Not just couples having sex.... one time... outside Mosul... I was in the RTOC and saw streaming video of a dude having sex with a goat......... WHY the solider was zoomed in on that I'll never know...
Not every Iraqi carries an AK everywhere they go, not every Iraqi even owns one. Sure it is common, however, most Iraqi's I've came across dont come strapped..... Sure Body Guards carry,
Most Civvies, shoot their AK's during Weddings, the end of Ramadan, and other holy days... OH! and soccer when the team they like wins they shoot em off randomly in the air. A kid I know was struck by a stray bullet after the world cup last year no serious injury justa small bruise. However, again most civilians dont just walk around the streets of Baghdad with an AK, they do have local laws about that kind of stuff for a reason.
Generally speaking, a person carrying a weapon needs a damn good reason to be carrying, two weeks ago I was at a wedding and the father of the Bride and the Groom both brought AKs fired a few shots in the air at the end of the wedding. My military escort who had been next door heard shots started screaming at me trying to see if i was ok... his weapon out, loaded, could have been a bad situation had I not answered him that everything was ok. I explained to him they have this thing called celabatory fire for these kinds of occasions... whoops.... My fuckup... I should have explained that prior to us leaving the base....
But yeah.........ROE are a bitch.... half the time with IED's there really is no one to engage in the chaos. If there is an explosion, most soliders scan for enemies, after seeing none they tend to the injuryed call for support etc....(most IED's are set with Cell phone/ Radio wave...) (VBIEDS however.... every car could be one and is treated as such until proven otherwise).

The bigger story here is actually that the military made a significant effort to cover up this incident, including flat out lying about parts of what happened and blocking FOIA requests for the video footage. This extended to harassment of some Wikileaks editors when they announced they had gotten the video and were going to release it. It seems many of the top folks in the military were of the opinion that this was a fuckup they didn't want the public knowing about.

I dont know if you actually believe what you say, or you just say it cause you "did service". Being in the military "on the ground" must really make you an excuse-making tool. Phraphrasing some comments of the reactions to this, this was a complete rush to find targets, yes, it was as though this idiot pilot was trying to score up higher points in his own version of the death from above level of Cod4. Was probably blasting "Let the bodies hit the floor" through his head gear too. There was NO courage, no bravery, no intelligence, NOTHING that the military, Semper Fi or anyone could be proud of. And don't come up with that crap excuse, cause it IS an excuse and a CHEAP COP OUT to throw that tired line, "in a war there's always casualties." Osama Bin Laden could use that very same line if he was on a bench on trial for 911. This isn't even a war, it's just a series of ILLEGAL OCCUPATIONS by the usa invaders. It's something akin to the occupations from Nazi Germany. It's disgusting.
Oh, and of course, soldiers "engage", only "insurgents" kill.

Yea, supported by the sock puppet government, the US-based UN, and whose population? You know, the goold ole U s of A military completely controls the Iraqui media. Their government too. Maliki is their guy they wanted to shove into power. Or did you mean Soccer mom, glen beck watching usa? And yeah, sorry, i just invalidated everything I wrote by mentioning nazi germany. Yea, i conceed defeat. My bad, sorry.

rectum hurt? :) i didn't say invalidated. for that i put yay. I like godwin's law and i love to invoke it in strange times.
Seriously tough:
By population i mean normal citizens. You know? fruit sellers, receptionists, sewer workers, etc. yes. they want USA out but they understand it is not that easy.
We cannot just leave mate. If we pull out 100% of forces in a month. In June the country will be on fire. Literally.
and UN is not US biased. If you don't know that's quite opposite. They opposed USA in the first place remember?
Finally: local government was elected as far as i know. So it makes it legal. I really don't think USA faked the voting, with so many people watching every move, every vote the election was probably the fairest one ever in middle east.
there is nothing illegal about it.

You are either too naive or you blind. Every occupated nation has elections. Every dictatorship has elections. That's the first thing they do. That's how they legitimize everything. "Oh, but we had elections."
The country is on fire now. And the reason it is on fire is because the USA is stationed there. And not only in that country, but throughout the MIddle East. Get that through your skulls.
If you believe everyting the (american) mainstream media tells you, well, more power to you. Everything is legal, the fox reporter said so.

Man. I like arguing but with people who have different opinion but know the facts!!
the election was watched by whole world. by usa journalists and diplomats, by spanish and german, by russian and chinese, by mongolian and indian, by saudi arabia and iran by WHOLE WORLD!
If anyone tempered with the results we would know about it. How can you compare it to dictatorship is just beyond me.
And no the country is not on fire now. It is relatively calm with spikes of violence. You don't even comprehend what kind of violence will happen if civil war happens. Country will be on fire literally! Desert burning, cities burning. Massive human loss and massive ecological damages not to mention damages to world economy slowly recovering from the recession.
I am not American mate. I don't get fox here. I do get internet.
If you want mature discussion about politics and future go hit the books/sites/magazines. You clearly have no idea how the world works.

I know I'm not really saying anything new in this topic, but I feel obligated to say how I feel.
First of all, I'm against the war in Iraq. However, I think too much attention has been put on this video. Yeah, the soldiers fucked up and killed innocent people. However, this is what happens when you have insurgents using civilians as cover to conduct their operations. It's what happens when a single rocket could kill all the people in that helicopter. It's what happens when people need to make decisions in less than a minute. Yeah, sure, it's easy to look at the video a few times and make judgments about what weapons that they may or not be carrying, but it's another thing entirely when you're there and you can't rewind or watch it again. I don't blame the troops in the helicopter. Yes, it's horrible that innocent people died, but I don't believe that the troops decided to kill random people; they lacked malice and had a valid reason to want to protect themselves and their fellow troops.
Wikileaks is trying to create a media stunt in order to get more financial support for their failing organization.

Ok, you obviously don't know me. I am a former USAF Security Forces member. IE, infantry of the Air Force. While I never deployed in my years of service (I WANTED to go to Afghanistan until they cancelled it due to the base transferring) I've talked with countless people who had been deployed, including some who saw combat, got injured, or killed people, one of whom was traumatized due to the fact he killed an innocent man, due to the fact the guy refused to heed all warnings, including warning shots, and kept advancing, prompting him to open fire per his ROE.
I AM NOT FOR THE WAR IN IRAQ OR AFGHANISTAN. Let me make that perfectly clear. However, I understand soldiers in the military. I know their attitude. These pilots are human beings, just like you and me. People don't need to have played video games to get their adrenaline flowing to the point where they get a combat high. They were reacting to people they THOUGHT were insurgents, who had been reported as having fired on soldiers. If you were in a war, and people were trying to kill YOUR friends, your countrymen, wouldn't you want to kill them just as much? This was an accidental killing, plain and simple. Weapons were visible, the WO's thought they were all terrorists, which is logical thinking, and they opened fire. They had NO idea they were journalists, or that there were kids in the van.
If you can't seem to grasp the concept, and want to assume that all soldiers are just Xbox Live players, feel free. I don't know how the military is in Peru, but I know how the US and German military is, and I can guarantee you almost every other soldier would act the same if they were placed in a similar situation. This is the problem with classified military transmissions: The public doesn't understand how soldiers speak, and yes, it comes off very callous, but I can assure you those soldiers hearts probably sank later that day after set the chopper down and went to their tents for the night, despite what the gunner and pilot say about kids being brought into the killzone.
DarrkPhoenix hit the nail on the head: The issue is not with the WO's killing the civilians, or their chatter, the issue is with the US Army Command, like the fucking pea-brained idiots they are, covering up a massacre LIKE THEY HAVE DONE TONS OF TIMES BEFORE. After incidents like My Lai, the Pat Tillman friendly-fire incident, you'd think they would have learned by now NOT to cover this stuff up and just come out with it. If they had come out in the first place and issued an apology, this wouldn't be talked about.

The country is "quiet". Yes, quiet like most maximum security facilities are quiet at nightime, when the order to turn off the lights is given. Being from Australia, a former penal colony, you should know that well. That's not a secure country. The fact that you say "if we leave the country burns" shows the occupation is a complete failure. You are not wanted there. Your presence is not appeasing anything. It only exacerbates it. Wonder if you'd like foreign troops occupying some parts of Syndey and Perth, and telling you it's "for your own good." You know, since the occupation there's been over one hundred common people casualties, not "hostiles", you know, what they call "friendly fire". Ecological damages, yea, all the bullet gunfire shell casings and skirmishes havent destroyed the environment so far, nope, not by a long shot. If I was australian or from any country that has troops invading iraq right now, it'd be freaking pissed and afraid to stick my head on the public. And I'd be protesting every day to my worthless government to stop being the usa's henchmen in this occupation. Occupations only benefits big private businesses in the end. Oil companies, building companies and such, making a killing, pun intended, from this invasion. And the biggest business of them being the military itself. More resounce and funds out of the taxpayer money needed for them. Crooks, I think every country in the world should do like Costa Rica, and get rid of that mafia-like ring of crooks called the military. And that is how the world works.

@PoSSeSSeDCoW
To clarify, the helicopter was under no threat at all in any way, shape or form. It was way, way, out of an RPG's accurate range of fire, possibly out of it's full range alltogether. The lag between hearing the 30mm cannon firing and the impact of the ammunition tells us that much.

To be fair, that's not quite right.
a) the Iraq war was NOT accepted by NATO and only after the whole mess, the UN agreed to help rebuild the country. It's not like they had a choice in the matter since it was a big mess that could blow up even more if left unchecked. The only reason it's even "legal" is because of this. Let's not be naive and pretend otherwise. The invasion, which is really the important part of this, was NOT legal and received a lot of criticism from both NATO and the UN so explain that?
b) of COURSE the local governement will say the war was a good thing because they weren't in power before. Sadham Houssein was part of the Sunnis which are the smallest group in Iraq so with Sadham gone, the the Sunnis are now without power which is part of this whole mess. Also, of course they like the US being there to help kill any Sunni resistance.

The pilot and/or gunner was obviously just some 18-20 year old trying to get his 100 kill achievement. He did wait for the authorization to fire, though. The real blame lies with those who gave that authorization.
It is debatable whether or not he noticed the kids in the window before shooting.