[quote name='Admiral Ackbar']Just saw it. The pilot asks, "Should I take them out?" The forward air controller clears the target by saying, "Take them out."
There's silence as the image grows in view. "Ten Seconds". Then BOOM!. They're gone. "Impact," says the pilot. There's a pause as the smoke rises up like a mushroom. Then the FAC says, "Aww Dude!" tinged with awe.
According to the US this is a legitimate strike. And I can't dispute that. It looks like it was followed by the book. Hopefully that soldiers on the ground knew who that bomb was being guided against.
What makes this video odd is that there's this large crowd just walking down the middle of the street. Analyst say it's highly unlikely insurgents would be moving in the open so brazenly and in such a large number. However, I don't see why a group of insurgents couldn't be stupid enough to do so.
But it's a must see clip. It really brings out the human component of war.
Here's a web page I found. it's been hard to find stuff about this on the web. I should n ote that this is from an anti war site so it probably has some bias. I disagree with their position that someone should hjave asked if these people were armed. That's not something up for discussion in the middle of combat and the Pilot would trust the FAC's judgement. But you can at least see the pictures. You can also watch the video here.
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1665.shtml[/quote]
Some bias? Try all bias...they titled the freakin' video massacre of civilians for cryin' out loud. After they openly said they don't know the answer. Plus we got about 30 secs of audio, some of which can't be made out in the video (and who's to say it's the real audio even) and to top things off we don't even know the circumstances. Was this air support for soldiers in the ground? Was the group advancing on a target? Yes we don't know from what we saw if they were hostile, but so far this seems like a British anti-war attack on what appears to be basically a legit airstrike.
