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As I saw him crouching behind the corner, I piked out the lens he was using as a Canon 70-200 L series with the cylindrical black hood. If I can spot this on a low-resolution video compressed by Youtube, anyone who cannot recognize it as a camera does not have sufficient visual capacity to be deciding who to shoot. There are two men with AKs, which Iraqis are allowed to carry for defense as per US-backed law.
The range display on the gun sight starts out at 1340 yards and barely drops below 1300 as they come around the building. The RPG-7 used by Iraqi insurgents and combatants is unguided and detonates after 920 meters if it does not strike a target. There was small arms fire reported in the area, but it would be physically impossible for the group of men who were targeted to do any damage to the men in the helicopter.
The gunner begging an injured man to reach for a gun so he could shoot him and showing the general attitude he expressed during the video was looking for people to kill, not to determine who the good guys and the bad guys are. The reason the man in the van brought a kid to the battle is because he was driving them to school and stopped to help a man dying in the gutter.
As little will come of this as came from the video of Blackwater mercenaries driving down the street taking pot shots at civilian cars for fun. Regardless of the justifications offered by the military, at least the gunner should be court martialed and locked up for a long time with psychiatric help because he is obviously disturbed. Anyone complicit in the coverup of this incident should similarly be brought to justice, sentenced as appropriate, and dishonorably discharged.
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