and three lives have been lost.
All the comments I heard were kind of in amazement of the technological 
aspect of it, and of the firepower of the Apache guns.
Somehow I keep having this sickening feeling of "us" (in the good 'old 
USA) being the good guys, the only "chosen ones" and people like the 
Iraqis being almost non-human beings, since they are not "like us" and 
because too many of us have bought the propaganda 9/11=Iraq.
I am so sick of it.It's bad enough this stuff is done in my name with my 
tax dollars !!
This is a video shot from an Apache helicopter in Iraq while it fired 
30mm armor--piercing depleted uranium rounds into three men (who are 
visible, there may have been another), a pickup truck, a flatbed truck, 
and a tractor still sitting at the end of a tiller--track in a farm 
field. You will note the efficacy of the DU ammunition that tears 
through mere automotive metal like a hot knife through butter and 
splatters a human being into so many pieces that his own family will be 
unable to identify them when they come looking for him  the following 
day. It's a very effective round, that 30mm.
One of these farmers was reported to have carried something, maybe a 
rocket launcher to hide in the furrows of the field, though there are no 
weapons visible in this video, and it is quite a stretch to think 
guerrilla operations are being mounted from a tractor in an open 
field... but why take any chances.
The Apache helicopter takes no evasive action, and instead hovers 
casually throughout this whole hunting expedition, clearly indicating 
that the chopper crew firing the 30mm ammunition through the vehicles 
and through the men's bodies feels no sense of threat... but they kill 
them anyway.
Note, especially, how calm and collected the crew is as they erase these
people's lives and leave them for their families to find rotting in the 
fields later... because evil, you see, doesn't look like the Other, 
doesn't sound like the other, doesn't come off as particularly sinister. 
It looks and sounds just like you and me. Note how dispassionate the 
shooters are when they spot one victim writhing on the ground and they 
give him another burst that -- in a particularly impressive display of 
digitalized, airborne, automatic weapons marksmanship -- they finish off 
the wounded man in the same burst that explodes the pickup truck. That 
great pyrophyric effect of the DU is on display as the vehicles burst 
into flame.
"That'll teach those hajjis who's boss. Let's go get supper."
Enjoy this video, like good pornography. That's what it is... a snuff 
film. Now we can all have a titillating glimpse of the rarified world of 
systematic slaughter that some of us carry around in our heads, waiting 
to crawl out into our dreams.
Don't bother with outrage, because I'm told you will be ignored. *No one 
cares*. The news media won't cover it. Congress won't demand an 
investigation. People will make excuses for it. It it a total violation 
of the Law of Warfare and the Geneva Conventions, but America doesn't 
recongize international law any more, so fuck it, right?
Hell, Rusty Calley is healthy and happy selling cars in Georgia, I hear. 
He and his crew killed almost 400 unarmed civilians in My Lai.
This is our age. You can get away with anything, even filming murder. 
Last month, a video was released showing a Marine being cheered on by 
his comrades as he killed a wounded Iraqi. No outrage then either. No 
investigations. No nothin'.
So you might as well sit back and enjoy it.
Wow, that 30mm is a helluva weapon, eh?
---------------------------------

Se e' il video che dico io gira gia' da tre mesi.  E' quello in cui sparano
a tre uomini vicino a un trattore e un camion, giusto?
--
Socio Luigino Fan Club, tessera n. 113

 su it.politica)

perché ritenuti sospetti. 
Adesso saltera' fuori gufo grigio a dire che si trattava di semplice
NONNISMO come in tutti gli eserciti del mondo...

 
This is the most frightening aspect of this video. I'm even not sure
that the guys in the helicopter took some pleasure to do that. Maybe
they did, but this isn't that obvious. More simply, they are probably
just good professionnals who work hard and do their job the best they
can. If they are asked to kill 3 civilian people who do not threaten
them in any way, then they kill them. Period. No remorse of any kind.
This is frightening because after all there is only a minority of
mentally deranged people who love killing other people, but there is a
vast majority of people who are willing to do their best in their job.
Whatever the job.
The launches of the cruise missiles which are applauded on the Navy
ships, the bombs that are painted by some "artists" before being
dropped on the ennemy, the sniper who is congratulated for his nice
shot... all terrible signs that demonstrate the non-human behavior of
the soldiers.
It shows also what is war really. It cannot be "clean". Civilian
people are deliberately sacrificed if it serves the militarian
objectives. Always. We have just one more proof here.
I don't know if the US army is worse than the others. I've learned
that US soldiers are given the right to shot at anybody (civilian or
not) without any justification, as soon as they *feel* threatened. In
contrast, british soldiers, if they do the same, have to report and
justify the use of their weapons, and they can be blamed it appears
that they made abuses with them . Well, I wouldn't actually bet a
single pence on any army, but such rules (or absence of rules), even
if they are more theory than practice, may also explain some
behaviors.
My father was a french soldier during WWII. For years, after he
retired, he didn't want to get the (small) pension that is given to
the veterans, just because he knew he had killed one man (german
soldier). He had to do that, but it affected him, and he didn't want
to be thanked for that. Probably not representative :-(
-- 
pehache