This is the one I’m endlessly confused about. People try to paint the first strike as completely unjustified killing of civilians, but we can plainly see on the video that several are armed, and one looks to even have an rpg. Additionally, they were in the area where us troops were taking fire from. The cameraman killed had a picture of a hummvee taken from a location where the soldiers were shot at from throughout the day. So either the insurgents shot a whole bunch and skedaddled while some completely unrelated guys with akms and an rpg came to the same spot to take pictures or the journalists were embedded with insurgents.

Pic of what I believe to be the rpg. Really hard to tell from the still frame but you can find this around 60 seconds in the full video. Just prior you can also see an akm.

It really kills me to parrot fox News here, because I’m saying the exact same shit they did when this initially dropped. Other orgs were saying everyone killed was a civilian and citing wiki leaks as the source, because that’s what they claimed.

The other two strikes were apparently valid under the rules of engagement, but I won’t morally defend them. The first one being painted as slaughtering civilians for fun is what I take exception to.