Anon

MILINET(excerpted):

"Iraq: Lessons From The Sandbox" by Richard Venola.

"Twenty years later, the Beretta 92F is still here, like a party guest you were pressured to invite and who now won't leave. It works, is accepted, but unloved. Beretta's design doesn't seem to be the issue, and with 40,000 Crimson Trace Laser grips headed into the system, it's going to be significantly upgraded - but caliber IS the issue."

"What is notable about its (the AK 47) use in Iraq is the total lack of anything approaching aimed fire. Lance Corporal Isaac McKay
put it simply: "They just stick it around the corner and that's it," he says Images from television invariably show insurgents doing 'spray and pray' or 'Beirut Offhand' on front of the TV cameras.

Bob says he asked a former sergeant in the Medina division (now in the new Iraqi army) to demonstrate the proper technique for firing the AK. The Iran-Iraq and Desert Storm veteran put it on his hip and sprayed in a wide arc. Fortuantely for us, a lot of this has to do with Islamic fatalism, the 'If Allah wills it, it will hit' attitude."

"In Fallujah, Marines with ACOG-equipped M16A4s created a stir by taking so many head shots that until the wounds were closely examined, some observers thought the insurgents had been executed. Since then the Corps has split (as usual) into East Coast and West Coast schools. The Lejeunites want to go with a special DMR AR (SAM-R) variant with a free-floating barrell (some say in 6.8 mm SPC) while the Pendeltonians just want to put an ACOG on a regular M16A4"

"A man can see a window and hit it with iron sights, but a scope sees INTO that window and can hit a target inside."

" 'Mostly, they give us LAW, which just doesn't work, and neither does the new CLP. Mixing three parts CLP with one part autotmatic transmission fluid works great.' They call it the 'Sergeant Major's Blend'."

"Troop leaders are concerned about the rise of an unusual and dangerous form of indiscipline: Men are failing to report serious wounds for fear of having to be medevace'd. Morale among the combat units is so high that men will risk courts-martial, maiming or death to stay with their buddies in the fight. How's that for a leadership challenge?"

"Such is the current public awe for snipers that the next generation of barroom BS artists will all say they were 'snipers with Recon' just as the RVN generation blowhards were all 'Green Berets working for the CIA'."

(Hehehehehehe)

" 'Johnny Jihad likes a stand-up infantry fight,' says Bob. 'It's their macho thing.' According to others, the Jihadists like to squirt a burst at a patrol and then fall back if something heavier is fired back. But if the Americans swap rifle fire with them, they'll bunch up to encourage Ahmed or whomever is doing the firing. Marines entertain them in this manner while they coordinate mortars and air support."

"Whatever you have noticed about the continuing fighting in the wake of 9/11, the part that stands out is the lopsided kill ratio. In this case, a lot of the credit goes to the drug war right here at home. Door kicking on crack houses has refined our urban entry techniques. The main differences are that the Iraqis don't have a pit bull and our guys aren't throwing stun grenades."

NOTE: I do not agree with all the author's conclusions, but it is an interesting read nontheless.

Bluesman

The part about guys not doing wound reports, even though they were serious? I have a story from Ft. Bragg when I was up there during the 'phoon evac last year:

One of our new guys (a Specialist, just out of whatever Special Forces course he had to complete to be fully ready for The Show) somehow talked his way into a six-month deployment to Iraq. He was supposed to go to one of the High-Value Target hunting units as just another trigger-puller, but in a typical Army screw-up found himself training Iraqi Special Forces guys in Iskandariyah BY HIMSELF. Yep, this Specialist was operating completely independently with an Iraqi unit!

ANYhoo, on a training op, something happened, probably a weapons-handling incident, and youngster had a 'friendly' bullet mangle the left tricep. It was a serious wound, but our intrepid warrior figgered, "No biggie - I'm right-handed."

He swore the Iraqi medic and doctor to secrecy, and changed the dressing himself twice a day (one-handed, of course). This went on for a few days, when he finally came to the notice of an Iraqi colonel who was checking on the progress of his SpecOps boys. He noticed that their one and only trainer was straightening his left arm with his right! He could bend it just fine, but to straighten it, he'd have to reach over with the other hand.

The colonel figured out which American unit this specialist belonged to, and called on the specialist's CO, who immediately called his man. The exchange was a masterpiece of 'barrack-room lawyer legalese':

Captain: Specialist, did you get hurt the other day?
Specialist: No, sir! Who told you THAT? (Disdain in his voice; feigned incredulity.) [NOTE: It didn't really hurt, and besides, it happened at night. Well, late afternoon, anyway.]
Captain: An Iraqi colonel says you appeared injured when he looked in on your Iraqi trainees.
Specialist: He must've been talking about PT, sir. The Iraqis were going extra hard when their colonel was around; I think they were just trying to impress him. I guess he thought I was slackin'. [NOTE: The specialist wasn't doing push-ups or pull-ups, but ran the four miles with his trainees.]
Captain: So you're saying you're not injured? [Suspicious about the answers...]
Specialist: Are you trying to put me in for a Purple Heart, sir? [Lighthearted attempt to avoid answering directly...]
Captain: Can you come over to the Company tomorrow? [THAT ought to clear things up.]
Specialist: Gotta get these bad-asses ready for graduation, sir. Maybe you can come out here... [Knowing that it almost certainly wouldn't happen.]
Captain: Good idea. Meet me at the gate at 1200. [Total bluff; stuck at the company all day.]
Specialist: Got Land Nav instruction from 0900 to 1500. You want to come out with us, sir? Teach a few tricks to my guys? [Total bluff; but he'd re-run the Land Nav drills again, because you can't have too much training in THAT.]
Captain: Some other time, maybe. Last thing, Specialist: What's the name of your doctor?
Specialist: [Long silence.] Sir, it's Captain Xxxxxx. But he didn't do anything wrong. I told him ALL American soldiers can operate with one arm tied behind their backs, and we didn't consider getting winged a 'serious wound'. Let's leave him out of it, okay?
Captain: When do your men graduate?
Specialist: Fifteen days, sir.
Captain: Sergeant Yyyyy will come up tonight to get your trainees through the rest of the week. When he arrives, you bring his vehicle back here. Tomorrow morning, you report to sick call, to Doctor Zzzzz ONLY. He's a friend of mine, and he'll look at you to see that you're not crippled. If you can get through the last few days to graduation, you can go back and see your guys down the aisle.
Specialist: Thank you, sir.

Captain: And Specialist? I was enlisted before I got commissioned. You're not smarter than me.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

Anon

Lol...