User:Brucevdk/July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrikes/Interview with Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer on the Dylan Ratigan Show (rush transcript)

On the The Dylan Ratigan Show of April the 5th Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer, apparently a notable U.S. intelligence officer, commented on the incident. The interview is linked in this article (the interview starts at 4m38s, here's a convenient YouTube link). The rush transcript I made follows:

Dylan Ratigan: Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer you look at this and you ask yourself: what are the Rules of Engagement for our soldiers and how do you.... There is a [sic] fatality in New York long ago where kids in the ghetto would take guns and point them police. Toy guns. How do you draw the line between the perceived threat of a camera tripod and a response like the one we're looking at and the Rules of Engagement, which I presume try to avoid this.

Anthony Shaffer: That is absolutely correct and Dylan I am glad you used that example because I was in exactly the situation where I had to shoot or not shoot an eight year old in Kabul within my first combat mission. And I choose not to, thank God, because at the last second the thing he threw at the car (which we thought to be a bomb), turned out to be a cup, thank God.

But it's a shoot don't shoot call every time you're out there, it's not easy, it's never easy, but this is tragic.

Now let me be clear here, this I believe was a failure partially because of training and discipline. I mean when you're using aviation as a primary source of delivery of firepower you've got to be very, very precise.

This is what Gen. McChrystal's always talking about, this is where we got to get it right if we're going to have the population on our side. Don't forgot there were two kids involved in this. I watched the video very closely Dylan. And what's going to happen when those kids grow up now? What will be their memories of this incident? This is where we got to be better than good, we gotta be great.

I understand the context, both ends of this, that there were a lot of RPGs coming out but this...

Dylan Ratigan: Let me make it really clear though: from your perspective were the Rules of Engagement followed from what you see in this piece of videotape?

Anthony Shaffer: Let me be clear... based on what I've seen only, and I'm making it on what I've seen: No, they were not. First rule is 'You may engage persons who commit hostile acts or show hostile intent by minimum force necessary.' Minimum force is the key here. If you see eight armed men, the first thing I would think as an intelligence officer: 'How can we take these guys and capture them?' We don't want to kill people arbitrarily. We want the intel take.

Now, most importantly, when you see that van show up to take away the wounded: 'Do not target or strike anyone who has surrendered or is out of combat due to sickness or wounds.' So the wound part of that, I find a bit disturbing by the fact that you have people down, clearly down; you have people on the way here...

Again, speaking as an intelligence officer my intent is to capture people to recover them. That is the idea here. If you're not doing that then you're not really doing precise combat.