Oh well, I think you can get the Gist of what I’m attempting to say!!?

As far as that example of an airplane zeroed in building containing Innocent Victims, How innocent are they?

I am NOT advocating wide open “Kill All” as I’m sure the Wackos on here will attempt to portray, BUTT, the Iraqis must also take responsibility for Their Country and for their Freedom! They are allowing the Terrorists to use them as Shields! It works both ways!

If our military has to think about it before they respond, well, nuff said!

We are being to PC and it’s getting our military KILLED!

As a JTAC, I control the biggest bang available to our forces in Iraq. As such, I have to be thoroughly versed in things like ROE, approval authority, and collateral damage estimation for all of the variety of ordnance that I have available to employ. I never felt like the written ROE placed any unnecessary restrictions on my ability to employ that ordnance. Some of my colleagues worked for commanders that severely limited their ability to do their job, while the commander that I worked for placed a great deal of trust in us to make correct and well-informed decisions and was never a hindrance to us. Commanders that fall in the former category need to be removed and replaced, and commanders in the latter category need to be actively sought out and encouraged.

R U L E S of E N T R A P M E N T!!!

I have not seen any instatiation of what you are calling “trigger happy idiots,” and you might want to go to the Haditha coverage in my archives to see my take; Haditha is NOT an instance of NOT following the ROE. They were involved in room clearing operations.

Now. I am indeed fully aware of why ROE exists. It is a complex fabric of reasons, including just war theory. But my argument has never been specifically that revised ROE would help us win the counterinsurgency. If you’ll go back through the links I have provided above, you will see that my first article included only instances from MSM reports. The instances are something that I happened upon, and began to string together a coherent view (at least in my opinion), and after publishing this first piece, I received letters from NCOs that laid the groundwork for the second article.

This second article is where the real meat of my prose is found, and relies on the reports by the NCOs rather than in anything I say or don’t say. This is the mistake most people are making when they respond to the posts, or send me notes about ROE (I have received many notes on this issue). People are responding as if I have made up these instances, or as if I have created these personalities in order to tell a story.

These instances came from real people, who in fact had much more to report to me on ROE than I was able to publish. It is not within my rights to publish on information that is classified or would compromise operations security. But suffice it to say that the reports were even more comprehensive and stunning when included in the whole context of the reports that I received.

Also notice when you go back and read the ROE posts that I have made, that the argument, once again, is not and never has been that it will help the US offensively to revise the ROE. My argument is and has always been that the current ROE place US troops in undue danger. This is not about winning the counterinsurgency. It is about the US troops.

When I receive notes from officers who have never seen combat but who are also training to be JAGs saying that the ROE are just fine, and then notes from highly respected, experienced and decorated NCOs saying that we have lost US lives due to the ROE, it isn’t difficult for me to determine which view is the most valuable.

Not a single note nor any comment that I have allowed to be posted over my site has even come anywhere close to convincing that there is any compelling reason to revise what I have said or what I think about ROE. Just the opposite. In the many comments and notes I have received, given that not a single one of them provides me with a compelling reason to demur to another view only encourages me and strengthens my commitment to my view.

Perhaps with better training the ROE could be relaxed.

As an aside; in Beirut, during the early 80’s, there were no less than about 120 different political and religious parties, factions and gangs (plus the Syrians forces and the regular Lebanese Army) and each of them exerted control upon a defined area. At that time, I noticed two interesting things which were: violent fights between these factions could erupt sporadically (and nightly, in an overwhelming number of the cases); and, the probability to occur and frequency of those fights was unmistakably linked to the weather (biggest and deadliest fights happened mostly during summers). Now, I have no idea about whether someone ever attempted a behavioral study linking an historical analysis of conflicts, revolution and guerilla warfare, and weather?

Don’t ask me where my point is. I don’t know myself! I’m just randomly mulling over facts and I’m trying to figure out as acurately as possible how incidents happen in Iraq, this in an endeavor to stumble across something I missed to see.

Regards,