I'm not taking sides, just want to say this:
01 live and they do need to apologize.
10 or more lives (being 2 reporters, plus civilians) and they don't need to apologize.
I don't get it.

Was that engineer beheaded by Iraqi army soldiers?

No offense to everyone but when this stuff happens to your country you will understand.
The issue is insurgents dress as civvies. They use children as spotters for artillery. They use women for bombings occasionally like the "Black-Widows' group that attacked Russia. They do everything in their power in all the dirtiest ways possible to kill our soldiers, and we get in trouble for their actions.
Some will say we need to retreat to stop the killing, yet fail to see it's the insurgents want this exact reaction. They want an iron fist over the innocents that will live there, and American soldiers are the only thing between the locals and the Taliban wet-dream of doing what they want with no need to pay for it. This is a dicey situation but real soldiers would be more worried about their comrades and the integrity of morale instead of apologizing about their actions.

If you use civilians to protect your insurgency, if you use children to protect your insurgency, it's your fault if they die. 100%.
Think about it. Some country invades your own with a far superior military force. You decide to join an insurgency. That's fine; I can completely understand.
However, do you set your base of operations in a school with children in it? Do you hold meetings in your house with your entire family there just to protect you and smear the enemy? Then you're an asshole and deserve to die for putting your life in front of that of your loved ones or children.

Damn right. They're just attacking us in the most cowardly fashion possible to get their ways. If someone were to invade America I'd be the first to join the local militia, but I wouldn't be partaking in the tactics used in Iraq by insurgents. I guess I'm cursed for being honor-bound.
EDIT: This quote system, if it were human, would be a guy with tourrette's shouting "clusterf--k waffles!!!!!" at people all day long.
EDIT again: Now it's informing me there's no chance of getting my quotes right, then tells me "hit alt+F4 and tell me who's your daddy"
EDIT: CLUSTERF--K WAFFLES!!!!!!

now you're both making an incorrect sweeping generalization AND attempting to speak for everyone in your country.
also: lol @ the media consciously trying to control mainstream America. the media is private, their only concern is to make money--both from a legal and from realistic standpoint. don't kid yourself that it's otherwise.
BTW i'm not making an argument about the overall topic. i just don't agree with the quoted statements.

Way to ignore and side-step the issue completely. If you "lol" at this topic then there's something wrong there.

I don't care about the media too. And I'm not following this case in the media, so I do speak only what I do think for myself.
Overall, I think that the number of lives must be respected. One live only, sure must be respected. A dozen lives, sure must too. They were living, breathing human beings, in both cases.
I also thought that this thread was only about the Collateral Murder case, not about the whole military vs. insurgents, not about the whole war.
(Tired to talk about now, gotta sleep now. Good night.)

are you kidding me? i specifically stated that I didn't want to get into the argument, i just didn't want you speaking for me just because we both live in the US.
in fact, let's explore some beautiful hypocrisy here. you accused me of not responding to your post--something i specifically said was not the goal of mine--and then you don't answer a single one of the points in my post. nice man.
and in case you hadn't noticed, I also specifically said lol @ the media controlling America comment, which wasn't making a comment about anything related to the article or issue, just to your silly perceptions. i'm sorry you have to resort to intentionally misinterpreting people's statements in order to make an argument, because i know you're smart enough that you understand what i wrote.
and now i'm done with this stupid argument. i posted here to avoid being misrepresented by your rhetorical fallacies and this devolved into you trying to argue semantics while simultaneously failing to understand them. not at all worth my time as of now.

I was pointing out in this thread anything like LOL is sorta jacked up to say and it's pointless to make a post not about original topic, a failed attempt to prevent thread hijacking. Even after I riled up the politically correct sissy I can go to bed and sleep like a baby simply because I got more important things to worry about later.
EDIT: spelling fixes due to late night typing, time to sleep

Congratulations, you've found out that the world is not a perfect place. Do you want a cookie?
What harm does it do to apologize anyway? Admitting to mistakes (even if we didn't do them) is always more honorable.

You should want them to apologize. Iraqis and Afghan civilians are not as informed as the Western world and are affected greatly by incidents where family members are killed, whether insurgents were using them or not. However, most don't run off and join the insurgency after these incidents, but rather demand answers and an acknowledgement that it happened and that it won't happen again. While they may not be "in the loop", they aren't stupid and as prone to becoming a terrorist as some might think.
Due to the nature of war however, it is inevitable that these things will happen again, but who would appear more just, the occupiers who acknowledge their actions, provoked or unprovoked, or those who effortlessly use their own people for an oppressive end-goal? You can probably figure that one out.
Lastly, you bring up the "Black Widows" as an example, yet that is an entirely different theatre with a different set of dynamics and motives at play. The Russians definitely do not apologize, and even "take care" of people who want to. While civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are unwillingly used to provoke collateral incidents, the Black Widows are completely willing to take their own lives against their enemy. Religion is not the only thing at play in Chechnya.

Well like you said they're up against a far superior force that invaded their country. There's no way the could effectively fight using conventional tactics. As wrong as their tactics may be they are effective and are they only way they can really do any harm even though the number they kill is fairly small the backlash by the people in the states over us soldiers killing civilians makes the war very unpopular and the more unpopular the war is the greater chance that the president or whatever is going to withdraw. You cant go in with a massively more powerful force and expect them to play fair.

Eh. As long as you're killing people who want to kill other people, and those people are killing the people that want to kill them, you're killing all the right people.