“I don’t want these guys to be able to essentially carry out an extermination due to anger or being out of control.”
They believed they were under attack. A type of attack that had happened many times before.
Where they erred was the panicked shooting of anything that moved in the square, by some of them, until relief arrived.
It SHOULD have been considered a “Fog of War” incident, but the Iraqi Gov, and Liberals in the US Media wanted BLOOD.
Which is something I want to allow for, if that is in fact the case. Holding these guys to a standard that would equate to the streets of Atlanta is pointless, and in fact dangerous. It causes other contractors to re-evaluate certain tasks.
We ask these people to do a tough job and we have to back them up some way. Granted there are limits, but in an honest tough situation, I’m not for going for these guy’s throats.
Perhaps some reassignments or other punitive measures are called for. Prosecutions I’m not sure are called for.