On 2011-01-29 13:33:05 -0800, Alan Browne
said:

On 2011.01.29 13:00 , Savageduck wrote:
On 2011-01-29 08:56:48 -0800, Alfred Molon said:

There was an Iraq war video on wikileaks showing a US helicopter
machine-gunning an AP photographer in Bahgdad. Apparently the guy on the
helicopter mistook the camera of the photographer as an RPG device.

Not nearly as bad as US Air Force F4 fighters strafing two US Coast

The Iraq footage is much worse than that event. Non combatants were
killed. It was one of the most disgusting displays of callousness I've
ever seen.

Worse is subjective. Callousness is your opinion. In combat the normal
reaction is to neutralize a perceived threat, and sometimes that action
has to be taken in a split second. It is not a movie, or TV, or a place
for Monday morning quarterbacks.
Have you ever been under fire in a combat situation?
My little "meditation in green" was determined by a Selective Service
number of #54 and a 1-A status. Footage is one thing the results of the
event another.
You are making a categorical judgement based on what you saw in the
Iraq footage without any knowledge of the other event.
When US. Coast Guard Cutters, flying the Stars & Stripes are shot up
with multiple passes by USAF F4's with 20mm cannon, 5 inch Zuni
rockets, & 2.75 ARA rockets with flechette (beehive) loads, you don't
quantify the event. It was as bad for them as it was for the
photographer in Iraq.
One of the Cutters was sunk. The carnage continued with more strafing
runs on victims in the water. The skipper of one cutter was beheaded by
a rocket blast on the third pass while he tried to signal recognition
codes and stop the attack. The F4's made 8 runs and a B-57, which had
started the whole thing, dropped a string of cluster bombs on them.
Page was lucky to survive with shrapnel wounds to his arm, a flechette
penetration of his cheek, nose, and orbit of his left eye, a flechette
wound in the small of his back and a shrapnel slash to his inner thigh.
The executive officer lost both arms and a foot. There were several
other wounded. Four other crew and a Vietnamese interpreter were killed
When you are being killed it doesn't matter much if you are a
non-combatant, or not, when you are being killed by your own side.

....and Page was a non-combatant photographer.

--
Regards,

Savageduck