I am so sorry to point this out for you but, the Iraqis are not involved in killing any U.S. citizen. Global security.
The terrorists had some connections there which pointed out their base of operation might have been located in the middle east. which both Blair and Bush invade. Unnecessarily Blair under investigation .
Ought to let you know, so you can be spared by public humiliation.

You mean - to the USA or to Iraq? It's not a "pure good" versus "pure evil" situation, you know?
On the other hand, real human beings would have some remorse after killing innocent people (even if there were some bad guys hidden amongst them). And treating the people you killed, as well as their families, with respect seems only civilised to me.

Agreed......
Often times, you do not know if a person was innocent or not until someone is dead.

I have seen the video, and from what I see there is nothing there which can positively be identified as a weapon. Sure, the camera and tripod might look vaguely like weapons. Why not move a bit closer then? It seems like they are pretty far away from the "insurgents", so why not move just a bit closer to get a more positive ID on possible weapons?
And if they where close enough to see weapons, then why didn't these people open fire right away, or maybe try to hide? I'd say they don't look hostile at all.
But that is besides the point really. What made me mad about that video is how eager the soldiers sound. They want to kill something.
And attacking that van is enough a reason for apologizing. You don't attack someone who is trying to help someone who is wounded. If the people who jumped out of the van had guns I would have understood, but they where clearly civilians.

Guy with a gun is shooting up your town. You see something in the distance that could either be a janitor with a broom, or the guy with the gun. So you should walk closer to make sure, right?
For those unfamiliar: This footage was taken with the equivalent of a telscopic lens. The reason they didn't open fire: They didn't know the choppper was there. The reason the chopper opened fire: They are trained a lot better than any of us when it comes to identifying weaponry.
But I fully understand, the rules of engagement should be: Don't open fire until they have ranged you, taken five minutes to line you up in their sights, and started to open fire. And even then you should make sure to ask if they really meant to shoot you.
Why attack the van? Because they are taking away potential sources of intel. It sounds heartless, but maybe one of the downed targets had some valuable info regarding an upcoming attack. Or, better yet, maybe said downed target could be rehabilitated by us/the local government to help win hearts and minds. Yeah, it is cold. But it is war.
A cop is forced to use force to down a suspect who just held someone hostage. Said suspect's friends are dragging him/her to the getaway car. So by your standards, they should let him get away?
As for how "eager" they sound: Your buddies are getting shot left and right. You have the opportunity to save a bunch of lives and make sure that someone's wife doesn't become a widow. Yeah, I am sure we would both be very somber.
Point of reference: Go listen in on a surgery some day. Or an autopsy. Or even any law enforcement officer. If you spend your entire life like a civilian and never get beyond the cold hard truth of your job, you blow your own brains out. Neither of us can ever truly understand what it is like, but I am sure we can both agree that something needs to give to be able to deal with it. If it means making a few heartless jokes, so be it.

We've had this discussion before with very pertinent comments from akwater who is in the middle of things over there. You can't move any closer or you get toast yourself and those soldiers are trained to spot all kind of weapons and have first hand knowledge of how they look on their screens.
As for the camera, I don't think that looks like a camera at all; too long, too narrow and pointed in an awkward position.
As for the van helping, you are in a theater of war, you have enemies with RPGs at hand and a van just happens to stop and people offload you fire.
As for apologizing, it's just diplomatic and won't affect the way things work over there.

Heck, you should hear me and the people I work with when the datacenter loses connection to something or a server goes down or the NOC doesn't respond. Even better, you should see the chat logs from when a third party severed a couple of our fiber ducts, you'd think we're all psychopaths.

This. This. This.

Edit.... was gonna go off and tell you about an old mission we had...but Why should you wouldn't believe me anyway...
please by all means come to iraq if you think you can figure out who is a civvie
NSFW... Tell me if the guy driving this car is a Civvie.....
Warning, if you are easily offended or do not want to see someone DIE because they thought someone was a civilian PLEASE do not OPEN.
SERIOUSLY....
http://tinypic.com/r/2jfi1au/5

Except for sociopaths, most people will feel some empathy towards those on the receiving end of violence, whether deadly or not. Emotion sells, for media outlets and for propagandists. I think emotion is inimical to running a successful war, where the point is to kill people and break things, but in this day and age I don't really think it possible to keep this sort of thing quiet. It becomes even harder in this situation, since we are an occupying nation.
Machiavelli spelled out pretty much the ONLY way to successfully occupy a nation in 'The Prince', but his tactics are brutal and would never last with today's media. Basically, he advises to kill off all the old leadership and their entire extended families for the annexed country (in this case, that would be a lot of dead imams), then appoint one's own countrymen to rule the country. The occupying country should deal very harshly with any insurgents, such as killing every 10th able bodied man in insurgent regions (e.g. 'decimating' in the Roman vernacular). As long as the country behaves, the country should be ruled benevolently, and with as much respect as would be expected by any other citizens of the Empire. Basically, be very kind when the populace behaves, be very brutal when the populace displeases.
No occupying force can occupy indefinitely, it becomes emotionally and economically infeasible. The annexed country must be assimilated, or they must die. The tactics i mentioned are harsh, but they have worked, historically speaking; the Greek and Roman Empires both employed these strategies to expand their respective realms. The trouble is that in this day and age, I don't think the public would ever allow such practices once it was reported (either by insurgents, or by Media outlets).
This is the reason I just say we should leave (whether we glass the place after is moot). I am about as far from a PC pansy-ass hippie as one can get, but running an occupation in today's world is just not effective under any metric I can think of... except, perhaps, body-count.

While there is some responsibility on the heads of those who did the acts in the video... really, it's not there that the blame should go. Stuff like this--especially realizing that stuff like this happens every single day, away from cameras--is cause for reflection.
War is hell for all involved, including innocent bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time. War should be an absolute last resort, a self-defense in the face of actual/imminent attack. To go into war for less-important or misleading reasons is to trivialize human life.
We never should have been in Iraq in the first place.
(I say "we" as I'm an American citizen, though residing in South Korea and Indonesia for the past 4 years.)

come on down to Downtown Baghdad, we only had 56 people die in the last 3 days from Suicide bombers...... You can explain to the insurgents that the 56 people they killed in a Shi'ite area of town WERE FUCKING CIVILIANS....
Sigh.... assume a person is a Civilian is the WORST possible mistake you can make here...
Seriously if your gonna change what happens over here then at least you could do is come....... otherwise why waste your breath...
I had a student who blew himself up............ was he a civilian? When did he go from Civilian to a hostile target? AHhh shit RIGHT AFTER HE KILLED 12 OF MY OTHER FUCKING STUDENTS HE WAS HOSTILE.........TOO LATE.... 13 people dead...........
/sigh.............. had I treated him like a hostile, had I done a number of different things, who knows what may or may not have happened....
Fact is he pressed the button ending his life.... and everyone I work with we all have to deal with it, and prepare as best we can for the next person who may go from Civilian to Hostile.

Do you mean when Saddam used Saran Gas against the Kurds.
Or when he would feed his harem to crocodiles when he was done with them?
Or the suicide bombers that kill civilians on purpose every day?
Or the torture of innocent civilians because they cause political dissent?
Or the targeting of people who were elected because you do not agree with them for assassination?
By a show of hands, how many people knew of the Suicide Attack in Baghdad that killed 56 people in a Shi'ite neighborhood?
Because those things happen to every day... yet they get hardly any outrage over them.
I agree we shouldnt have attacked Iraq... the fact remains though....... we are here, and just like Afghanistan, we leave and basicly drop the ball... what will happen?

The trouble here is that U.S. forces are operating under the rules of Just War Doctrine (oxymoronic name aside, it is what most Geneva Convention nations use as a guideline). JWD talks a lot about dealing innocents and combatants, but it is utterly useless in this type of war/occupation. Essentially, if one follows JWD, unless someone is obviously a combatant (pointing/firing a gun, wearing a uniform. etc), then it is against guidelines to take actions against that person.
I took a class on this on college (called 'War and Morality', of all things), and I pretty much thought the entire idea was bunk. I remember the professor making me rewrite my midterm paper because I essentially wrote: "The purpose of war is killing people and breaking things. Since wanton destruction is irrational, almost by definition, i find it hard to assign any sort of morality to war." I also remember asking him once if a 7-year old with a bomb strapped to hes chest was a 'combatant,' or if Einstein was an 'innocent', by the definitions of Just War Doctrine.
What I am getting at is that I don't think we, as a society, are philosophically capable to wage an effective war any longer. Never mind an effective occupation of a hostile country. Either one must become totally draconian and brutal to bring a population in line, or one must just GTFO. I don't think there is a middle ground with this.

that is incredibly clear-headed and i wish it had been my first reaction
i'm going to listen to what akwater says, he clearly has actual experience with this issue.

There is video showing what happened, isn't an "admission of guilt" rather redundant at this point?
Frankly, this is one of those situations where an apology should be tendered. It is not a matter of "political correctness", it is a matter of what is right and what is wrong. If the US is to maintain the moral high ground in a war/occupation as dirty as this, then when accidents like this (or worse) happen, we need to stick to our moral standards and do the right thing. We aren't the ones using children as shields and blowing up civilians because we are supposed to be better than that. When we aren't, even if it is unintentional, we need to acknowledge it appropriately.