Award winning photographer shot dead by US army in Iraq - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

HarmlessRabbit · 08-17-2003, 03:42 PM

Summary: passing convoy thinks a journalist (filming with permission) has an RPG, not a camera, and fires on him.

Sucks for the journalist, who left behind four young children. To me, this is just a sign of what the stress and heat and constant guerilla attacks are doing to the troops. I'm sure many of them are tired and punchy, and that's not a condition you want a 22-year old handling deadly weapons to be in.

So, I hope that the weather breaks a little and some of the troop rotations they have been promising to set up start happening.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...n_dc&printer=1

Quote:

U.S. Troops Shoot Dead Reuters Cameraman in Iraq

By Andrew Marshall

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops shot dead an award-winning Reuters cameraman while he was filming on Sunday near a U.S.-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Eyewitnesses said soldiers on an American tank shot at Mazen Dana, 43, as he filmed outside Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad which had earlier come under a mortar attack.

Dana's last pictures show a U.S. tank driving toward him outside the prison walls. Several shots ring out from the tank, and Dana's camera falls to the ground.

The U.S. military acknowledged on Sunday that its troops had "engaged" a Reuters cameraman, saying they had thought his camera was a rocket propelled grenade launcher.

"Army soldiers engaged an individual they thought was aiming an RPG at them. It turned out to be a Reuters cameraman," Navy Captain Frank Thorp, a spokesman for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Reuters in Washington.

Journalists had gone to the prison after the U.S. military said a mortar bomb attack there a day before had killed six Iraqis and wounded 59 others.

Recounting the moments before the shooting, Reuters soundman Nael al-Shyoukhi, who was working with Dana, said he had asked a U.S. soldier near the prison if they could speak to an officer and was told they could not.

"They saw us and they knew about our identities and our mission," Shyoukhi said. The incident happened in the afternoon in daylight.

The soldier agreed to their request to film an overview of the prison from a bridge nearby.

"After we filmed we went into the car and prepared to go when a convoy led by a tank arrived and Mazen stepped out of the car to film. I followed him and Mazen walked three to four meters (yards). We were noted and seen clearly," Shyoukhi said.

"A soldier on the tank shot at us. I lay on the ground. I heard Mazen and I saw him scream and touching his chest.

"I cried at the soldier, telling him you killed a journalist. They shouted at me and asked me to step back and I said 'I will step back, but please help, please help and stop the bleed'.

"They tried to help him but Mazen bled heavily. Mazen took a last breath and died before my eyes."

AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST

Dana's death brings to 17 the number of journalists or their assistants who have died in Iraq (news - web sites) since war began on March 20. Two others have been missing since the first days of the war.

Dana is the second Reuters cameraman to be killed since the U.S.-led force invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

On April 8, Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian based in Warsaw, died when a U.S. tank fired a shell at the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel, the base for many foreign media in Baghdad.

"Mazen was one of Reuters finest cameramen and we are devastated by his loss," said Stephen Jukes, Reuters global head of news.

"He was a brave and award-winning journalist who had worked in many of the world's hot spots," Jukes said.

"He was committed to covering the story wherever it was and was an inspiration to friends and colleagues at Reuters and throughout the industry. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with his family."

Dana, a Palestinian, had worked for Reuters mostly in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Paul Holmes, former Reuters bureau chief in Jerusalem, recalled a towering, chain-smoking bear of a man with a ruddy complexion and expansive heart.

"The amazing thing about him was he was like the king of Hebron. Every journalist in the city looked up to him and any journalist who covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will know and love Mazen," he said.

Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer said he hoped there would be "the fullest and most comprehensive investigation into this terrible tragedy."

Married with four young children, Dana was one of the company's most experienced conflict journalists and had worked in Baghdad before, shortly after U.S. troops entered the city.

He was awarded an International Press Freedom Award in 2001 by the Committee to Protect Journalists for his work in Hebron where he was wounded and beaten many times. (additional reporting by Charles Aldinger in Washington)

smooth · 08-17-2003, 04:10 PM

Nasty position the troops are in. On the one hand, they need to rotate in and out. On the other, troop rotation schedules were used in Vietnam and began to demoralize the units as people became more concerned with their exit date than team unity and "cherries" began to endanger veteran squads.

lurkette · 08-17-2003, 04:15 PM

I really wish the armed forces would acknowledge when they make fuckups like that, instead of saying they "engaged" a reporter. I know it's early and they probably still have to issue an official statement, but it would go a long way toward appeasing people if they'd take responsibility for their actions. Doesn't sit well with a lot of people, I'm sure, that the journalist was Palestinian to boot. What a mess.

CyCo PL · 08-17-2003, 04:18 PM

I guess those troops never went through the "camera are not rocket launchers" training.

evo626 · 08-17-2003, 04:24 PM

Maybe its time to rethink our postion in Iraq and go back to war, so we can kill these sobs that keep killing our troops. Once they are all dead then we should go back to setting up a pupet government.
evo

debaser · 08-17-2003, 04:25 PM

Help do your part:

http://mywpages.comcast.net/frankiemayo/

BigGov · 08-17-2003, 06:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by lurkette
I really wish the armed forces would acknowledge when they make fuckups like that, instead of saying they "engaged" a reporter. I know it's early and they probably still have to issue an official statement, but it would go a long way toward appeasing people if they'd take responsibility for their actions. Doesn't sit well with a lot of people, I'm sure, that the journalist was Palestinian to boot. What a mess.

Quote:

"They tried to help him but Mazen bled heavily. Mazen took a last breath and died before my eyes."

They say engaged because they didn't know the entire story about what happened. Before they want to make an official statement they want to make sure they have everything settled in house first. Otherwise, the media spins a million different stories with ten different quotes.

We don't know why the troop shot, so that's the first thing the army tries to find out in a situation like this, for not just us, but for themselves.

The_Dude · 08-17-2003, 07:02 PM

no warning shots are fired??

they should've given the guy a chance "to surrender" or to put down the camera.

BigGov · 08-17-2003, 07:03 PM

If you see someone with an RPG pointed at you, you don't fire any warning shots.

Anyone who thinks warning shots are even feasable in a situation like that does not know anything about fighting.

Phaenx · 08-17-2003, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by CyCo PL
I guess those troops never went through the "camera are not rocket launchers" training.

That's easy to say when you're sitting on your ass in front of a computer in the States. Lets take you to Iraq, go through a few attacks, and then have someone point a camera at you from a distance.

smooth · 08-17-2003, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jimmy4
They say engaged because they didn't know the entire story about what happened.

For the record, both HarmlessRabbit and I empathize with the soldiers. I'm assuming (from his statements here and in other threads) that he agrees with me that this is a natural outcome of stress, fatigue, and longterm battle atmosphere.

However, they say "engaged" for the same reasons I have laid out in my other posts regarding discursive practices in wartime--it ameliorates and sanitizes the situation.

Phaenx · 08-17-2003, 09:14 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by smooth
For the record, both HarmlessRabbit and I empathize with the soldiers. I'm assuming (from his statements here and in other threads) that he agrees with me that this is a natural outcome of stress, fatigue, and longterm battle atmosphere.

However, they say "engaged" for the same reasons I have laid out in my other posts regarding discursive practices in wartime--it ameliorates and sanitizes the situation.

Is that a problem? I can't imagine that it is, but lets say we change it to something more descriptive, I'm not seeing it have an impact on preventing friendly fire, but anything in general really.

Maybe I'm wrong though, what would you suggest?

pangavan · 08-17-2003, 09:31 PM

Quote:

I guess those troops never went through the "camera are not rocket launchers" training.

have you taken that test? They look alot alike in a heat haze when you only have about a second to make up your mind.

If you havent done it, don't judge

pangavan · 08-17-2003, 09:37 PM

If we really wanted to hurt them we would send over New York and L.A. cop and tell them there are no civil rights laws to get busted for violating

smooth · 08-17-2003, 09:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Phaenx
Is that a problem? I can't imagine that it is, but lets say we change it to something more descriptive, I'm not seeing it have an impact on preventing friendly fire, but anything in general really.

Maybe I'm wrong though, what would you suggest?

I don't really know if I'm suggesting anything--I just think it's important that we realize how language shapes our perception of reality.

To the soldier in the field and a civilized population that ordinarily disdains war and murder, using neutral phrases allows us to conduct ourselves in ways we deem necessary but would otherwise be constrained from doing due to social norms (beliefs).

One disadvantage, however, is that we do so at the expense of empathy for the people we have to label as our enemies. In this particular case, where we are fighting one segment of the population on the behalf of another segment of the population, we will inevitably harm our allies and, unfortunately, engender hatred and misunderstanding even as we attempt to do something beneficial to the indigenous population.

I guess that if I'm suggesting anything it would be that, given this information, you weigh the costs of these types of discursive practices against the benefits. Not that you wouldn't still think we should continue using such practices, but that you then are not surprised by the "collateral damage" that will definately occur in response to our actions.

Macheath · 08-17-2003, 11:51 PM

I feel sorry for the soldiers who did this; it's not their failure but a failure of policy. There needs to be a clearly defined relationship between the media (not just the embedded media) and armies with well defined policies and conventions. The trouble would be army commanders who created policies so unnecessarily strict as to effectively "ban" the world's media from an area of global interest. People should react to something like that with outrage.

It's a pity we live in an age where people seem to only react strongly to images. A wordsmith correspondent sans camera crew could do a great public service in a war zone and any group of soldiers who mistook his pen and notepad for a gun would rightly be hung out to dry.

onetime2 · 08-18-2003, 05:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by HarmlessRabbit
I'm sure many of them are tired and punchy, and that's not a condition you want a 22-year old handling deadly weapons to be in.

Umm, that's the condition of any troop in combat. That's what they're trained for.

HunterDevourer · 08-18-2003, 06:21 AM

Accidents do happen. However, weren't the soldiers briefed on the camera work that was underway? Highlights the need for media people to take as few risks as possible...

j8ear · 08-18-2003, 06:27 AM

Bad things happen to people in dangerous places.

Tired and punchy...that's a good one

jwoody · 08-18-2003, 06:52 AM

I suspect we 'Westerners' are being fed a watered down version of this horrific event.
Here is another version of the story:

http://www.islam-online.net/English/...rticle03.shtml

the truth probably lies somewhere in between this account and the Fox/CNN/BBC version.

To mistake a TV camera for a grenade launcher is unforgivable. Do a google image search if you disagree.

smooth · 08-18-2003, 07:58 AM

Thanks for the link, jwoody.

There was an interesting article (#13) below that one.

And this from the other day (for anyone following my discussion regarding discursive practices, note the language used):

Quote:

Once again, trigger-happy, nervous US soldiers have gone on the rampage in Iraq killing nearly 20 innocent Iraqi civilians in less than a week.

The latest incident occurred August 11 after a power generator blew up, plunging several Baghdad neighborhoods into darkness, according to the Associated Press.

Within a time span of just 45 minutes six Iraqi civilians traveling well before the 11 pm curfew, including three children, were gunned down by heavy machine gun fire from US troops. Iraqi eyewitnesses told reporters that US troops continued to fire into the cars despite cries from the women in the cars that they were an innocent family. Eyewitnesses also reported parts of human skull and brain dashed all over the interiors of the cars.

j8ear · 08-18-2003, 08:51 AM

There are Iraq 'civilians' or where ever they're from blowing up oil pipeplines and vehicle's too.

Where to draw the line?

BigGov · 08-18-2003, 10:50 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by jwoody
To mistake a TV camera for a grenade launcher is unforgivable. Do a google image search if you disagree. [/B]

Oh yes, up close you can tell the difference. From farther away, it's a hell of a lot harder. Throw into account outdoor light, fatigue, and the stance of the camera man and it becomes a hell of a lot harder.

But oh, it's so easy to judge right now. Sitting at your computer in a chair in an air conditioned room, typing in searches in Google, yeah, how in the hell could someone not know a difference.

The_Dude · 08-18-2003, 11:04 AM

dont the media wear signs on them like they do in jerusalem?

debaser · 08-18-2003, 11:13 AM

Listen up.

The primary sight on an M-1 tank is a thermal sight.

The tank in question was approacking an area that had just been attacked by some sort of artillery (mortar, rpg, grenade), they didn't know what kind yet.

From the gunners point of view a man holding a camera on his shoulder and a man holding an RPG on his shoulder look identicle.

The gunner would have yelled "target".

The commander would have identified the target, in this case incorrectly, but given that he was looking through periscopes at someone a couple hundred meteres away in 100+ degree heat, and had a fraction of a second to appraise the situation, maybe we can cut him some slack. "Gunner battlesight troops"

Gunner: "Identified"

Commander: "Fire"

Gunner: "On the way."

The entire proess would have taken about 1.5 seconds from the gunner first sighting him.

Combat zones are dangerous places. Reporters know that. This was a tragic accident. The other tradgedy is that some people wish to use it to further their own agendas...

seretogis · 08-18-2003, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by debaser
Combat zones are dangerous places. Reporters know that. This was a tragic accident. The other tradgedy is that some people wish to use it to further their own agendas...

I couldn't have said it better myself, so I won't try.

The_Dude · 08-18-2003, 03:22 PM

this is becomming way too common of an occurence.

remember the guy in the repair shop holding spark plugs (?) getting shot cuz the soldier thought it was an rpg or somethin like that?

i'm not blaming this on the soldiers. they're workin long shifts and dont have the best of things. i can understand why they're edgy.

--------------

the military presence in iraq is going to continue for a long time (years?) and more of these incidents will happen.

JumpinJesus · 08-18-2003, 03:47 PM

I'm not at all trying to justify what happened, but for those of you who haven't been in these situations, let me try to give you an idea of what it's like:

You're on duty 24 hours a day. Being in a hostile military environment isn't a 9-5, 5 day a week job. It's 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You don't go to your supervisor and say, "Sir, I've been on duty 17 hours, I'm going to go get some sleep." You stay awake until you're relieved, which is whenever your commander damn well feels like it.

It's hot as fucking hell over there. These guys are wearing upwards of 50lbs of equipment in 100+ degree weather. Most of them are around 18-20 years old. They're tired, scared, pissed, hungry, thirsty and don't know when the next guerilla attack is coming. Anyone can be the enemy in this environment.

Now, see debaser's post for a detailed description of what happens next.

Had they not "engaged" the target and it <i>did</i> turn out to be an RPG, there could be many dead soldiers. If there were, we'd be bitching about more American soldiers dying.
As for the terminology used, military-speak is never emotional. For them to say "engaged" is not their attempt to sanitize what happened, it's just simply how they speak.

The person found to be responsible for this is fucked on top of what he's going through knowing he killed an innocent person. No matter how justified his actions (he did what he was supposed to do), the military will hang him out to dry to appease the public over a highly publicized event.

You don't have to like what's going on over there or even agree with it to cut the soldiers a little slack or appreciate that it was not their intent to kill a journalist.

Vyk · 08-18-2003, 04:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by JumpinJesus

The person found to be responsible for this is fucked on top of what he's going through knowing he killed an innocent person. No matter how justified his actions (he did what he was supposed to do), the military will hang him out to dry to appease the public over a highly publicized event.

That's exactly what I thought when I first heard about this. Ugh...

BigGov · 08-18-2003, 06:24 PM

Quote:

remember the guy in the repair shop holding spark plugs (?) getting shot cuz the soldier thought it was an rpg or somethin like that?

No. Give links please.

The_Dude · 08-18-2003, 07:01 PM

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...light=mechanic

we discussed it here on the tfp.

smooth · 08-18-2003, 07:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by JumpinJesus As for the terminology used, military-speak is never emotional. For them to say "engaged" is not their attempt to sanitize what happened, it's just simply how they speak.[/B]

I haven't seen anyone, except one person, express anything other than support and understanding for the soldiers' positions--so you can just lay off asserting otherwise.

That is not just "how they speak." First of all, do some research on discursive practices--it's well documented. Secondly, this was a press release, not an off-the-cuff statement. Thirdly, whether you or they realize it or not, people choose their words for reasons--not just "because."

I doubt they will "hang" anyone out to dry--and no one here has said they should. Every incident up until now has been investigated and the soldiers involved exonerated--there is no evidence that this case would be handled otherwise.

BigGov · 08-18-2003, 10:08 PM

Quote:

remember the guy in the repair shop holding spark plugs (?) getting shot cuz the soldier thought it was an rpg or somethin like that?

Not even close to the actual events. An approaching car was fired upon.

Anything else said in the article about what the US did? Nope.

Odds are they thought they had the area covered 100%. The approaching car they probably saw as terrorists doing a drive-by, or a car bomb.

Very, very different from this incident.

The_Dude · 08-19-2003, 09:57 AM

sry, wrong story.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...l/iraq/2038968

Quote:

Iraqis seek retribution for civilian casualties
----------

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Uday Ahmed walked across an auto repair yard in south Baghdad, holding the car part he needed replaced: an ignition distributor.

The object gleamed in the sunlight, clearly visible to anyone on the rooftop of a police station adjoining the yard. It was round and metallic, slightly bigger than a fist. From a distance, it strikingly resembled a hand grenade.

One shot exploded in the air.

In the chaotic minutes that followed, Ali Hassan remembers seeing the 24-year-old Ahmed doubled over on the ground and then glance up briefly at the police station roof, where soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were posted behind sandbags.

It might have been the last thing Ahmed ever saw. A second shot, fired from the roof of the police station, struck his chest.

"It hit him, and he dropped. There was blood everywhere," said Hassan, who runs a falafel stand about 20 feet from where Ahmed fell.

That death last month, witnessed by several people who later spoke to a reporter, has been almost forgotten as the daily attacks against U.S. soldiers continue to dog the American occupation of Iraq. Most soldiers at the 82nd Airborne's base two blocks from the auto-repair yard could not recall the incident.

But the mounting numbers of deaths among their own have hit the Iraqis hard. In numerous interviews, they warned that more than other factors like widespread crime, high unemployment or electricity blackouts, civilian casualties have hardened their feelings toward the GIs and could prolong or widen the armed resistance.

"It's increased our hate against Americans," says Ali Hatem, 23, a computer science student at the University of Baghdad. "It also increases the violence against them.

"In Iraq we are tribal people. When someone loses their son, they want revenge."

Neither Iraqis nor the U.S. military keeps statistics for dead civilians like Ahmed the mechanic, whose shooting the military calls a tragic accident. Yet such incidents are reported regularly.

On July 27, for instance, U.S. soldiers opened fire on cars that overshot a military cordon in the plush west Baghdad suburb of Mansour. At least three people were killed.

In late April, 82nd Airborne soldiers fired on a demonstration in Fallujah, about 50 miles west of Baghdad, killing 13 people. In June, soldiers opened fire on a protest outside the Republican Palace in Baghdad, killing at least two people.

In both those cases, soldiers said they believed armed insurgents hidden in the crowd had fired on them.

U.S. regrets deaths
U.S. officials have expressed regrets that innocent people have been killed in the crossfire of the conflict with Saddam Hussein's loyalists that has raged since May 1 when President Bush declared major combat operations over.

The military officials say they are still fighting a war and that such incidents are an unfortunate consequence.

Still, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, told a reporter last week that the military had decided to limit the scope of raids conducted the past few weeks in a hunt for Baath Party operatives and others. Other operations in Iraq, and the Americans' rules for firing weapons when they deem their lives are endangered, apparently were not affected.

So far, Iraqis have filed two wrongful death claims against the Americans. The military will not specify which cases they are. But the claimants are unlikely to win.

Under U.S. laws drafted during World War II, the military is not legally liable if civilians are killed during combat operations. "Our soldiers are conducting combat operations," says Col. Marc Warren, the senior American military attorney in Iraq. "We are still engaged in combat operations."

At least one case has been so unsettling to both American soldiers and Iraqis that U.S. forces have decided to break their own rules and open formal investigations into a death.

The tragic incident occurred on June 28.

At 10:30 that night, 12-year-old Mohammed Al-Kubaisa had gone to the rooftop of his family's home, where he and his twin brother, Moustafa, were to sleep, a favorite summertime habit. Mohammed had just reached the top, when he turned to watch a group of armed American soldiers patrolling the street below. One soldier looked up in the darkness and saw a figure on the roof, watching him. A bullet was fired, and Mohammed was hit.

"I held him while his blood poured on the floor," said his mother, Wafa Abdul Latif, 44, recalling the hours following. She said the soldiers slammed through the front door and pushed her aside as they searched the house. "He was still alive. He was struggling to breathe."

Delay at a checkpoint
Worse was to come. The family's neighbor, Yaser Ala, bundled young Mohammed into his car, and tore through the streets toward a hospital. They reached a group of soldiers at a roadblock.

"They stopped us at the checkpoint because it was nearly curfew time," said Ala, 17. "They said we could not go on, even though they saw Mohammed bleeding."

No civilian is permitted outdoors in Baghdad after 11 p.m.

Distraught, Ala returned to the house. Mohammed died in the car seat shortly afterward.

Mohammed's death was cited in a report released by the London-based Amnesty International, which said that U.S. forces were at times trigger happy and were ill-prepared for policing Iraq. "Coalition forces must abide by law enforcement standards and therefore use force in line with the principles of necessity and proportionality," the report said.

i'm not a car person and got confused with an "ignition distributor" and a spark plug.

seretogis · 08-19-2003, 12:20 PM

Although the idea seems to be completely lost on some people, I will say it again: war is not fun. People die. Innocent people die. It happens.

I don't really see the point of starting a thread every time that a civilian mistakenly is shot.

The_Dude · 08-19-2003, 12:24 PM

war is over. the US is in full control of the country.

it's peacekeeping time.

Nizzle · 08-19-2003, 12:42 PM

The war is not over. There is a vicious guerilla war underway in Iraq. Fox News and other entertainment-driven news sources only report a portion of the events that occur, and portray them as disconnected events.

The war will be over when people stop dying every day.

JumpinJesus · 08-19-2003, 01:08 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by smooth
I haven't seen anyone, except one person, express anything other than support and understanding for the soldiers' positions--so you can just lay off asserting otherwise.

I was not intending to assert that anyone was denouncing the troops for what happened. I was making a general statement. If I left the impression that I was, then I apologize. However, I stand by my statement that many people are not truly aware of the conditions. There is a big difference between empathy and sympathy.

Quote:

That is not just "how they speak." First of all, do some research on discursive practices--it's well documented. Secondly, this was a press release, not an off-the-cuff statement. Thirdly, whether you or they realize it or not, people choose their words for reasons--not just "because."

Yes it is how they speak. I'm not going to debate discursive practices regardless of how suspect the Navy Captain's speech may have been. Having served for 5 years during the first war in Iraq, I am very well aware of how those in the military speak. And a confrontation with anyone is termed an engagement. It doesn't matter whether this was a press-release or not, the fact of the matter is that a Naval officer was describing the event in the language with which he is accustomed. I think you give too much credit with the assumption that every word was carefully chosen to exact a particular meaning. Not everyone who speaks does so with as much premeditation as you seem to be claiming.

Quote:

I doubt they will "hang" anyone out to dry--and no one here has said they should. Every incident up until now has been investigated and the soldiers involved exonerated--there is no evidence that this case would be handled otherwise.

It is a strong possibility that he will be exonerated and I hope he is; however, the military beauracracy too often offers a sacrificial lamb in cases like these if public pressure becomes great enough.

Dibbler · 08-19-2003, 06:25 PM

I've been reading this guys blog since before the war started and it's pretty interesting. He's an Iraqi who's been writing about what is really going on over there. Sounds like the whole country is pretty fucked up.

Here's the site: http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/

I'd like to hear what you guys think...

smooth · 08-19-2003, 06:44 PM

Hey JumpinJesus, now I see where we're crossing:

I'm not claiming that discursive language is employed in a premeditated fashion by everyone who uses it.

We do, however, speak in patterns that confirm and shape our perceptions and allow us to conduct ourselves in certain ways. Words do not just fly out of our mouths--our brain selects them and then we use them. Our brains select them based on a myriad of reasons--if they didn't carefully select them we would speak gibberish.

I'm not attributing some sinister motive to his words--they are a rational response to the situation. Now that you have a crash course in discursive practices start to listen whether different groups of people speak in different patterns.

Ingot, or slang, allows people in particular groups to share worldviews and communicate with one another. We do this in the office, on the web (LOL, ROFLMA, and etc.), as well as in the military.

The fact that military personel use "engage" to describe any killing of an opponent doesn't detract from the realization that such a word sanitizes the reality (as opposed to the Iraqi usage of "brains and blood" all over the dashboard) that one human being killed another human being.

08-17-2003, 04:10 PM	#2 (permalink)
smooth Junkie Location: Right here	Nasty position the troops are in. On the one hand, they need to rotate in and out. On the other, troop rotation schedules were used in Vietnam and began to demoralize the units as people became more concerned with their exit date than team unity and "cherries" began to endanger veteran squads. __________________ "The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann "You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

08-17-2003, 04:15 PM	#3 (permalink)
lurkette My future is coming on Moderator Emeritus Location: east of the sun and west of the moon	I really wish the armed forces would acknowledge when they make fuckups like that, instead of saying they "engaged" a reporter. I know it's early and they probably still have to issue an official statement, but it would go a long way toward appeasing people if they'd take responsibility for their actions. Doesn't sit well with a lot of people, I'm sure, that the journalist was Palestinian to boot. What a mess. __________________ "If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." - Anatole France

08-17-2003, 04:25 PM	#6 (permalink)
debaser Sir, I have a plan... Location: 38S NC20943324	Help do your part: http://mywpages.comcast.net/frankiemayo/ __________________ Fortunato became immured to the sound of the trowel after a while.

08-17-2003, 07:02 PM	#8 (permalink)
The_Dude The GrandDaddy of them all! Location: Austin, TX	no warning shots are fired?? they should've given the guy a chance "to surrender" or to put down the camera. __________________ "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

08-17-2003, 07:03 PM	#9 (permalink)
BigGov WoW or Class... Location: UWW	If you see someone with an RPG pointed at you, you don't fire any warning shots. Anyone who thinks warning shots are even feasable in a situation like that does not know anything about fighting. __________________ One day an Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman walked into a pub together. They each bought a pint of Guinness. Just as they were about to enjoy their creamy beverage, three flies landed in each of their pints. The Englishman pushed his beer away in disgust. The Scotsman fished the fly out of his beer and continued drinking it, as if nothing had happened. The Irishman, too, picked the fly out of his drink but then held it out over the beer and yelled "SPIT IT OUT, SPIT IT OUT, YOU BASTARD!"

08-17-2003, 04:18 PM	#4 (permalink)
CyCo PL Addict Location: Tulsa, OK	I guess those troops never went through the "camera are not rocket launchers" training.

08-17-2003, 04:24 PM	#5 (permalink)
evo626 Upright	Maybe its time to rethink our postion in Iraq and go back to war, so we can kill these sobs that keep killing our troops. Once they are all dead then we should go back to setting up a pupet government. evo

08-17-2003, 09:37 PM	#14 (permalink)
pangavan Insane Location: cleveland, OH	If we really wanted to hurt them we would send over New York and L.A. cop and tell them there are no civil rights laws to get busted for violating __________________ He is, moreover, a frequent drunkard, a glutton, and a patron of ladies who are no better than they should be.

08-17-2003, 11:51 PM	#16 (permalink)
Macheath Junkie Location: Sydney, Australia	I feel sorry for the soldiers who did this; it's not their failure but a failure of policy. There needs to be a clearly defined relationship between the media (not just the embedded media) and armies with well defined policies and conventions. The trouble would be army commanders who created policies so unnecessarily strict as to effectively "ban" the world's media from an area of global interest. People should react to something like that with outrage. It's a pity we live in an age where people seem to only react strongly to images. A wordsmith correspondent sans camera crew could do a great public service in a war zone and any group of soldiers who mistook his pen and notepad for a gun would rightly be hung out to dry.

08-18-2003, 06:21 AM	#18 (permalink)
HunterDevourer Insane Location: Sydney - Australia	Accidents do happen. However, weren't the soldiers briefed on the camera work that was underway? Highlights the need for media people to take as few risks as possible... __________________ Viva La Muerte

08-18-2003, 06:27 AM	#19 (permalink)
j8ear Gentlemen Farmer Location: Middle of nowhere, Jersey	Bad things happen to people in dangerous places. Tired and punchy...that's a good one __________________ It's alot easier to ask for forgiveness then it is to ask for permission.

08-18-2003, 06:52 AM	#20 (permalink)
jwoody Shackle Me Not Location: Newcastle - England.	I suspect we 'Westerners' are being fed a watered down version of this horrific event. Here is another version of the story: http://www.islam-online.net/English/...rticle03.shtml the truth probably lies somewhere in between this account and the Fox/CNN/BBC version. To mistake a TV camera for a grenade launcher is unforgivable. Do a google image search if you disagree. __________________ .

08-18-2003, 08:51 AM	#22 (permalink)
j8ear Gentlemen Farmer Location: Middle of nowhere, Jersey	There are Iraq 'civilians' or where ever they're from blowing up oil pipeplines and vehicle's too. Where to draw the line? __________________ It's alot easier to ask for forgiveness then it is to ask for permission.

08-18-2003, 11:04 AM	#24 (permalink)
The_Dude The GrandDaddy of them all! Location: Austin, TX	dont the media wear signs on them like they do in jerusalem? __________________ "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

08-18-2003, 11:13 AM	#25 (permalink)
debaser Sir, I have a plan... Location: 38S NC20943324	Listen up. The primary sight on an M-1 tank is a thermal sight. The tank in question was approacking an area that had just been attacked by some sort of artillery (mortar, rpg, grenade), they didn't know what kind yet. From the gunners point of view a man holding a camera on his shoulder and a man holding an RPG on his shoulder look identicle. The gunner would have yelled "target". The commander would have identified the target, in this case incorrectly, but given that he was looking through periscopes at someone a couple hundred meteres away in 100+ degree heat, and had a fraction of a second to appraise the situation, maybe we can cut him some slack. "Gunner battlesight troops" Gunner: "Identified" Commander: "Fire" Gunner: "On the way." The entire proess would have taken about 1.5 seconds from the gunner first sighting him. Combat zones are dangerous places. Reporters know that. This was a tragic accident. The other tradgedy is that some people wish to use it to further their own agendas... __________________ Fortunato became immured to the sound of the trowel after a while.

08-18-2003, 03:22 PM	#27 (permalink)
The_Dude The GrandDaddy of them all! Location: Austin, TX	this is becomming way too common of an occurence. remember the guy in the repair shop holding spark plugs (?) getting shot cuz the soldier thought it was an rpg or somethin like that? i'm not blaming this on the soldiers. they're workin long shifts and dont have the best of things. i can understand why they're edgy. -------------- the military presence in iraq is going to continue for a long time (years?) and more of these incidents will happen. __________________ "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

08-18-2003, 03:47 PM	#28 (permalink)
JumpinJesus Junkie Location: Chicago	I'm not at all trying to justify what happened, but for those of you who haven't been in these situations, let me try to give you an idea of what it's like: You're on duty 24 hours a day. Being in a hostile military environment isn't a 9-5, 5 day a week job. It's 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You don't go to your supervisor and say, "Sir, I've been on duty 17 hours, I'm going to go get some sleep." You stay awake until you're relieved, which is whenever your commander damn well feels like it. It's hot as fucking hell over there. These guys are wearing upwards of 50lbs of equipment in 100+ degree weather. Most of them are around 18-20 years old. They're tired, scared, pissed, hungry, thirsty and don't know when the next guerilla attack is coming. Anyone can be the enemy in this environment. Now, see debaser's post for a detailed description of what happens next. Had they not "engaged" the target and it <i>did</i> turn out to be an RPG, there could be many dead soldiers. If there were, we'd be bitching about more American soldiers dying. As for the terminology used, military-speak is never emotional. For them to say "engaged" is not their attempt to sanitize what happened, it's just simply how they speak. The person found to be responsible for this is fucked on top of what he's going through knowing he killed an innocent person. No matter how justified his actions (he did what he was supposed to do), the military will hang him out to dry to appease the public over a highly publicized event. You don't have to like what's going on over there or even agree with it to cut the soldiers a little slack or appreciate that it was not their intent to kill a journalist. __________________ "I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

08-18-2003, 07:01 PM	#31 (permalink)
The_Dude The GrandDaddy of them all! Location: Austin, TX	http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...light=mechanic we discussed it here on the tfp. __________________ "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

08-19-2003, 12:20 PM	#35 (permalink)
seretogis Huggles, sir? Location: Seattle	Although the idea seems to be completely lost on some people, I will say it again: war is not fun. People die. Innocent people die. It happens. I don't really see the point of starting a thread every time that a civilian mistakenly is shot. __________________ seretogis - sieg heil perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

08-19-2003, 12:24 PM	#36 (permalink)
The_Dude The GrandDaddy of them all! Location: Austin, TX	war is over. the US is in full control of the country. it's peacekeeping time. __________________ "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

08-19-2003, 12:42 PM	#37 (permalink)
Nizzle God-Hating Liberal Location: Silicon Valley, CA	The war is not over. There is a vicious guerilla war underway in Iraq. Fox News and other entertainment-driven news sources only report a portion of the events that occur, and portray them as disconnected events. The war will be over when people stop dying every day. __________________ Nizzle

08-19-2003, 06:25 PM	#39 (permalink)
Dibbler Psycho Location: Initech, Iowa	I've been reading this guys blog since before the war started and it's pretty interesting. He's an Iraqi who's been writing about what is really going on over there. Sounds like the whole country is pretty fucked up. Here's the site: http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ I'd like to hear what you guys think...

08-19-2003, 06:44 PM	#40 (permalink)
smooth Junkie Location: Right here	Hey JumpinJesus, now I see where we're crossing: I'm not claiming that discursive language is employed in a premeditated fashion by everyone who uses it. We do, however, speak in patterns that confirm and shape our perceptions and allow us to conduct ourselves in certain ways. Words do not just fly out of our mouths--our brain selects them and then we use them. Our brains select them based on a myriad of reasons--if they didn't carefully select them we would speak gibberish. I'm not attributing some sinister motive to his words--they are a rational response to the situation. Now that you have a crash course in discursive practices start to listen whether different groups of people speak in different patterns. Ingot, or slang, allows people in particular groups to share worldviews and communicate with one another. We do this in the office, on the web (LOL, ROFLMA, and etc.), as well as in the military. The fact that military personel use "engage" to describe any killing of an opponent doesn't detract from the realization that such a word sanitizes the reality (as opposed to the Iraqi usage of "brains and blood" all over the dashboard) that one human being killed another human being. __________________ "The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann "You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman