Originally Posted by Del Boy

Apologize for what, precisely?

Still waiting for your answer Perseus, still waiting.

Well Perseus - it seems you cannot tell me just what you wish me to apologize for regarding this matter .

You don't have the decency to answer a simple question, but try to claim the high moral ground to suit your agenda.

Originally Posted by BritinAfrica

I wasn't there, so I cannot comment.

I wasn't there either, but I would offer that the court has spoken. Case closed.

I seem to remember a certain U.S. Congressman by the name of John Murtha who was convinced that these Marines were guilty and they would pay for their "crimes."

To the extent already stated, these Marines have mostly been exonerated.

War is hell, goes the saying, and agonizing and arguing about atrocities years afterwards will not reduce or eliminate atrocities from happening in the future.

Just as an aside, I recently finished the book "American Sniper: Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. History" co-written by former U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle.

Chris described the great lengths that he went to in order to ensure that he complied with the ROEs - and yet was fearful the entire time for being run up on charges by politics or armchair generals. This was a guy who was being shot at on a daily basis by all manner of insurgents of either sex and differing ages who didn't bother to concern themselves with ROE or the niceties of international criteria for the waging of war. He had a job to do and did it quite well.

If you don't already know Del Boy, I can't tell you!

Originally Posted by perseus

If you don't already know Del Boy, I can't tell you!

Thank God for da Google.

Not sure who you directed your comment at, but nah - I didn't know Del Boy (but I do now).

My wife is the Anglophile of the two of us -- I'll make sure to let her know you brought it up.

Originally Posted by brinktk

Watched a documentary on the whole incident last night and it is not nearly as clean cut as one would think.

And worst atrocities of WWII? Really? The only people who were hung were those of the axis forces. Not one person in Allied bomber command was hung during WWII and they WERE deliberately targeting civilians on many of their missions...AND...THEY KNEW IT! It seems we can pick and choose who is a bad guy for killing civilians when the media isn't there to broadcast it...yet these guys took a KIA, DID recieve fire, and "cleared the house" according to the intent that the SSG's PL directed. They acted within the ROE when they opened up on the car. Still, they should have stopped once they realized they had killed women and kids in the first house...at the same time there was still a threat that they had to deal with...To continue the assault or to stop and lose momentum....hard decision to make for anyone.

Easy to judge after the fact from behind a keyboard. I wish this was black and white...it's simply not. Yet, it seems that some on here prefer to speak in absolutes so...here goes...anyone who has no context for the situation these guys were in has no idea what they are talking about...end of story.

So,... I guess that means that 9/11 was excusable. I'll bet the al Quaeda operatives who carried it out considered themselves at war?

Did the perpetrators take fire from four and five year old children?

Once you start making (very poor) excuses for your atrocities you know that you are no better than your enemy, sometimes worse. Effectively we may as well throw the Geneva Conventions out the window and revert to savagery?

Ever cleared a house where people were shooting at you from it?

I haven't, but I imagine I would be jumpy as f**k. It would be all to easy to shoot someone in error ie "was that guy going for a gun?" and simply loosing it from there. What if the family started going ballistic at you? yelling screaming throwing stuff, trying to push you out of the house or what ever? It would be all to easy for a young soldier to snap and before you know it 45 people are dead. We simply don't know do we?

I am not justifying what happened clearly something wrong occurred. All I am saying is we are in no position to be so clear cut about the issue. We know less about it than the court martial (<insert correct term) did and it came up with the conclusions that it did. The court martial could have been wrong but would you have someone convicted of what can not be proven? Are you in a position to prove what did or did not happen? I suspect not.....

I just find it difficult to believe that Fog isn't a lame excuse.

Let's reverse the situation. For some reason there is an occupying force in in your country who claim to be 'freeing' you and claim high moral principles.

However, some resistance fighters are in your village which bomb/shoot at them. Exactly the same thing happens to your civilians, perhaps your family. We are not talking about a few accidental deaths here, this is nearly everybody inside a house at point blank.

Now every one of the soldiers get of completely free. Are you satisfied this can be excused by 'War Fog'?

Originally Posted by captiva303

Ever cleared a house where people were shooting at you from it?

That's what soldiers are expected to do. Soldiers have no special right to feel "miffed" just because their enemy shoots at them. That's what is expected to happen in war.

Even if those persons within the house were the shooters, nothing gives the soldiers the right to murder the occupants in cold blood. The fact that these persons were obviously not fighters puts it on an even lower level.

I'm not going to sit here and argue. I've already made my stance clear on the issue and I already said that they should have stopped as soon as they realized what they were doing.

Senjo, you keep making these black and white statements about the issue...but it's not black and white. Did you know that the accounts from the Iraqis was not backed up by ANY forensic evidence? Actually, the forensics backed up the Marines account of what happened. Did you know that when you clear a house, especially ones of those size that your vision is severely impaired AFTER you throw the grenade in? A house the size they cleared takes about 30 seconds to clear. Speed and violence of action is about your best bet at survival. THEY DID TAKE FIRE FROM THE HOUSE! So they cleared it. The line I draw is when they went from the first to the second house. They had to of known what had just happened...This should have made them at the very least weary and more alert to the possibility of civilians on the battlefield... Of course, I WASN'T THERE, so I will never know for sure. I leave it open because I understand how these things can happen. You call it a massacre, as if they lined them up and shot them in the back of the head, I call it overreaction/ voluntary manslaughter. Yes, they should have done time...If it's any consolation you should know that in the years after this incident every single time a civilian is killed in Iraq there is a 15-6 investigation on the incident. There were several incidents this last deployment where we were attacked and had the enemy in our sights, but held our fire because of potetial collateral damage...It's all because of this one incident. Had my platoon killed just ONE civilian on this last deployment regardless of the circumstances, then I would be looking at an investigation and a potential court martial. So don't act like nothing was learned from this. And also don't ever lump me in with the enemies I have fought for the past almost 9 years. Don't act like you have even a clue as to the evil that I faced on not just the battlefield, but in the streets of areas that I patrolled. I don't know how many countless Iraqi's I helped personally pull out of the Euphrates that had been murdered by these extremists with their hands still bound behind their backs...men, women, and children. Their only transgression being they were Shi'a. How many times I've had Iraqi's come to me personally for help and protection because we DO the right thing. How dare you lump me in the same category as them while you sit in the security of your home from behind a screen having never been a situation like this and then have the audacity to claim moral superiority based off your obviously inexperienced dealings with these matters. A democratic judicial system is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. That's the system that I defend and it is obvious that the prosecution was not able to convince a jury of these Marines peers that they were guilty. That's the way it works.

You can THINK what you want. But honestly, you have no idea what you're talking about. Combat isn't like the movies, or even like YOU imagine. 90% of the time noone even knows what the hell is going on. It is truly a fog. Without training most people would be overwhelmed by it and simply end up dead. We have battle drills that teach to us to react specific ways to a number of potential combat incidents. This is tempered over time with experience in the military and expericence in combat. This SSG had never even been in combat before this incident. If you knew anythig about tactics you would know this is EXACTLY the by the book way you deal with an incident like this. I.E. complex ambush, assault into it. That's what this guy did and in 99% of incidents he would have been lauded as a hero for saving lives, instead, the insurgents provoked an over reaction from these Marines and they got exactly what they wanted. A huge propaganda victory for their cause. It doesn't exonerate the action, but let's pretend we have some common sense and can use our brains on this. Where's the moral outcry for the thousands of atrocities that terrorists have done on the civilians of Iraq. I was with one of the last combat units in Iraq and I could literally see FEAR in the eyes of the Iraqi's that we were leaving them. They constantly asked us if we were staying or leaving because they knew if we left, things would get horrible again. I've seen this same fear in Fallujah and Ramadi years ago when those places were overrun with these psychos, the very same ones who could murder entire families for simply waving at us.

But you will never know. You will never understand. You will never comprehend. I will leave it at that.

Originally Posted by brinktk

I'm not going to sit here and argue. I've already made my stance clear on the issue and I already said that they should have stopped as soon as they realized what they were doing.

Senjo, you keep making these black and white statements about the issue...but it's not black and white. Did you know that the accounts from the Iraqis was not backed up by ANY forensic evidence? Actually, the forensics backed up the Marines account of what happened. Did you know that when you clear a house, especially ones of those size that your vision is severely impaired AFTER you throw the grenade in? A house the size they cleared takes about 30 seconds to clear. Speed and violence of action is about your best bet at survival. THEY DID TAKE FIRE FROM THE HOUSE! So they cleared it. The line I draw is when they went from the first to the second house. They had to of known what had just happened...This should have made them at the very least weary and more alert to the possibility of civilians on the battlefield... Of course, I WASN'T THERE, so I will never know for sure. I leave it open because I understand how these things can happen. You call it a massacre, as if they lined them up and shot them in the back of the head, I call it overreaction/ voluntary manslaughter. Yes, they should have done time...If it's any consolation you should know that in the years after this incident every single time a civilian is killed in Iraq there is a 15-6 investigation on the incident. There were several incidents this last deployment where we were attacked and had the enemy in our sights, but held our fire because of potetial collateral damage...It's all because of this one incident. Had my platoon killed just ONE civilian on this last deployment regardless of the circumstances, then I would be looking at an investigation and a potential court martial. So don't act like nothing was learned from this. And also don't ever lump me in with the enemies I have fought for the past almost 9 years. Don't act like you have even a clue as to the evil that I faced on not just the battlefield, but in the streets of areas that I patrolled. I don't know how many countless Iraqi's I helped personally pull out of the Euphrates that had been murdered by these extremists with their hands still bound behind their backs...men, women, and children. Their only transgression being they were Shi'a. How many times I've had Iraqi's come to me personally for help and protection because we DO the right thing. How dare you lump me in the same category as them while you sit in the security of your home from behind a screen having never been a situation like this and then have the audacity to claim moral superiority based off your obviously inexperienced dealings with these matters. A democratic judicial system is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. That's the system that I defend and it is obvious that the prosecution was not able to convince a jury of these Marines peers that they were guilty. That's the way it works.

You can THINK what you want. But honestly, you have no idea what you're talking about. Combat isn't like the movies, or even like YOU imagine. 90% of the time noone even knows what the hell is going on. It is truly a fog. Without training most people would be overwhelmed by it and simply end up dead. We have battle drills that teach to us to react specific ways to a number of potential combat incidents. This is tempered over time with experience in the military and expericence in combat. This SSG had never even been in combat before this incident. If you knew anythig about tactics you would know this is EXACTLY the by the book way you deal with an incident like this. I.E. complex ambush, assault into it. That's what this guy did and in 99% of incidents he would have been lauded as a hero for saving lives, instead, the insurgents provoked an over reaction from these Marines and they got exactly what they wanted. A huge propaganda victory for their cause. It doesn't exonerate the action, but let's pretend we have some common sense and can use our brains on this. Where's the moral outcry for the thousands of atrocities that terrorists have done on the civilians of Iraq. I was with one of the last combat units in Iraq and I could literally see FEAR in the eyes of the Iraqi's that we were leaving them. They constantly asked us if we were staying or leaving because they knew if we left, things would get horrible again. I've seen this same fear in Fallujah and Ramadi years ago when those places were overrun with these psychos, the very same ones who could murder entire families for simply waving at us.

But you will never know. You will never understand. You will never comprehend. I will leave it at that.

wall of text D:

Just kidding lol. I just wanted to say that we get what your saying and we know we will never understand unless we been in that situation, however, it does not relinquish the fact that they are still accountable for their actions. We understand a good deal of people will lose it in this same situation, but we are a nation of laws. As we all know, politics screws the soldiers, making it difficult as both their own people as well as the terrorists/opposition are potential "enemies". One side is trying their best to kill and/or ruin the reputation of the soldiers while the other is ready to condemn their soldiers to save face when something goes wrong. We don't like this aspect, but its quite necessary to ensure nation security and influence.

We have came far from a world of savage killings and rapes. Also this war isn't about killing taliban/terrorists as much as growing trust in the civillians. How can they trust us if we are killing them as well and then letting the men who kills them get away with petty sentences? It takes years to build trust and only a minute to destroy it, so we must do whatever possible to keep it standing.

Don't forget that there were cover-ups in the Haditha incident, making it even worse for U.S foriegn relations.

I wanted to be a soldier and if I became one then I would expect the same judgement as I am giving these guys. There should be no excuses even in battle for the killing of bystanders, especially with a rifle. Their sentence is too low and even you agree with that, so what is it your disagreeing with?