There....but for the grace of God.........

you come to a village, have translator tell head honcho all people out of hootches, any one found inside will be shot as VC!
all this talk about the inocents from people who werent there.
if there guilty i guess its punishment time

war is hell my friend some here dont relize it

with haditha and ishaki (sp) and now this and god knows what else will be oozing out of the quagmire in the coming months...

Mark and Tony will probably be the first to say "if you haven't been there, you will never know what it's like" and i for one am unable to judge the wrongdoers (and by this i am not saying let them go unpunished)...


jonah


.

but as you said if your never been under the gun.
if they proven to have done this i hope there judged kindly by a court who has served in war.
and not let the politicians try them

Shouldn't that be

judged FAIRLY by a court?

a kind court with people who have fought in a war not armchair warriors.

if you get a "kind" court and not a "fair" court.

The perception amoung Iraqis and the rest of the world will not be good pr, but what does that matter.

as an arm chair warrior you no best

and were you there nope, nor was i but ill let the courts decide not what the iraqis nor the world thinks

event ever since armies began using guerrilla tactics. Even highly-trained soldiers cannot with certainty discriminate between friendly, neutral, or hostile personnel in the short time span they need to decide in.

I say that if the investigation shows the troops knowingly killed civilians in some sort of homicidal rampage... throw them and any commandng officers involved in jail.
If the soldiers mistakenly shot the civilians because of combat stress or miscommunication, bring them back to the US for psych treatment because they're going to need a lot of it after killing innocents.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head. Someone said combat is 90% boredom and 10% sheer panic. A person in combat can lose it pretty quickly if they are not in control and being in control is harder than combat.

Tom

your story was well told. you gave me a chance to feel what you had to do. I bet that those few seconds that you had to decide must have seemed like an eternity. the myriad split nano seconds; when you are thinking of maybe your own child or sister, your buddies, and yourself. total focus. the pause in your replies was perfect. I had the luxury of reading it on my time without pressure.
thanks for the happy ending.

luxury to take time to think

They are well trained for combat. Every young Marine group that I drank beer with, the topic of the discussions were how to kill someone. Watching your buddies get killed and wounded can trigger some to action that happened in this incident, something like a Audie Murphy adrenalin.

Read a book by a military officer who was also a psychologist called "On Killing". The main point being that humans, as a rule, have a hard time killing another human. Rifles recovered at Gettysburg were found to have up to 12 loads in the barrel. The soldier evidently aimed, never pulled the trigger, then reloaded. On Iwo Jima, it was noticed that over half of the Marines found something else to do besides shooting, like "I'll go get more ammo" or "I'll take the wounded back to the aid station". When the military figured this out, they had to change their training techniques. In boot camp, learning bayonet techniques, the instructor was on a platform that had printed all around it "Kill or be killed". Think maybe they honed the razor too sharp? 18 to 22 year olds have the physical strength to perform the arduous tasks required of soldiers, but not necessarily the emotional maturity. I really feel for all of the troops.

Tom

the eyes staring and hollow has also been shown in German captured combat film, something that affects many in fierce combat. Course we know that in some battles/engagement there were times when it was 'take no prisoners' that must have affected the 'fatigue' on all sides.

I am not anti-gun etc. once we stopped killing with our bare hands and were able to distance ourselves from the target; we stopped seeing the faces close up. and your right about the young going off to war. time has a habit of restraining your angers. they don't question like the older folks would. tell youth to kill and they ask; where are they? older folks might ask; why? which also explains the 'no draft' wishes of the pentagon.

he who hesitates dies.

might not be a virtue in war. sometimes he who hesitates lets the innocent live. and that might cause their own death. wheels of war go round and round.

and if its a choice between them and me guess where my heart lies?

....part of a show on A&E. It was about a group in Iraq, and those who had died in some missions.

One that stands out in my mind was when a squad was tracking down from which house they had been fired upon. A Marine Lance Corporal went up to a house to knock on the door, but his fist didn't reach the door. His Captain said that he was supposed to be the one to knock on the door, but that somehow the corporal got ahead of him. The "Why him and not me?" factor had entered in.

I reckon there are few things that bonds a group together more than battle. Each one looks after the other. "A band of brothers", indeed.

Angeline
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the bands as strong as its weakest link.

as to why the US Army came to the USAF asking for Sergeants to apply for Army Officers Candidate School as there was a shortage of 'Follow Me' Lieutenants in the Army as they needed their current Army Sergeants during the Korean War. Then during NAM coming to ask again for USAF Sgt's to apply for Warrant Officer to fly copters.

(enlisted personnel) flying aircraft. I once flew with one in a PBY. Don't know if they still do.