My uncle was a Marine,and he sent this to me last night via e-mail.
" We have so damn many people who believe that life in a combat zone is like an old B movie,i. e., where only the bad guys shoot first, but they always miss so the good guys can shoot the gun out of their hands.. According to these folks, our guys should assume everyone they come upon is an innocent civilian until after that person opens fire. In the real world of harms way, doing that gets you and your buddies killed.
We were taught to: 1] never leave a live enemy in our rear, 2] anything worth shooting once is worth at least one more bullet, 3] when passing "dead" enemy, make certain they really are dead before they are behind you, 4] when headquarters wanted prisoners, patrols would be sent out to get them, otherwise we were to complete our mission, and 5]we learned from veterans not to assume anyone was a civilian, innocent or not, in a battle zone.
I have seen the video. The Marine could not see the guys hands. My only questions are what has happened to the practice of tossing in a grenade before entering an enclosure, and why were not more Marines shooting?"
