hillbilly
July 24, 2004, 12:42 PM
Got the following from a friend of mine in Iraq until March or April.
He's a captain with the 39th infantry and his job is to train the Iraqi National Guard.
hillbilly
We had an unfortunate incident here the other day. I was called to one of our traffic checkpoints to investigate a shooting involving one of our ING soldiers; unfortunately, the whole thing was accidental and resulted in the death of a civilian motorist.
When I got to the checkpoint, we started interviewing witnesses, trying to get a clear understanding of what happened. Usually, that's hard enough to do when you're dealing with Americans, but once you factor in the language barrier and an interpreter of questionable skills, you begin to have a recipe for one huge tension headache. After talking to the witnesses and not getting any kind of clear picture of what happened (one person said there was one shot, another said four, another said he wasn't sure if the shots came from in front of or behind the vehicle, etc.) we lined up the two vehicles involved (one ING, the other civilian) and ran a long rod through the bullet hole in the second one. From that, we determined that there was a definite downward angle to the bullet's trajectory, which meant the single shot came from the weapon mounted in the back of the ING pickup. Once the gunner was confronted with that evidence, he confessed.
Basically, the whole thing was a result of negligent weapon handling: a round in the chamber, the safety off, and a finger on the trigger, rolling down a pot-holed highway. The pickup hit a bump, the gunner fell forward and pulled the trigger, and one man wound up dead. The worst thing about the event was that my cadre and I have preached weapons safety since day one of this job, and many of the ING just don't get it. I can't tell you the number of times I've been on patrol with the ING and found myself looking down the barrel of one of our own AK-47s. Maybe, just maybe, they'll realize what it is they're doing from now on.
He's a captain with the 39th infantry and his job is to train the Iraqi National Guard.
hillbilly
We had an unfortunate incident here the other day. I was called to one of our traffic checkpoints to investigate a shooting involving one of our ING soldiers; unfortunately, the whole thing was accidental and resulted in the death of a civilian motorist.
When I got to the checkpoint, we started interviewing witnesses, trying to get a clear understanding of what happened. Usually, that's hard enough to do when you're dealing with Americans, but once you factor in the language barrier and an interpreter of questionable skills, you begin to have a recipe for one huge tension headache. After talking to the witnesses and not getting any kind of clear picture of what happened (one person said there was one shot, another said four, another said he wasn't sure if the shots came from in front of or behind the vehicle, etc.) we lined up the two vehicles involved (one ING, the other civilian) and ran a long rod through the bullet hole in the second one. From that, we determined that there was a definite downward angle to the bullet's trajectory, which meant the single shot came from the weapon mounted in the back of the ING pickup. Once the gunner was confronted with that evidence, he confessed.
Basically, the whole thing was a result of negligent weapon handling: a round in the chamber, the safety off, and a finger on the trigger, rolling down a pot-holed highway. The pickup hit a bump, the gunner fell forward and pulled the trigger, and one man wound up dead. The worst thing about the event was that my cadre and I have preached weapons safety since day one of this job, and many of the ING just don't get it. I can't tell you the number of times I've been on patrol with the ING and found myself looking down the barrel of one of our own AK-47s. Maybe, just maybe, they'll realize what it is they're doing from now on.
