"Oh, Dude" Watching CNN right now. A controller okays the dropping

[ScreamingMeemie]

of a 500 lb bomb on a group of people (it's not known whether they were insurgents or civilians), instead of the intended building targeted...and all he can say is, "Oh, Dude"??? :puke: :cry:

[JuniorPlankton]

1. Outrageous!

:mad:

[knowbody0]

2. i watch video of

apache bombing EVERY ONE leaving a mosc in afghanistan. you could hear the pilot breathing,oinking, saying "oh Dude" it was a 30 minute tape recording the excitement. i am so ashamed.
how bout how cnn is explaining the righteousness?

[tridim]

3. "Insurgents" would not have run out onto the street like that

At the very least they'd scatter and take cover next to a structure to make their target smaller.

Hey, DUDE.. You killed civilians. How's that feel?

[ScreamingMeemie]

5. Exactly. CNN is trying to spin it that it "may have been poorly trained"

insurgents. An Iraqi doctor said they were civilians.

[legally blonde]

4. I saw this last night

on Anderson Cooper 360. I think what I was most appalled at was the juvenile reaction of the controller and his "Oh, Dude" comment. He sounded like a 14 year old playing a video game. Those were real people, probably innocent civilians. Completely sickening. :cry:

[pelagius]

6. It's entirely possible...

...he was a 14-year-old playing video games just a few short years ago.

[apnu]

11. they are 14 year old playing a video game

Here's a chilling story from 1992:

I was taking a Greyhound bus from college to my mother's house and I sat next to a Army man who just got his first leave. So, to pass the time, I started talking to him about what he did in the Army. He told me that he fired a missile system.

"How does it work?" I asked.

"Well, I get an order to shoot at a grid square, so plug in the grid square and press a button. Then missiles rain down on the grid square and everything is killed" he responds.

"OK, what is a grid square?" I asked.

"Uh... well its a grid square." He responded sounding kinda baffled.

"How big is it?"

"I don't know, grid square sized" he says baffled again.

"Do you know where the grid square is, and who or what is inside the grid square?" I asked.

"Nope, the grid square is just some lines on the computer. I don't need to know whats in it, because I wouldn't be ordered to shoot at anything but the enemy. So I know the enemy is in the grid square."

"OK, so you don't know what the grid square is or its contents. You just supply a firing solution to a computer and press the fire button. And everything dies."

"Yup," the Army guy says, "and the best part is the truck I sit in is air conditioned." he said with relish.

/end story

Scary, in 1992, our Army personnel were shooting and killing with a total disconnect to what they were doing. This guy had no idea what he was doing yet he had control of a deadly weapon and blind obedience to his superiors to issue him correct orders. No one bothered to tell him that someone could easily order him to fire on a school, or a bunch of civilians -- he would have never known the difference!

[TahitiNut]

21. Stanley Milgram warned us.

Sadly, the DoD used his work to 'better' design our killing systems.

[ScreamingMeemie]

25. Very sadly.

Hi Mike. It's good to see you. :hug:

[Arianrhod]

7. The problem with our push-button, video arcade military

is that death is much too sterile for them to be bothered by it.

I say take every one of them and put them on the ground with a sword in their hands. We'll see soon enough how much they love war.

Maybe the entire 130,000 would throw down their weapons and say, "No more!"

Maybe.

[ScreamingMeemie]

8. You have a point there. I think, at the very least, we'd be hearing a lot

less "Oh Dudes".

[Arianrhod]

10. A friend of mine once described to me

his witnessing on a Predator video of the killing of a man taking a smoke break in the doorway of a building which had been targeted by a "smart bomb". It so shook him up that he resigned from the military almost immediately.

I can feel the image in my stomach.

[ScreamingMeemie]

15. That people believe in "smart" bombs is incredible to me...We can

thank Tom Brokaw for his scintillating (not to mention totally bogus) reporting on how well the smart bombs do.

[Arianrhod]

22. Yes.

Most of them rely on human guidance via a laser "joystick". Even a TOW is on a wire. They're not as smart as we'd like to think . . . although they are probably smarter than some of our politicians.

:)

[Redleg]

23. I agree. War is not so brutal for the technologically advantaged.

But for the poor bastard minding his/her own business one minute and then blown limbless the next moment- war is hell.

[Nordic]

9. war is terrorism by the rich. Terrorism is war by the poor

something to remember

[info being]

18. Completely agree

[Redleg]

24. Well said. I have often thought of it that way.

Terrorism, like it or not, is the way for those with little power to wield influence.

[LisaLynne]

12. Even if you're targeting people ...

whom you KNOW are trained, armed military, it should never seem funny to kill another human being. I know that in order to get through the horrors of war people will make jokes and I'm not going to judge them. Doctors and ER staffs will do it. Police will do it. They see so much bloody, horrible stuff that that is the way their mind deals with it so they can do their jobs. But it is still sickening the lack of respect and compassion that war breeds in people -- in anyone.

You know, my dad fought as a young man in WWII. He killed Nazis. But you know what? When he talked about it -- the few times he did -- he was still shaken up about it, 40 years and more after the fact. Yeah, they were the enemy. Yeah, they were going to kill him if they could and they had the means to do so, but it was NEVER a joyous thing for him to take the life of another human being and he NEVER forgot that.

[ScreamingMeemie]

13. Very well said LisaLynne. There was a compassion there, that just

doesn't exist today. Perhaps this kid doesn't know what he said...perhaps he does and just doesn't process the impact (no pun intended) of what he okayed.

[knowbody0]

14. in '71 kerry said bootcamp was genocide

prophetic words of a very wise man

[951]

16. Do you like we'll ever find out who "Oh Dude" is?

[ScreamingMeemie]

17. I have no idea. I don't think anyone would admit to such callous

behavior. :hi:

[RivetJoint]

19. Not likely

You'll never find out who the pilot is either.

[DrWeird]

20. Support our troops.

It's hard work killing civilians.

Nothing wrong with taking a little pleasure in one's job.

[Jacobin]

26. They have begun doing Vietnam-styled 'body counts'

They'll kill a bunch of people and call them 'insurgents' or 'terrorists'.

The generals will push for more dead bodies. The troops can't figure out which is which because they hide and are protected by most Iraqis who support the guerilla fighters.

So, just kill more people and call them bad names. The body count will go up and then we will be "winning".

Viet Fucking Nam

[ScreamingMeemie]

27. ...and for CNN to spin that it was likely untrained insurgents makes

me want to vomit. Is that what we are calling Iraqi children now?

[EDT]

28. Hope they are saying it's not a recent event, as I saw this 4 months ago.

It was all over the internet in early summer.

Edited to add- found the file on my hard drive, I downloaded it on 7/7/2004. And I imagine it's older than that by a fair amount as well.

[ScreamingMeemie]

30. No they are not. And yes we've posted about it. It only came out today

that it was actual footage and that the armed forces cannot say for sure just what was bombed. Thanks. FWIW, these are the things that need to be broadcast over and over again. I posted no footage, so who would have been able to say just by my words whether this was the same or not? Lots of soldiers are saying "Oh, Dude"...I'm sure.

Thanks.:eyes:

[EDT]

32. Not just by your words, but by the entire description of the video-

An air controller giving permission, and a crowd of people slowly walking down the street, with the Oh dude at the end. A safe bet it was the same video.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

29. Would armed insurgents slowly walk down the middle of a street

during a firefight? Or could they have been scared civilians? I guess untrained insurgents might. Whether they actually were insurgents or not, the "oh, dude" comment really shocked me as well when I heard it.

I also was shocked when I saw previous footage many months ago of US troops killing a wounded Iraqi soldier during the invasion. The man was trying to crawl to safety and had no weapon. Whether or not that was a violation of the Geneva Convention (whether he was "hors combat" according to international law), the thing that most shocked me were the cheers and the high-fives I saw among US troops when the man was finally hit after several others tried to nail him while firing from a distance. It was the rejoicing that I could not understand. Killing is a terrible job, not a sporting event. Soldiers of any army bring dishonor to themselves when they take pleasure in killing or treat it lightly.

[ScreamingMeemie]

31. Yes and the night vision tank attacks, where they could not tell for

certain if their targets were armed or not. Freedom? I think not. :(