31Aug06

Notes from Iraq, from a friend there:

"NDs here continue to be more than just an occasional nuisance. The predictable command response is an endless plethora of high-level directives , declaring that all guns need to be loaded less and unloaded more, in soldier s' hands less, locked up more,. Whenever an ND occurs, several dozen more 'clearing barrels' suddenly appear! The result is that soldiers here, in the zone of supposedly active fighting, have fewer and fewer opportunities to handle an d carry live ammunition and loaded guns.

The real solution is to teach our soldiers to:

(1) Keep fingers in register and out of trigger guards, except when intentionally shooting, and

(2) Keep muzzles down."

Comment: We're going in the wrong direction! UUARMED SOLDIERS MAKE TEMPTIN G TARGETS. Didn't we learn that painful lesson in Lebanon in the 1980s?

Additional clearing barrels will not solve this dilemma. We need to be training professional gunmen who are accustomed to being armed, all the tim e. We won't win this war, or any war, with the fearful and timid, smothered in clearing barrels!

/John