General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Guns in the Classroom.... let's think about this for a minute.... [View all]Bigmack
(8,020 posts)..is a real problem. With trained troops.
Imagine with somebody who has fired a couple of hundred rounds on a range, but never faced a situation...
Some samples...
US troops killed at least seven and wounded 34 of their compatriots in 18 suspected friendly fire incidents after the invasion of Iraq, only the most serious of which have previously been made public.
The catalogue of "blue on blue" deaths and injuries shows how serious the wrong call from a young man in charge of deadly weaponry can be in the stress, confusion and bureaucracy of modern war and how events that seem clear one moment may be perceived differently soon afterwards.
When a unit from the 502nd Infantry Regiment came under small arms fire in Baghdad on 4 November 2005 they assumed they were being attacked by the enemy. Five men were injured and another, Staff Sergeant Joseph Fegler, 24, was killed. Two hours after the engagement it emerged that the damage had been done by the rear gunner of another US convoy up ahead. The first shots the victims heard had been warning shots fired to get them to keep their distance.
Three weeks later a patrol from another company of the same regiment, moving on foot through farmland south-west of Baghdad, came under heavy fire from insurgents. Some of the platoon were wounded and the senior sergeant commandeered a civilian car to take them back to the company vehicles. As it raced back another part of their company, drawn by the sound of shooting, headed their way. They saw a civilian car filled with armed men moving towards them at high speed, and opened fire, killing two of their comrades, Sergeant Aram Bass and Sergeant William Meeuwsen, and injuring four others, including a civilian interpreter.
Corporal Ryan Collins of the 501st Parachute Regiment, who died from a gunshot wound; and Private Shawn Hensel, who appears to have been among a group of 23rd Infantry soldiers hit by a burst of heavy calibre machine gun fire from a US Stryker armoured vehicle.
One night in October 2006 a British patrol, festooned with the blue light sticks, agreed on as a sign to identify themselves as friendly, reported they had been shot at by US troops who had no night vision goggles and had been listening to their iPods.