Konami Announces a Game Based On a 2004 Battle In Fallujah 644
The LA Times reports that Konami has announced Six Days in Fallujah, a video game due out next year that is based on an actual battle fought in Iraq in 2004. Quoting:
"The idea for the game ... came from US Marines who returned from the battle with video, photos and diaries of their experiences. Instead of dialing up Steven Spielberg to make a movie version of their stories, they turned to Atomic Games, a company in Raleigh, NC, that makes combat simulation software for the military. ... 'The soldiers wanted to tell their stories through a game because that's what they grew up playing,' said John Choon, senior brand manager for the game at Konami... More than a dozen Marines are featured in documentary-style video interviews that are interspersed with the game's action. The Marines reappear in the game itself, doing pretty much what they did during the war. One tells the story of how he furiously wrote a letter to his wife and begged a chaplain to give it to her if he died. Another, Eddie Garcia, talks about how his right leg was shredded in a mortar attack, and how he suffered survivor's guilt after he was taken out of combat."
Re:Scumbags (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is sick (Score:3, Informative)
You might as well put tl;dr in there.
Read very closely:
"They told me stories of teams of people that would go into apartment buildings and shoot every single thing in it. These people were all "insurgents". Entire families of insurgents."
This is what he means by massacre. The fact that you aren't able to read the 4 lines of his post doesn't make you insightful, it makes you a moron.
Re:Let's see what it looks like (Score:3, Informative)
Very well said. It's one thing to sit on the sidelines and spout your views, it's another to go there and be "in the shit" and try to deal with it.
Some of the people responding here are acting like these Marines went in, killed everything in sight and then sat back drinking a beer laughing about it.
WTF? They're human just like you and I. (I should know, I was in the Corps) This crap affected them the same as it would anyone else. This is an attempt at telling their story, and people want to treat it like it's either an attention grab or a money grab.
To them I say shame on you.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:4, Informative)
As someone who was there, F you man. It's easy to sit here at home and call us murderers and bastards for what we did, but the fact remains that the people we put down were bad people.
Sure, There are bound to be a few innocent people killed in any war. This war has been great in that we have greatly reduced the number of innocent people killed as compared to historical numbers.
But when you take a town of 25,000 where the vast majority are violently anti-american and put lots of american soldiers in the center of town, you're going to have lots of people die. You choose who you would rather have die. Your neighbors and countrymen, or some terrorist raghead who is hell-bent on destroying america and is practicing building bombs in his kitchen.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Informative)
I was there in 2004 alongside the Marines (Army Infantry), and coalition psyops basically blanketed the city for weeks prior to the invasion with the message that all civilians needed to leave the city and any male over the age of 15 who stayed would be considered a combatant. We all but told them exactly when we were coming and "you want to fight, let's fight...you want to live, get the hell out of the town".
The civilian casualties that I saw were caused by bombing the city prior to the attack and bombing/artillery on specific buildings that insurgents were using as strong points that couldn't be taken any other way.
At no time did I or anyone in my company fire upon any civilian. In fact the only civilians that I saw were after the fact when they came out of their hiding places and surrendered. We sent them on their way with the MP's, safe and sound.
What I did see was a lot of AK and RPG's fired at my Bradley Fighting Vehicle. I took 4 within the span of 15 minutes. Thank $DEITY for that reactive armor.
Re:Scumbags (Score:3, Informative)
The baby-killers charge was, is and always will be trolling.
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize we made it very public in and around Fallujah that we were going to attack the city before hand right? We encouraged people to leave the city before we took it. These were no unenlightened individuals struck by a surprise attack.
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Informative)
As soon as you are a fighting force hiding amongst the populace you are no longer part of a legal army, you are a terrorist, and anyone assisting these people are also the same.
Not immedeatly. It makes you a guerrilla first. And given that a guerrilla army needs the support of the local populace, a guerrilla army can only *defend* a territory as it's almost impossible to act on enemy territory. If some cell manages to do so, attacking civilians, thats terrorism.
Re:Atomic Games (Score:3, Informative)
Unless I'm mistaken, aren't they also the same company who produced the V for Victory series of games way back when? I have the original boxes, discs and documentation stored away and up until a few years ago, still played them on my W95 machine.
Great stuff they were. Allowed for an overall view of the combat area, tried to depict real-life supply situations, aerial attacks, armor vs infantry, etc.
I was able to demonstrate that in some cases, the Germans could have stopped and repelled the allied forces. It was always fun when you overran a beachhead and stole their supplies.
Re:Scumbags (Score:3, Informative)
In the next 4 to 6 years when you finally go to college I strongly suggest you take some (Inter)National Security courses and some history courses.
For one thing aside from the moral issues attacking civilian targets during WWII was never a particularly effective tactic. The reason Britain wasn't crushed by the Nazi's is that once they had air superiority the Nazi's switched to civilian targets. This allowed Britain to rebuild it's devastated military and simply fanned the flames of nationalistic pride.
When the tide turned and the allies started bombing civilian targets the same was true. Germany was able to hold out a lot longer because the reduction of pressure on it's military infrastructure.
If you are looking for a war won by the USA after WWII look no farther then the Gulf War. It accomplished everything necessary to safe guard the US's interests. Going any farther would have been against the US's interest and landed us in the mess we are in now. Keeping Iraq intact was also important because it's primary enemy was actually Iran.
Re:Scumbags (Score:5, Informative)
This is an example of the problem with International Treaties, like the Geneva Conventions.
They only apply to countries who voluntarily agree to have them apply.
Re:Scumbags (Score:1, Informative)
Posting AC for obvious reasons.
I worked on a semi-automated mortar system.
System supports off the ground detonation of white Phosphorus rounds for illumination. But of course, this can also be used as anti-personnel if set to detonate on the ground.
In the end, it is a weapon, how it is used will be determined on when necessary - and not even in policy.
Lies and Propaganda (Score:2, Informative)
The Geneva conventions most specifically did not deal with the use of WP. The Geneva conventions dealt with the treatment of combatants and non-combatants. The Hague conventions dealt with the use of arms and munitions. This is like the old lie about shotguns being illegal weapons or the .50 caliber machinegun not being legal for use on people. The shorthand rule is is that if they are legal combatants they are legal targets (until they surrender or are incapacitated). If they are illegal combatants they are legal targets. If they are non-combatants they are not ever legal targets.
The treaty concerning white phosphorus is The Chemical Weapons Convention, which the United States amongst others has not signed. This is not to say that WP is a chemical weapon like mustard gas or phosgene. It's a fragmentary incendiary, more like napalm in a solid state.
Re:This is sick (Score:1, Informative)
Geneva doesn't call them a terrorist, they call them Enemy Combatant. And even EC's are afforded very similar rights to a POW. What Bush did was move the goalpost and create a new designation as Illegal EC, which is not present anywhere in Geneva and exists only to create a legal loophole, also something that Geneva forbids. Guerilla and Terrorist are weighted definitions depending on which side of the media is reporting. Rebel, Insurgent, Freedom Fighter, Irregular Militia are also biased terms that serve more to define the speaker than the person they want to paint in one light or another.
Re:Atomic Games (Score:3, Informative)
They are and they aren't. After only a cursory examination of their www site, I posted my post from earlier, but it seems that the company was "re-formed [atomic.com]" in 2006. There's no way to know if these people simply want to cash in on the company's name reputation or want to continue the tradition of war games with depth.
Re:The USA is kinda hypocrites, but not in Iraq (Score:5, Informative)
Are you aware that the Germans and Japanese killed civilians by other means than bombing?
Germany ran death camps that murdered several million civilians, and murdered more millions in other ways.
Japan was not as organized, but their civilian toll does run in the eight digits somewhere. Let's not forget Unit 731 in Manchuria, where among other things Japanese surgeons practiced amputations - on healthy limbs, without anesthesia.
The Western Allies (including the US) committed plenty of atrocities. I'm unaware of any major power in a large war that didn't. However, they weren't anywhere near on the scale of the Germans and Japanese. The Western Allies, for all their faults, were the humanitarians in that war.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:3, Informative)
You do understand that the US did not enter the war with Germany (December 1941) until months after the plan "Barbarossa" was executed (June 1941), and as such your "question" is utter nonsense, don't you?
The question is entirely different. We know the historical strength of the German army in 1941-1945, the state of its industry etc, the respective strength of the USSR and its industry, and there were no possibilities of any miraculous reversals. In this I do not "predict" anything, simply observe the inevitable outcomes based on long established historical data. The Germans simply did not have the sufficient military strength, nor the personnel to achieve victory, which was plainly apparent even long before the landings in Normandy. Your comparison is that of apples to oranges.