[Sacajaweau]

"non combat".....yeh...that means he was unarmed.

No matter what he was doing....that's boots on the ground and they should be armed.

[oh8eleven]

"non combat".....yeh...that means he was unarmed.
No, that means it wasn't due to hostile fire.
In a combat zone, every Marine is issued a weapon since every Marine (cooks, clerks, etc.) may be needed to act as a rifleman.

[angcat]

What exactly do you mean?

[ottbmare]

There are a lot of deaths that don’t come from enemy action. The equipment is inherently dangerous and there are frequent accidents. I have been told by my son and his Marine friends and stepbrothers about training accidents they have witnessed that either resulted in deaths or could have done. A Marine colonel I dated told me that some of our few losses during the first Iraq war were of young men who got killed in vehicle accidents, not from enemy fire.

I don’t believe one single thing this administration says—if the White House announced that the sun comes up in the East, I’d question it. But I can believe that a boy might be killed without enemy involvement.