Talk:2004 Fallujah ambush

Relevance of Blue Man film?

In June 2014, a Popular Culture section was added to the page to include a reference to a 2014 Turkish film, Blue Man. The underlying NYT article cited makes no mention of Fallujah, or depleted uranium. The trailer I've seen of the Blue Man suggests that - if it does refer to Fallujah - it would be in passing. If passing references suffice, then we should add Jonathan Franzen's 2010 novel Freedom, which suggests that the contractors' convoy may have broken down due to shoddy truck parts. Colin Rowat (talk) 12:45, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Moral panic?

The article mentions moral outrage, however this link redirects to moral panic. Is this what the author intended, or should the link be changed to something more appropriate/less judgemental sounding? Wardog (talk) 07:02, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Daily Kos section is useless

Who cares about some blog entry and people's negative response to it? Unfortunately press (and especially bloggers) like to make the news and instead of reporting it. Should just delete the whole section. --MarsRover (talk) 20:15, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I've been bold and deleted this section as it didn't seem to be notable. I'm sure all manner of blogs, newspaper writers etc had opinions on this event and we can't list them all. I've also got rid of the "moral outrage" as it has pejorative connotation (that the "outraged" are over-reacting or unjustly outraged) and is therefore POV. Also got rid of "pacification" in scare quotes as again this is POV. Booshank (talk) 15:23, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

question

The second sentence of this article currently reads:

"The four armed contractors, Scott Helvenston, Jerko Zovko, Wesley Batalona and Michael Teague, were dragged from their cars, beaten, and set ablaze. Their burned corpses were then dragged through the streets before being hung over a bridge crossing the Euphrates."

First, weren't the men killed, then their corpses were dragged from the car and desecrated? This sentence strongly implies that they were dragged, beaten, and set ablaze, while they were still alive.

PBS frontline has a docu out on this called Private Warriors which covers this story. Video was obtained, apparently shot by the insurgents, which shows an SUV shot out with two bodies in the front seat, censored. Both bodies are obviously dead. This video then shows the SUV being set on fire and then corpses dragged out and hung.76.10.167.13 (talk) 02:27, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/view/

Second, doesn't the policy on writing from a neutral point of view require using neutral wording to describe these four men? In the weeks following the incident they were routinely described simply as "contractors". The public knew that the USA had contracted out lots of services to American civilians -- not combatants. American truck drivers were getting double, triple, quadruple their US rate of pay to drive trucks in Iraq. Food services contracted out. The public did not know that tens of thousands of former special forces soldiers had been hired to perform security duties.

Calling these men "armed contractors", rather than mercenaries, private soldiers, soldiers of fortune, implies, as was strongly implied at the time, that these men were civilians. Desecrating their bodies was a war crime. But if they were killed by resistance elements who had, up until then, been complying with the laws of war, then I suggest killing them was not a war crime. We don't know that it was the resistance elements who desecrated their bodies -- it might well have been a mob of angry civilians.

One of Bremer's decrees was that the private soldiers hired by the US, or foreign firms in Iraq, could not be prosecuted through the Iraqi justice system for anyone they killed or wounded, when they were on duty. And, unlike American GIs, they didn't fall under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Blackwater escorts were reported to have routinely fired on Iraqis and Iraqi vehicles, or to drive them off the road. In theory, because they weren't governed by the UCMJ, the management of their firms were supposed to have some kind of corresponding code. The only time there was ever any thought given to holding them accountable for civilian deaths in 2003 and 2004 were when American GIs were hit by the cross-fire. Geo Swan (talk) 16:56, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

To answer your first question, the sources I've seen are either unclear or contradictory on whether or not any of the contractors survived the initial ambush long enough to be removed from their vehicle alive. If you want to tweak the wording to reflect the ambiguous nature of the sources I don't see a problem with that.

Secondly it was very much an ambush and desecration perpetrated by insurgent forces. More detail on the event can be found in the House examination of the incident here.

Lastly I haven't seen the term "war crime" used in here at all but a war crime does not have to be committed against a uniformed combatant (or even a combatant at all) to be considered a war crime. The legal gray area of Blackwater during the earlier stages of the Iraq War is outside of the scope of this article as is the debate of the naming conventions for their employees. Consensuses reached in other, more pertinent articles, is that "private military contractor" is an appropriately inclusive and NPOV term for the relevant persons. TomPointTwo (talk) 18:46, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

They were a mercenary military force in the employ of the United States... Under international law the US is fully responsible for them. They may not want to call themselves mercenaries, and the US government don't want to accept liability for them, but that in no way changes what they are. Soldiers for hire are mercenaries, they were soldiers, they were hired. QED 81.96.176.135 (talk) 00:43, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Pictures

Is there a reason why there aren't any pictures on Wikimedia of the contractors on the bridge? I'm pretty-sure the photos weren't copyrighted (ie were taken by insurgents). I'm working on an article on the Anbar campaign, and it's a pretty famous photograph. Palm_Dogg (talk) 21:43, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

"2004 fallujah bridge" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect 2004 fallujah bridge has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 September 4 § 2004 fallujah bridge until a consensus is reached. Edward-Woodrow :) _[talk] 15:47, 4 September 2023 (UTC)