marines have hired big-game-hunters to teach sniper shooting

[donsu]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ31Ak01.html


Bagging trophies on Iraqi safari

-snip-

He noted that, as part of an instruction course named "Combat Hunter", the marines have brought in "big-game hunters" to school their snipers in the better use of "optics". According to a September article by Grace Jean in National Defense Magazine, "he lab conducted a war game with marines, African game hunters and inner city police officers to search for ways to improve training." The program included a 15-minute CD titled "Every Marine a Hunter."

This year, according to an article by Kimberly Johnson of the Marine Corps Times, Colonel Clarke Lethin, chief of staff of the I Marine Expeditionary Force - I MEF, a unit based in Camp Pendleton, California that took part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and will be returning there soon - indicated that its commanders "believe that if we create a mentality in our marines that they are hunters and they take on some of those skills, then we'll be able to increase our combat effectiveness".

The article included this curious add-on: "The corps hopes to tap into skills certain marines may already have learned growing up in rural hunting areas and in urban areas, such as inner cities, said Colonel Clarke Lethin, I MEF's chief of staff." Outraged by the statement, one Sergeant Ramsey K Gregory wrote a letter to the publication asking, "Just what was meant by that comment about the inner city? I hope to God that he's not saying that people from the inner cities are experts in killing each other and that we all just walk around carrying guns."


(think of them as big game animals, not human beings and you will shoot better)

-snip-

From the commander-in-chief to low-ranking snipers, a language of dehumanization that includes the idea of hunting humans as if they were animals has crept into our world - unnoticed and unnoted in the mainstream media. Perhaps a few linguistics professors or other social scientists might like to step into the breach and offer their views on the subject - unless, of course, they've already been mustered into those Human Terrain Teams.
----------------------------

[Squatch]

1. The Marines have consistently used innovative training techinques

to inculcate the belief that every Marine is a rifleman, first and foremost.

While I believe the Army has gotten really soft over the past 15 years, the Marines still maintain that warrior ethos...hell, they've even invented their own martial art.

If I could do my military career all over again, I would join the USMC (my second choice being the USCG).

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. If I could do it over again..I wouldn't.

4 years in the marine crotch was enough to convince me that it was an organization well deserving of being called The Suck by the cannon fodder.

[Squatch]

4. Shit, man...we even call the Army "The Suck"

I think that, from an grunt's view, everything sucks about the military.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Speaking of "innovative training"..

The DI that taught us all that tough guy bayonet and hand to hand combat shit ended the course by saying, "If you shitbirds ever find yourself in a position to take on some guy with a bayonet or his hands, use your feet! Run like a stripy-assed zebra."

Words to live by.

[Squatch]

8. I also read this from a Marine about the M9 pistol

"The only reason you have a pistol is so you can fight your way back to your rifle, which you must have mistakenly dropped earlier."

Or something to that effect.

[donsu]

7. you like killing people? or just like learning how to do it?

and hanging out with your buddies

[Squatch]

10. Don't know. Never had the opportunity.

:)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. "Killing is fun."

[EstimatedProphet]

5. The dehumanization is always there

this doesn't change any of it one whit. It's not like the Marines were a pacifist organization that has suddenly become an army. They have had snipers for some time now, and it's a surprise that they haven't been using big game hunters to help in their training. If you're going to have snipers, you should have functional snipers.

[benEzra]

13. The Marine sniper school was *started* by hunters...

Carlos Hathcock started as a hunter, and used a deer rifle (Winchester Model 70 in .30-06) for most of his 93 confirmed kills.

[EstimatedProphet]

15. Right. I don't see why this even makes the news

I'd almost exect the next story to be "Breaking: Marines are armed."

[Annces]

9. Professional killers

Just what the world needs. (sarcasm)

[Squatch]

11. They're the fucking MARINES...

Jeebus.

[SidDithers]

12. Any chance this helps to reduce civilian casualties?...

maybe targetting the people shooting at you, instead of just spraying and hoping?

Dunno, never been there myself.

Sid

[benEzra]

14. Why the quotes around "optics"?

:eyes:

FWIW, snipers have always drawn heavily from hunting, going back to the Revolutionary War. Being a hunter doesn't make one a sniper, but the best snipers started out as hunters (Carlos Hathcock, Vasily Zaytsev, Simo Häyhä).

The only reason they're doing this now is that fewer recruits grew up hunting than in the past.

[tuckessee]

16. Notice the training includes "inner city police officers".

Coming to a ghetto near you soon.