Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Posted on 05/19/2010 8:16:47 AM PDT by FReepaholic
From Michael Yon's Facebook page:
An American soldier emailed from Afghanistan saying that his unit has been ordered to patrol with no round in the chamber.
http://www.facebook.com/MichaelYonFanPage/posts/123097424378854
Michael Yon (born 1964)[1] is an American writer and photographer. He served in the Special Forces in the early-1980s, one of the youngest soldiers to pass the Green Beret selection process, and he became a general freelance writer in the mid-1990s. He focused on military writing after the invasion of Iraq.[2] Yon has been embedded on numerous occasions with American and British troops in Iraq, most prominently a deployment with the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment (Deuce Four) of the 25th Infantry Division in Mosul, Iraq that ended in September 2005.[3]
The U.S. military has learned NOTHING from the Vietnam War and Beirut 1983.
No rounds in the chamber?
It makes me get pains in my stomach.
This cannot be a real order.
maybe poppies in the barrels of their rifles?
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Let's hope not posthumously.
WTF?!?!!?
As a civilian in a non-combat zone I carry with one in the chamber!!!
This sounds like a case where the soldier needs to tell his NCO or officer to go eff himself and load up.
What are they gonna do? Bend his dogtags and send him to Afghanistan?
This doesn’t surprise me. Certainly, this comes down from Secretary of the Army or higher. No local command in Iraq would come up with such a lamebrain idea, as this will get our guys killed.
The time it takes to chamber a round plus the fact that the weapon isn’t up and ready is crazy if bad guys are anywhere nearby.
This makes it obvious that, to this administration, our troops are expendible.
I knew Michael, we went to HS together. Never knew he went SF. Small world.
My intentions were to write several more dispatches about missions, yet there seems to be so little interest in Afghanistan that it hardly seems worth the time to write about real missions.
There is little embedded work coming from Afghanistan. McChrystal's censorship seems to be working. (For now.) He's losing the war and covering it up. The deception is easy when so few people are paying attention. We are losing the war. At this rate it will be lost.
tracking. want more info too, please
Same for me in Chicago, curiously!! ;-)
We had a similar rule, but like you, I was in constant violation of the rule. Some orders were too stupid to obey.
http://twitter.com/michael_yon
He's got some interesting photos and updates.
The Secretary of the Army cannot make such a ruling, he does not have operational control of any troops in Afghanistan. This comes from the operational chain of command in the theater.
Don’t know if this makes sense, depends on the conditions on the ground. I sometimes did this as a rifle company commander in Vietnam based on where we were and who was around. Biggest problem with rounds in the chamber is some knucklehead who takes his weapon off safe and accidently shoots a buddy. Not good.
Wanna bet?
So where is our great “conservative patriot” and champion of America, Mitchie McConnell, trumpeting this sort of disgrace all over FOX news (the only network which would run the story.) Perhaps he’s too busy supporting other RINOs and planning for fewer republican senate seats after November.
I guess I should have prefaced that sentence with “I would hope that...”
Yes, there are a few buffoons in ranking positions in every branch of service.
So what was SOP before that? Round chambered, safety engaged? I’d go safety off, bolt back, dustcover closed and use the bolt release as a safety.
Indeed. And it seems to be getting worse.
What’s next, have them patrol with the clip removed too? So, if you come upon a bad guy, what do you do, club him with your rifle?
I agree that no local command in Iraq would come up with an order for troops in Afghanistan, but I doubt it comes from SECARMY. He's not even in their chain of command. Anyhoo, with the ejection port cover closed, no one can tell visually if there's a round chambered or not. Put the bolt back for precombat inspection, quietly ride it home once you're out of the wire--if anyone asks, you felt "threatened" and took the appropriate action.
Someone needs to find out who the A-hole his tha issued that order and why they’re putting our troops into danger for nothing.
That commander who issued the order should be on a street patrol with No rounds in his chamber.
That could be why we lost a group of troops to a suicide bomber just yesterday.
Do these Commanders ever learn?
Pretty easy to accidentally hit the release when getting in or out of vehicles, juggling equipment, etc, and then you’re flagging someone with an unsafe weapon. Best to use the safety for what it was designed for, IMHO.
Yeah...probably best to use the chamber for what it was designed for, as well.
It most certainly can. And probably is.
An AF Sargent I met some years ago told me they had those orders during his 2 tours of Bosnia. You were not allowed to load your weapon until *after* you were fired upon.
Where is the ACLU on this? Seems to me the military has no legal right to put soldiers into potential combat situations without firearms that are loaded. Ought to be in court right now.........Uh, wait, could it be the ACLU doesn't give a $hit about the lives of our servicemen??
The New Castrati, as Rush calls them.
If true, then the REMF officer who gave the order should be placed on point on a patrol, at the end of a bayonet if necessary.
It’s a war zone and any soldier should be able to defend himself and his unit without any restrictions on his ability to do that.
Sir, the enemy is attacking, they’re at the gates !!
Well, then fill out the necessary requisition forms in triplicate and await your orders ...
Sir ?
Absent the "who, what, when, where", let us continue to exercise our imagination.
Yep, sure sounds like Beirut, 1983.
Better to have dead American troops than to lose “positive control,” meaning the higher command, safely located miles away, will tell you when you are in enough danger to fire back.
If you have knuckleheads like that out on a patrol, and you know it, you didn't train them well enough or the Army send you some real damn dregs.
Exactly...WTF is going to know? :-)
This is the kind of stupidity that leads to fragging.
No joke.
Just to be clear, “no round in the chamber” doesn’t mean the magazine isn’t full, right? Need more information. The only conceivable purpose of such an order (no round in chamber) would be to slow down any response a soldier might have to an ambush. ..Which makes no sense on the face of it.
Why not just make them carry in Condition 4 while they are at it!
Simply Unbelievable!
As an officer serving in Afghanistan, if one of my men violated this order, I would be duty bound to praise his readiness to deal with emerging situations. [Note: I am only an “officer serving in Afghanistan” by the Blumenthal standard. In actual fact, my service ended several years ago, but this is the Obama generation so the truth doesn’t have to influence my words.] A good officer distinguishes between orders he doesn’t understand but that could be reasonable and orders that he understands perfectly well and knows cannot be reasonable. My duty to the Constitution of the United States extended to loyalty to my men and my country but not quite far enough that it included blind loyalty to a Community-Organizer-in-Chief who wanted to “send a message” at the risk of my men’s lives.
Was it mentioned what type of unit this soldier is in or what his MOS/SSI is?
If this is an infantryman or a SOF trooper, this is totally unacceptable. However, if this is a member of a support unit, his CO may have good reason for this directive.
Lately, Michael Yon has posted some things which make you wonder about his present state-of-mind. (See blackfive.net for a long discussion of his “problems”.) Several military sites have ceased their praise of him.
And if I had not done those things that I needed to do to ensure that my troops did not get shot, either by friendly or unfriendly troops, then I would have been the knucklehead. You sound like some genius on the division staff.
good question.
were the cooks and clerks in camp told not to chamber a round?
or
Was it infantrymen on patrol?
It’s you who had so little confidence in your men that you called them knuckleheads, and worried so much about ADs/NDs that you agreed it was best they not have chambered rounds ON PATROL.
That speaks for itself.
Write about it in your next novel
I will. And you’ll still remember your troops as knuckleheads that you didn’t trust to carry chambered rounds ON PATROL.
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