The journalists knew the risk of going into a hotbed warzone. Obviously we wouldn't have had Apache's flying overhead if this wasn't an area with a high volume of insurgents. They should have been traveling with US personnel doing the reporting, or at least informed the US that they would have been in the area. You noticed that they checked to see if there were any friendlies nearby, and the records showed none, so they attacked.
When it comes to a choice of killing possible insurgents or waiting around to see if they attack you or your friends, I think the choice was pretty straight forward. Heck, you could tell in the video that the guys in the Apache were genuinely afraid that they were going to start getting RPGs fired at them.
Moreover, I'm not the least bit surprised that they are happy that what they believed to be insurgents were dead. In their minds, they just killed 8 people who were all wanting to kill allied troops. Even more so, it's not surprising at all that humans are brutal or blood thirsty or any of that. We're animals, animals that are damn good at killing things, but actually have the capacity to hold back occasionally. Compared with the rest of the animal kingdom, we're positively passive, except that when we do fight, there's technology involved.
Besides, we live in the most peaceful period in human history. Sure, wars still happen and we happen to have the opportunity to see them up-close, never-before possible for non-soldiers, so people that have a natural disposition against conflict are of course going to be even more horrified by it. But, a smaller percentage of the human population dies in warfare, conflict, or murder these days than did 50 years ago, then less than 100 years ago, and so on.
There was a study once that showed that more primative civilizations lose a greater percentage of their members to warfare each year...so I'd say we're on the uptick, idealism and conflict-paranoia aside.
EDIT: Also, the part where they open up on the van is even less surprising. Again, put yourself in their shoes. You just killed what you suspect are 8 really bad guys, and now you see an unmarked van show up and start picking up the bodies and carrying away one of the wounded. You would immediately assume they were also insurgents. If it was an ambulance, then maybe not. But a dark unmarked van? Of course. Notice that they were going to let that guy live until the van showed up. It's not like he was going to ever pick up a weapon. Obviously if they were just blood thirsty they would have kept shooting. They only engaged when they saw weapons.
But yeah, we're looking at this with the benefit of hindsight, which the soldiers in the helicopters didn't have.
Both Reuters and the military conducted their own investigations into this two years ago, and both concluded the soldiers did nothing wrong and followed every reasonable protocol. For us to sit in judgment with our "extensive knowledge" of the situation is asinine. Plus, the source is slanted as hell to begin with. They use the word murder at the start, obviously to pin the stigma that goes with that on the soldiers...it's pathetic. They are probably a bit mad that the war turned around. I guess being anti-war is no fun when your side is winning.
[This message has been edited by Cheesewiz (edited 04-06-2010 @ 04:43 PM).]