Reply #1: I finally looked at the video

[sui generis]

I'm leaning towards they clearly misidentified the camera as a weapon that could bring down a chopper, and that triggered the chain of events. Most damning of all was swinging the camera profile past the corner, which made it look like a weapon preparing for use. When you're a hammer everything looks like a nail.

HOWEVER, to play devil's advocate to that observation, I also think that "insurgents" would not have been walking around right in the open if they had mischief in mind, and more of them would have had weapons at ready if they HAD mischief in mind. These guys were walking bare handed - I would have been a little less willing to make a mistake and err on the side of caution.

So now to put some extremely well deserved salt in this wound. Maybe if the fucking army hadn't fired all their gay arabic and farsi translators (local language groups, et al), a simple PA could have led to avoiding bloodshed. Maybe even english mighta worked, who knows. :shrug:

This was clearly a shoot first, ask questions later operation, and certainly merely one of many times many. They don't hate us because we're beautiful. . . .