Dear Jesus

This is going on my facebook account right now. I wish everyone could see this.

While I adamantly oppose our military presence outside our own borders, this smacks of propaganda. The text also shows an ignorance of the ROE (regarding treatment/disposition of foreign civilians) that these soldiers have to deal with as well as an obvious anti-military bias. Forgive me if I'm a skeptic when the media sources are a NYT war journalist and Reuters.

www.keepvid.com   -  all you have to do is copy the You Tube URL of the video and paste it into the box on the keepvid page.  It rips it to your hard drive, usually in high-def.  Totally free, no user accounts needed.  I'm surprised it hasn't been sued yet.

I've got a couple things to say about this.

First, I know the area where this was filmed rather well. My unit relieved the Bushmaster element, and we had Crazy Horse air support for a time. That, at least, definitely lines up. I was actually operating out of the base where they evacuated the children. I don't see what would make anyone think this is propeganda...the radio traffic, the lingo, the nicknames for various outposts... it's all straightforward.

Beyond that, the video really hits me personally. I've seen stuff like this happen. A lot of the stories that Americans get about the war are false. It's as if all of the bad things that get caught on tape are purported to be the only bad things happening, and it's just not true. Hell, my squad lost a couple guys to a faulty grenade, and the official story was that they were killed by an enemy mortar team. Whatever makes the people back home feel better.

I shared this on my facebook profile - hopefully videos like these will continue to surface and wake people back up to the antiwar movement

I've been reviewing the video some more, and I saw at least one RPG. That definitely alters my take on this video. It's still terrible that this happened, and that some journalists were killed, but it doesn't appear to be the massacre I first thought it was.

I am surprised to see comments on here that are unable to fathom that our state's army is capable of such immoral acts. Propaganda...Oh please! I smell necons in our midst. This is what Ron Paul means when he talks about blowback. Events like this make great recruiting tools for extremist muslims=BLOWBACK! This video is now being picked up by all the mainstream media for all those who need such "credentials" to believe events like this happen.  Brian beat them to it of course.

I can see how in the fog of war these soldiers could mistake the cameras and tripods for weapons. However, I did not really see any hostile actions from the group of civilians. The cover up is just plain wrong. I am surprised to see soldiers so willing to shoot their guns. I am surprised at the states ability to brainwash our soldiers into dehumanizing the enemy (I can't believe the excitement in some of the soldiers voices. It is as if they are playing a video game). There comes a point when everyone has to question if our actions in the middle east are actually securing our country our endangering it. I think this video shows the unbridled truth of our occupation in the middle east. Sure there are good things that are being done, but events like these also happen quite frequently. Each of these events serves as a recruiting tool for the extremists that view the US as infidels. If we do not realize this, we are headed down a dangerous road.

There were cameras, and there was an RPG. I did not mistake the two. I also saw an AK or two, but that's not unusual for Iraq. The issue at was that there was a firefight going on close by where Americans were being engaged with small arms fire and RPGs.