And you KNOW all of this how Lox??

What do you think that the van was there for Lox??

What were the children doing in the van Lox??

Why were they both sitting in the front passenger seat??

Have children been used in the past in terrorist attacks in Iraq involving cars/vans?

1. The group of so called civilians were armed insurgents about to set up an ambush. Reuters had been invited there to film it.

2. The van was parked up close to where the incident took place, I say that as neither helicopter saw it approach the area, but they could see the approaching US & Iraqi Patrols.

3. The reason the van was there was to provide a get away vehicle for those taking part in the ambush.

4. The children were in the vehicle seated as they were to be obvious to anyone manning any check-point the van might approach after initially getting away from the scene of the ambush. The children Lox were camouflage. In Baghdad there have been instances of children being left in car bombs that the insurgents park and walk away from, the car is then detonated by the "freedom fighters" when they are a safe distance away. In this instance Lox what sex were the children, male or female? My guess both were female, I know that at least the first one discovered was, could that be significant in any way??

All the above is supposition, but it is borne out more by what happened and the reaction to what happened at the time, than your fairy tale of innocent bystander just bimbling across the mother of all fire-fights in his van with his two children and who then decides to risk not only his own life but the lives of his supposed children (lets face it we do not know for certain who the children belonged to) for complete and utter strangers who could for all he knew turn out to be a sectarian militia out to kill his branch of the muslim religion (Or let me guess Lox, you know for a fact that they were all Sunni Arabs, oddly enough I haven't seen that information posted anywhere)

Reading down through this thread I appear to be the only person who as looked at this incident with anything that would be described as an inquiring mind and I have thrown up some questions that really do need to be answered if the party line as told by MSM and Wikileaks wants to stand up to serious scutiny - The rest of you have just followed your own particular bias and swallowed an inaccurately reported story presented to paint as black a picture as possible hook-line-and-sinker.

All that apart. The crews of those two Apache Helicopters on the day did the job that they were there to do, and as such no blame attaches. The Reuters employees behaved like bloody idiots considering the situation, they knew that they were getting into. Those on the ground believed that they had been hit by ground fire, note none of them are ever seen looking upwards to see the aircraft firing at them. The man directing the van, was pointing out where it appeared not to be safe for the van to go.

"HOW QUICK COULD YOU GET YOU KIDS INTO A VAN IF YOU WERE DELIBERATELY GOING INTO AN AREA THAT HAD JUST BEEN STRAFED BY MACHINE GUN FIRE?"

I answered that question a lot further down the thread Lox. As a parent there is no way on God's earth that I would ever load my children into a van and deliberately drive them into an area that had just been straffed by machine gun fire, I would be doing my utmost to get them out of there in the opposite direction as quickly as possible, or getting them behind the biggest and most solid all round cover that I could find.