(April 6, 2010 at 9:19 am)Tiberius Wrote: Ok, people seem to be ignoring another issue here. Yes, civilians get killed in war. Yes, war should be the absolute last course of action. Yes, there will be instances where things go wrong and innocent people are targeted as the enemy.
The actions of the people in the film can possibly be excused if you hold the technology and actual war accountable instead. However, the actions of the US government by denying that this took place, and the spreading of the lie that the chopper was fired upon first should be highlighted. Once the facts came out, and Reuters announced that their journalists had been killed in this firefight, a full investigation should have taken place. Reuters asked for the chopper video 2 years ago as part of the freedom of information act, and it was denied. Why? Possibly because it shows that the US government lied about what happened, that the chopper was not "fired upon", and that this action was not done in self-defense.
Why do governments have such problems with admitting to errors? Why can't they apologise for their mistakes?
I could just say it is the nature of governments.
Really, it's damage control. Unnecessary, not well thought out, selfish, damage control. I will agree with you that the United States government did the wrong thing here. Spreading a lie. Not conducting a full investigation, etc., etc. You're right; they should have apologized.
My contention with how a lot of people are reacting to the video is that the heat is now coming down on a group of soldiers who did their jobs. We may not like their jobs. We may not like the mistakes they sometimes make, but the fact of the matter is that they behaved in the very way they were trained to. Everyone makes mistakes at work. When your job is to kill people who are trying to kill you, your mistakes are a little more disastrous.
