El Tejon said:
If it is just one person, he must be Bosnian or Western convert?
Maybe foreign team that got Western training?
El Tejon said:
Uber, yes, but the fact that he hit anything at all leads me to believe he must be a Westerner.
El Tejon, that doesn't make any sense. Basically you just classified all non-westerners as crappy shots. Not only that, but because apparently easterners can't shoot well, then he must be western or western trained? That is a very ethnocentric and naive statement, completely underestimating the threat.
Zundfolge points out that the sniper(s) most definitely could be indigenous.
TexasSIGman said:
Probably several people's stories combined to create a mythical "Super Sniper of Allah".
Sniper propaganda was very successful for the Russians and Germans....
And it worked very well for the Americans with Hathcock and the whole Whitefeather mystique. Like the Jubas, there were many American snipers working as Whitefeathers to help in demoralizing the opposition, giving the impression of being a super sniper while at the same time protecting Hathcock from being able to be pinpointed specifically for who he was.
Riphalman said:
well, just remember...........
There are a few truely professional snipers on our side and they are working to keep America safe and free. I'd pit them against those creeps anyday....anynight.
This is another similar enthnocentric perspective that completely underestimates the opposition. Apparently only true professional snipers aren't fighting against the US. Is that it?
While you might be willing to put the snipers protecting America up against the Iraqi snipers any day or any night, the fantasy sniping competition is immaterial. One of the things you have missed along with several others here (and several who did not) is that sniping isn't about what type of training you had, where you had it, your birth origin, or about how high your hits to misses ratio is. Sniping is simply a tactic used to neutralize, demoralize, and hassle the enemy as usually performed by a singular shooter or a shooting team. Apparently, these so-called non-professional Iraqi-side snipers are being successful in these aspects.
So do y'all really think our opposition is all that terribly trained and unprofessional and that our well trained, armored-up soldiers are that much more professional for some reason? Have y'all considered it in relation to the number of rounds expended by our soldiers to defeat the enemy? Maybe the unprofessional enemy has better body armor than our soldiers or maybe our soldiers are not true professional soldiers. The lowest in theatre estimates I have seen are that we are expending some 12,000 rounds per enemy kill. Some put the numbers higher at 50K or so. Overall, we are expending some 250-300K per enemy killed when you consider how much ammo the US is burning through each year as part of training and operations (which is about 1.8 billion rounds per year).
So are American soldiers that poorly trained and unprofessional that even with the low end estimates that they need to expend in ammo more than double the body weight of each opposition fighter killed? (12K rounds of 5.56 being somewhere over 350 lbs of weight)
Of course not! You would claim that the number of rounds expended does not relfect whether or not the US soldiers are well (and western) trained or professional, but that said soldiers are most definitely professional and well trained, having the discipline to continue prolonged engagements and to continually take the fight to the enemy as much as is necessary to get the job done.
So for 12K rounds per kill average, is the Iraqi opposition that much better armored that US forces such that their armor holds up much better and has fewer gaps than the US's body armor such that each bad guy needs to be shot thousands of times? No, of course not. In fact, the vast majority of the opposition don't have anything resembling armor.
So if it isn't the training of US troops that is at fault, isn't that the opposition has superior body armor, then how come we have to shoot a few hundred pounds of ammo for each opposite force killed?
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The point here is this. It matters not what those of us at home think about the enemy. It does not matter if we think the enemy is professional or not. It does not matter if we think the enemy is well trained or not. We make such self righteous claims to reassure ourselves that the fight by us is just and good.
There are many ways we can look at data to estimate whether or not our actions or effective or if the actions of the opposition forces are being effective. Depending on what data are used and the perspective considered, both sides can come out looking pretty amazing or pretty crappy.
And that APC guy with the candy bar . . . 
