Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Posted on 05/19/2010 8:16:47 AM PDT by FReepaholic
From Michael Yon's Facebook page:
An American soldier emailed from Afghanistan saying that his unit has been ordered to patrol with no round in the chamber.
http://www.facebook.com/MichaelYonFanPage/posts/123097424378854
Michael Yon (born 1964)[1] is an American writer and photographer. He served in the Special Forces in the early-1980s, one of the youngest soldiers to pass the Green Beret selection process, and he became a general freelance writer in the mid-1990s. He focused on military writing after the invasion of Iraq.[2] Yon has been embedded on numerous occasions with American and British troops in Iraq, most prominently a deployment with the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment (Deuce Four) of the 25th Infantry Division in Mosul, Iraq that ended in September 2005.[3]
The U.S. military has learned NOTHING from the Vietnam War and Beirut 1983.
No rounds in the chamber?
It makes me get pains in my stomach.
This cannot be a real order.
maybe poppies in the barrels of their rifles?
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Let's hope not posthumously.
WTF?!?!!?
As a civilian in a non-combat zone I carry with one in the chamber!!!
This sounds like a case where the soldier needs to tell his NCO or officer to go eff himself and load up.
What are they gonna do? Bend his dogtags and send him to Afghanistan?
This doesn’t surprise me. Certainly, this comes down from Secretary of the Army or higher. No local command in Iraq would come up with such a lamebrain idea, as this will get our guys killed.
The time it takes to chamber a round plus the fact that the weapon isn’t up and ready is crazy if bad guys are anywhere nearby.
This makes it obvious that, to this administration, our troops are expendible.
I knew Michael, we went to HS together. Never knew he went SF. Small world.
My intentions were to write several more dispatches about missions, yet there seems to be so little interest in Afghanistan that it hardly seems worth the time to write about real missions.
There is little embedded work coming from Afghanistan. McChrystal's censorship seems to be working. (For now.) He's losing the war and covering it up. The deception is easy when so few people are paying attention. We are losing the war. At this rate it will be lost.
tracking. want more info too, please
Same for me in Chicago, curiously!! ;-)
We had a similar rule, but like you, I was in constant violation of the rule. Some orders were too stupid to obey.
http://twitter.com/michael_yon
He's got some interesting photos and updates.
The Secretary of the Army cannot make such a ruling, he does not have operational control of any troops in Afghanistan. This comes from the operational chain of command in the theater.
Don’t know if this makes sense, depends on the conditions on the ground. I sometimes did this as a rifle company commander in Vietnam based on where we were and who was around. Biggest problem with rounds in the chamber is some knucklehead who takes his weapon off safe and accidently shoots a buddy. Not good.
Wanna bet?
So where is our great “conservative patriot” and champion of America, Mitchie McConnell, trumpeting this sort of disgrace all over FOX news (the only network which would run the story.) Perhaps he’s too busy supporting other RINOs and planning for fewer republican senate seats after November.
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