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Military Police, like civilian policemen, always cary live ammo. Its their job to enforce law and order. Soldiers and Marines, when conducting non live fire exercises, actually that is the only kind of training excerise, use blank ammo. This is for the very reason pointed out above, to keep from having the troops kill one another, unintentionally.

Typical knee jerk reaction from non military people.

Not sure sure about the Kobar Barracks incident, but normally guards are always allowed live ammo. I'd rather this statement, of them being unarmed, be verified.

Typical knee jerk reaction from non military people.

I'm sorry, but excuse me - I am former military.

The story is inconsistent. There is discussion of an attack by Kuwati (now certified by intel as being Al Qa'eda), a firefight, a chase by MPs, and the eventual destruction of the original attackers by the MPs.

Now, I am not criticizing your version of events, but the outline provided in the posted story is, however you want to view it, inconsistent. If the marines didn't have bullets, then there was no firefight. If there was a skirmish when the MPs took matters into their own hands, then what occurred there might be a firefight, but one can hardly tell with the article as posted, now can they?

We are making a bunch of assumptions here based upon our view of the world (through either active or former military prisms, so to speak), and they are probably accurate - I'm not in question with these.

I was speaking to the article. (Which was, quite probably, not written by a military-literate person.)

but normally guards are always allowed live ammo

I agree with the rest of your post, but I was put on guard duty several times with no ammo. Heck, they didn't even give us an empty magazine so they can fake it. It heavily depends on the political situation at the time.