Posted on 04/30/2011 6:38:31 AM PDT by macquire
Listening to Col David Hunt (Retired) on Fox right now explaining how the rules of engagement did not permit the Americans the Afghan pilot killed to have loaded weapons on base. The angry pilot simply shot them execution style after he left the meeting and retrieved a loaded firearm from his office.
Have any of you heard this before? I am outraged.
How do you fight a war with one hand tied behind your back?
“It’s a safety issue, it has nothing to do with ROE.”
Safety? No. It is political and born from a lack of trust.
Hey TT.
You retired yet?
“It’s saved many, many lives, I guarantee you.”
Spoken like a true liberal: Give them guns but no one is to be trusted because that many guns means a bazzillion people killed.
If that were the case then we ought to be having a bazzillion people people right here in Colorado as 250,000+ people now have concealed weapons permits. Gun ranges would need ambulances standing by and cops would be dropping dead left and right as they carry every day.
Yep, I have completed my service. 30 years of deployments, separation from family and friends—and some great memories I may add—have ended.
Retired in Nevada, bought a house, and simply loving life as a retired old goat that can take his quad out and shoot stuff in the desert. Very nice.
I “assume” when you are on “weapons green” Status you keep that Iraqi long knife handy.
Dirka, Dirka.
Meanwhile the Obama administration routinely and effortlessly violates the most sacred document of the Republic, the Constitution, with impunity. This must stop.
Nice.
Good on you!
Thanks for the ping, PM. I’d heard about the murders, but this is the first I ever heard of troops not allowed to have rounds for their weapons.
My s-i-l just returned home from Afghan on about Wednesday after a year away. I’ll check with him and see if this was normal or unique to a given location.
I know in training missions our units were often required to have weapons without rounds in quarters areas for obvious safety reasons, but that would not entail in a combat zone.
There’s also the issue of whether they could have magazines but not have them in their weapons when in a FOB. I can sorta get my mind around that, but I think out of 9 killed that someone could have locked and loaded in that amount of time and returned fire.
Thank you.
During WW 1, my dad was wounded as a result of an accidental discharge that grazed his femoral artery. That happened in New York State. He did survive, albeit barely and with a big scar and volunteered again for WW 2. He managed to get to Europe that time and was discharged as a mustang Major. So he must have done something right and had at least half a brain. One of the things I most remember about him was that he was always very, very conscious about firearm safety. The US military did not just make up it's firearms rules for no particular reason.
If you are in a combat zone you should have a weapon on or near your person.
That weapon should have a magazine in it but without a round in the chamber.
These 9 did not.
When I was in Afghanistan, we had the magazines in the gun, but no round chambered until leaving the FOB. Some of the smaller outposts had a round chambered at all times, but I was an old fart who was on the larger bases.
All I would have needed to do to fire was rack the slide of my 9mm...
When flying somewhere, we brought along our M-4s and all our ammo. That was in case the plane went down...
But that was also under GWB in 2006. I’m sure the current guidance is much less ‘rude’.
This is crazy. The U.S. media has blood on their hands as well for not reporting this! Bring the troops home!
You don’t know what you’re talking about. A FOB in the Arghendab River Valley or in the middle of Baghdad is NOT Colorado for God’s sake.
Wonder what the rules of engagement were on Iwo?
Time to end these wars and bring our guys home, if we aren’t going to do any better than this.
THEY CAN’T HAVE THEIR WEAPONS LOADED??? That’s insane! It isn’t at all unusual for me to carry a loaded weapon, around the house. These guys are in a WAR ZONE! Whomever came up with rules like this needs to be either court-martialed or impeached!(whichever is applicable)
If we need to fight wars, they need to be won, and that should be the end of it. This open ended scenario is madness. We have our guys over there setup to be target practice for the enemy while we play a game of ‘nation building’.
In some of the very small COPs (think “Restrepo”) I could see amber status, maybe even red. On a FOB like Ramrod or Kandahar? Can you possibly imagine everyone going around in red status? Good Lord...the mind boggles.
Gun-free zone. What a concept.
This wouldn’t have happened in Israel.
Maybe it is time to change the rule.
9 Americans were executed because they did not have access to immediate fire power in a war zone. Many of the Afghan soldiers we are training are more loyal to Islam than they are to our mission. We need to make sure that our troops are ready for these terrorist attacks. Walking around with unloaded weapons when you are surrounded by potential terrorists is the height of stupidity.
Our police officers are walking around with loaded weapons every day all the time and our soldiers are for the most part better trained in weapon handling than most of the police officers we have here in the US. If we are engaged in a "police action" then our soldiers should have the same obligation to carry loaded weapons in the field and on the base as our police are obligated to carry them on the street.
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