More info revealed about Blackwater and the Nisour Square Incident

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Aeson
I can see how the vehicle could potentially be seen as a threat in it in that situation... but shooting fleeing civilians seems much harder to justify, especially if the article is correct that the firing was in several directions.

17 dead and 24 wounded? They ****ed up either in their targetting or reaction.

The firing is in multiple directions, at all times - your have an assigned sector depending on where you are in the convoy, and you look for and engage targets in that sector. Given the number of rounds fired and the number of contractors, plus how crowded the area likely was, that's not really a surprising number of casualties.

Once the firing starts, there's a very good chance you're simply shooting at whatever moves, because you can't take time to fixate on one target - you're looking vertically as well as horizontally, as you're in urban terrain, not an open plain or desert.

It's a complex problem - whether there was overreaction seems likely, but without knowing the specific situation in detail as the contractors saw it, it's hard to make meaningful judgments. If its your life on the line, and you have to react in real time, not with the luxury of analysis and hindsight, you're likely to react far differently than if you have that luxury.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
If its your life on the line, and you have to react in real time, not with the luxury of analysis and hindsight, you're likely to react far differently than if you have that luxury.

Sure. But we still have responsibility for our actions and can be held responsible. (Or should.)

If we are going to say that once someone (even ourselves) shoots a bullet everyone around is now fair game, we might as well nuke the place and be done with it. This type of slaughter (if we go by the article) doesn't just happen with standard proceedure... because if it did it'd happen practically every day over there. Yet somehow our forces are able to usually differentiate between civilians and insurgents.

Mistakes will happen... but this (as described) is way overboard.

[Berzerker]

Not enough info. Too many questions. I reserve my judgement.

Reading that I got a visual of the 3 monkeys who see, hear, and speak no evil...

Yup, if someone in a crowd shoots at me I can just blow the crowd away with a machine gun. Their loved ones will understand...

[Imran Siddiqui]

[q=Shrapnel12]I know war is different, but I was taught to always be able to see my target before shooting. If there were no armed militants present, then these security personnel were firing randomly, just hoping to hit their target.[/q]

And that's my problem. Sure, I can see an idiot Blackwater guy getting trigger happy and killing a driver (and then being wisked away in the night by the State Dept while his family gets $5k to shut them up... but that's for another thread), and then shooting the car up... but to just randomly go and discharge your weapons in the crowd... WTF?!

As Aeson said... why does this stuff tend to happen a lot with these military contractors and not so much with the actual military?

[DAVOUT]

I wonder when you let people with total legal protection, heavely armed and ready to fire, run in a town of millions inhabitants, wherever it is, Irak, Texas or Europe, if this is not likely to happen.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Aeson


Sure. But we still have responsibility for our actions and can be held responsible. (Or should.)

I don't disagree with that at all, and I'm not a fan of Blackwater or PMCs in general. My point is that a probable over-reaction to a FUBAR situation is different than premedidated "let's waste some of these Iraqi *******s just for ****s and grins."

If we are going to say that once someone (even ourselves) shoots a bullet everyone around is now fair game, we might as well nuke the place and be done with it. This type of slaughter (if we go by the article) doesn't just happen with standard proceedure... because if it did it'd happen practically every day over there. Yet somehow our forces are able to usually differentiate between civilians and insurgents.

Even with the contractors, it doesn't happen every day, so there are a lot of questions that need to be answered.

Mistakes will happen... but this (as described) is way overboard.

Most likely, yes. I'd rather learn more detail before deciding how overboard.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
I wonder when you let people with total legal protection, heavely armed and ready to fire, run in a town of millions inhabitants, wherever it is, Irak, Texas or Europe, if this is not likely to happen.

It doesn't happen very often. How many times in the last four years? And how many times in the last four years have contractor or military convoys been ambushed, successfully or otherwise?

[Slade Wilson]

Yup, these guys are in a war zone. The article sounds to me like hype and hysteria with little info.

People conveniently forget most blackwater workers are former soldiers, not some mercenary army being rented out piece by piece from some foreign power. These are soldiers who are no longer usable by the army coming back to continue work.

[Shrapnel12]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
And that's my problem. Sure, I can see an idiot Blackwater guy getting trigger happy and killing a driver (and then being wisked away in the night by the State Dept while his family gets $5k to shut them up... but that's for another thread), and then shooting the car up... but to just randomly go and discharge your weapons in the crowd... WTF?!

As Aeson said... why does this stuff tend to happen a lot with these military contractors and not so much with the actual military?

QFT. Is this what really happened though? Berzerker would have us jerk our knees and lynch this security firm. Hold on to your rope, there is time to answer a few questions before we string them up.

One thing I will say right away, whether anyone is found culpable or not, I say get rid of private security firms. I don't trust them. I barely trust a government agency with guns let alone a private militia.

[Patroklos]

Ahem. Like I said, this is most likely on video. Reserve your judgements.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
I don't disagree with that at all, and I'm not a fan of Blackwater or PMCs in general. My point is that a probable over-reaction to a FUBAR situation is different than premedidated "let's waste some of these Iraqi *******s just for ****s and grins."

So why are you quoting me? I haven't even come close to insinuating that it was premeditated.

Even with the contractors, it doesn't happen every day, so there are a lot of questions that need to be answered.

Exactly. (I used "forces", which include the contractors.) "You shoot everything that moves" is not a valid justification for something like the article describes.

Most likely, yes. I'd rather learn more detail before deciding how overboard.

Eh... that's for if there's another article/whatever. Right now I'm just discussing this one. Most likely we'll never know the whole truth, as with just about everything else.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Aeson


So why are you quoting me? I haven't even come close to insinuating that it was premeditated.

And I didn't say that you did. You were convenient to quote since you brought up the point of someone being held responsible.

Eh... that's for if there's another article/whatever. Right now I'm just discussing this one. Most likely we'll never know the whole truth, as with just about everything else.

This article is simply woefully incomplete. We have a partial story from one of who knows how many witnesses perspective.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
And I didn't say that you did. You were convenient to quote since you brought up the point of someone being held responsible.

Quoting someone, then going off on an argumentative tangent against a statement they haven't made is an intellectually dishonest method of implying the person has said something to the contrary.

If you want to make a new assertion that is irrelevent to anything I have said, just say it. You don't need to quote me to do so, I promise.

This article is simply woefully incomplete. We have a partial story from one of who knows how many witnesses perspective.

The article states it was 12 witnesses, Iraqi investigators, and some second-hand info from a US investigator. Which is still not enough to convict on (at least for us), but certainly more "enough" than just 1, and far more (claimed) evidence than we get for most of the stuff posted in the OT.

If we can't discuss this, we might as well shut down the OT.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Aeson


Quoting someone, then going off on an argumentative tangent against a statement they haven't made is an intellectually dishonest method of implying the person has said something to the contrary.

It's actually more convenient/lazy, since this is an internet forum, not a scholarly research publication.

BTW, it's not entirely irrelevant, either, as we have to first determine exactly for what we want to hold people responsible.

There's a potential range here from "oops" to murder.

If you want to make a new assertion that is irrelevent to anything I have said, just say it. You don't need to quote me to do so, I promise.

But what if I want to?

The article states it was 12 witnesses, Iraqi investigators, and some second-hand info from a US investigator.

Which is nice, and gives us some bullet points, but we don't have those twelve witnesses' complete statements with some idea of their location, or the presumably much more detailed statements of the investigators. We have snippets assembled by reporters.

We will never get to see anything close to the "whole story" but I hope someone who will act appropriately on it does get to see as much of the whole story as can be put together.

If we can't discuss this, we might as well shut down the OT.

There's always spam.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
It's actually more convenient/lazy, since this is an internet forum, not a scholarly research publication.

I'm lazy.

But what if I want to?

Then of course I'll simply respond about the intellectual dishonesty of your approach.

Which is nice, and gives us some bullet points, but we don't have those twelve witnesses' complete statements with some idea of their location, or the presumably much more detailed statements of the investigators. We have snippets assembled by reporters.

We will never get to see anything close to the "whole story" but I hope someone who will act appropriately on it does get to see as much of the whole story as can be put together.

There's always spam.

Duely noted for future cases where you try to make substantiated arguments.