"Helomech" wrote in message ...
So what do we have here........ 3 guys slaughtered that were not carrying
weapons - not pointing anything at anyone........perhaps trying to fix a
busted tractor in the wrong place at the wrong time........

I don't see one weapon that the Iraqi's had..........anywhere in this
video........

I've seen the full-length video. Probably about 9 minutes long,
although I could be wrong. It's definitely long. Anyway, there's
definitely a long cylindrical object that looks just right to be
either an RPG or a MANPADS that one of the subjects pulls from the
smaller truck and walks about 70-90 feet into the field and sets down.
Anyone's guess as to what the story was, although to me it appeared
like it was possibly an ambush site being stocked. The radio chatter
is significant...there's a lot of back and forth discussion of what's
being observed, what to do, and the clearance to fire doesn't come for
a good 5-6 minutes. The first two subjects just flat-out disappear
when fired on. The third was under the truck when he was spotted, and
the first burst chewed up the front of the truck and some rounds
looked like they made it underneath. When he crawls out, it sure
looks like he's missing a leg and is hurt bad, so the second burst
certainly put him out of his misery.

Is it shocking? Yeah. Is it justified? Not my call to make,
although I would presume that the actions they were undertaking were
clear enough to identify as insurgency-related and that the Apache was
the only viable option for intercepting the subjects.

And I CERTAINLY believe that any news program would cut the vid to
just the minute or so of target engagement at the expense of the
context of the moment.