COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

This is obviously awful.

Still, take a look at the sourcing. The report quotes the Ramadi deputy chief of police and someone who works at the Ramadi hospital.

The police chief quote makes some sense because Ramadi is the seat of government for the whole Al Anbar province, which extends out to the Jordan/Syrian border regions where the attack took place. And it might be the closest police station in the chain of command with a reliable phone line--I don't know. So it makes sense to me that the reporter would call the Ramadi police station or government center somewhere along the line.

But the report also quotes a hospital official who puts the death toll at 45. But the official works at the Ar Ramadi hospital. But Ramadi is hours away from the borders of both countries.

Hardly Johnny on the Spot. The AP News crew who took the footage are in a much better position.

Nevertheless, it's a terrible tragedy.

I don't really have any doubt that it was actually a wedding. Iraqis like to party late. And Tuesdays and Thursdays are big days for weddings. It was very routine to hear celebratory gunfire several times a day in Ramadi from wedding parties, and we quickly learned to discount any reports of gunfire on these days.

I can imagine if a helicopter were in the area around the time of a celebratory burst of gunfire in his direction he might feel threatened and return fire. Which is normally a good instinct.

He must have taken some fire in his direction, seen a large gathering of people in his optics, and thought he had a motherlode of insurgents in his sights.

I would be asking for the radio logs and SIGACT logs of the units in the area to see what was reported when. Had the aviation unit been in contact with the ground unit, and called in with a grid to the house, there is a good chance that the unit that had visited the house earlier that day would have told him "Check fire. It's Tuesday. It's a wedding party. Celebratory gunfire. Don't sweat it."

But it if it hadn't been celebratory gunfire, but, say, an Ansar Al-Islam training camp, then the time it would have taken to check things out would have cost him a great target of opportunity.

It will come down to a comparison of the pilot's actions against the rules of engagement. The specific rules of engagement are classified, but if we took fire, we were generally allowed--even encouraged--to return it. But the standard expected was that we should only fire at 'confirmed enemy positions.'

The unspoken but universal assumption, of course, was that any position or building you took fire from could be considered 'confirmed enemy.'

Maybe that's not quite the assumption to make, when you're an aviator--especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

It's a tough line to walk when your in the middle of it. And it looks like in this case, we were tragically wrong.

We will be tragically wrong again, although I hope never again on so large a scale.

Splash, out

Jason