What you have to believe to support Bradley Manning

| December 5, 2010

This is a video someone sent me from the Geezers for Sitting on Our Hands calling for support for the Wikileaker Bradley Manning.

At 2:50 in this video Ethan McCord admits that the Iraqis who were killed in the “Collateral Murder” video had an RPG anti-armor weapon and an AK-47 (a fact that the anti-war crowd has disputed since the video was released). McCord goes on to claim that the Iraqis were just “standing around” and not a threat to the helicopter crew, so the crew had no reason to fire on those Iraqis, cuz you know an RPG is a home defense weapon.

What McCord neglects to recognize is that there was a firefight a few minutes before the video started and the crowd of Iraqis were coming from the direction of that firefight. McCord’s own unit was in the neighborhood and might have been on the receiving end of the RPG if the helicopter crew hadn’t taken care of them. If the Iraqis were just hanging out, why were the reporters there? What reporter wants to write a story about some shiftless goons hanging around on a street corner?

Here’s a video of what McCord calls detainee abuse in his unit;

Ethan McCord was just another clueless private whose idiot opinions based in 20/20 hindsight don’t matter.

Category: Antiwar crowd

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Old Trooper

I guess doing PT would be considered abuse, if this is the standard McCord uses for abuse?

Doc Bailey

GOD DAMMIT CANNON! I knew that video would come back to haunt us.

Doc Bailey

Yeah I have the same video on my computer. and worse ones. McCord was a good guy good troop but re rapidly became. . . less so. I don’t want to speak ill of a friend, but yeah.

McCord’s platoon didn’t lose anybody, and has a few sad distinctions I will not detail here. My platoon 2nd, took the most casualties of Bravo, and was trusted with the most important missions. We were a bit. . . eccentric because of that.

Smorgasbord

Reporters are required to wear blue helmets and vests to identify who they are. The two reporters in the video didn’t.

One of the last photos in the dead reporter’s camera was of a Humvee a short distance away. This is the area of the earlier fire fight.

The full unedited gun-camera view of the event is 39 minutes and 29 seconds long. It is at:

Doc Bailey

I was on the ground and I have no wish to relive it again and and again. Why can’t this be put to rest?