This article is entitled War even uglier when children are the enemy. As an aside im in full support of this war but this situation just makes you go oh my god. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/usatoday/20030408/ts_usatoday/5045082&e=2
So… what’s the debate here? Your horrendous spelling?
My step father is a LRRP Ranger from Vietnam, and he faced this situation.
He still cries.
He rarely sleeps through the night.
Given the nature of the article he posted, I would think you could forgive some spelling errors.
Poor taste.
War is hell.
A sad story. It doesn’t blow my mind though and I am certainly human. These things happen in war. They always have and they always will.
I feel bad for the Marine who was forced to act in self defense. It must be hard to deal with having killed a young boy even if you had no other choice.
I don’t really see the debate.
I am sorry. He was a Soldier in the Army, not a Marine.
i dont think i could have done it myself. Especially taking out BOTH kids with a huge burst of fire when only one touched the weapon. Maybe a shot nearbye as warning for them to drop and run or shoot at thier legs or something…i dont think i could lay down heavy fire on children. I mean maybe if they pointed it at me then i would but seems to me there were other options in this situation.
With a rate of fire of 600 rounds/minute, it doesn’t take very long to put out ‘heavy fire’ and it certainly isn’t easy to keep the muzzle down when you’re doing automatic fire.
Each round tends to climb a bit higher than the one before it, and the typical idea is to fire in 1 to 3 second bursts. In 1 second, 10 rounds have left the muzzle. Aim at the legs with the first one, the tenth will hit higher than that. In a combat situation with people trying to kill you, perfect muzzle control is probably a lot harder to achieve than it is on a closed range. And it’s difficult on the range.
It’s horrible that he had to shoot those kids, but if he hadn’t one or both of them would’ve gotten that RPG to where it could’ve killed him. There was no way that situation could have had a happy ending. I just hope Pfc. Boggs won’t spend the rest of his life suffering for it.
Of course, the soldier in question had approximately one nanosecond or less to ponder the issue, but we have at least a second or two to think of alternatives. Especially since it is entirely possible for a child that age to kill you. Especially when this government over there is known to send apparently pregnant women out with car bombs, and has a known cadre of children (The “Young Lions,” I think) trained to kill.
I was wondering if this sort of thing would be the “unconventional acts” that were promised by Baghdad Bob. What would one do if a group of 10-year-old boys came upon you with weapons? Let them shoot you and your buddies? Or shoot them first?
I agree, it is a sad, sad, sick situation. Most normal parents, I would think, would endeavor to PROTECT their children, not send them out in the street where the fighting is. I do not understand it. I feel bad for all of those involved and infuriated at whoever puts children in this situation.
Maybe the debate is whether or not there’s a debate?
Jeff
Other options that might cause your fellow soldiers to get killed?
Seriously, the kids were on a battle field going for a gun. It isn’t like they were on a play ground going after a baseball.
You don’t fire warning shots at an armed enemy in a battle unless you want to die.
Shooting them in the legs with a machine gun is simply going to slice someone in half, not incapacitate them. There is no such thing as a movie style “flesh wound” that you shrug off.
Using child soldiers is of course a war crime, but the fact that a soldier attacking you is a child doesn’t negate your right and duty to defend yourself.
You fire warning shots when its little people that arnt making desicions for themselves but that will affect the rest of thier short lives. Im sure that a 10 yr old will drop ANYTHING and run with 600 machine gun rounds going off a short distance away. Or more likely just stand there and start crying. I still think there were other options.
Houston, we’ve got a problem.
In this morning’s Seattle Times, a column on this same event titled, Soldier kills boy who was reaching for weapon" indicates that only one boy was killed. This article is from the Army Times, byline Matthew Cox, though I am unable to locate the article on either source website. Curious, eh? I’m going to print the pertinent section of the article for contrast to the OP.
Looking down the street, the soldiers saw an Iraqi soldier sprinting for cover. He was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), a devastating weapon in urban combat. During the running series of gunfights that day, RPGs would destroy a Bradley fighting vehicle and a U.S. soldier would be critically wounded.
The Americans opened fire and cut down the Iraqi soldier. Then, darting out from an alley, came a child no older than 10.
Boggs raised his weapon, a light machine gun that spits out 600 rounds a minute.
Boggs had his finger on the trigger. At that range, a few hundred feet, he knew he wouldn’t miss.
“I didn’t shoot. I didn’t shoot,” he said.
Then the child reached down and grabbed the rocket-propelled grenade.
“That’s when I took him out,” Boggs said. “I laid down quite a few bursts.”
The small boy lay dead in the street. Another young boy ran from the alley but made no move to pick up the RPG, and the soldiers held their fire. The second boy dragged the dead child away.
Anyone care to discuss this seeming contradiction?
WOW…dunno i just read the articles i dont write em.
Fog of War? <the new catch phrase for confusion>
Monday morning quarterbacking is not one of them.
That’s got to be the dumbest quote ever.