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but believe what you want.

...gee, thanks. Since I wasn't there and didn't see the evidence, I'll take my chances and believe the Marines.

I didn't say that the good officer in charge was bored and sent the Marines home. I said that the fine Army officer in charge was making sure that his star wouldn't be delayed by doing the politically correct ASS K@SSING thing by sending an entire unit home for the investigation.

Thereby #1 getting rid of any problems that the New York Times, AP, Reuters and MSM would present pics of bodies stacked like cord wood being splashed about during his review.

#2 By sending the entire unit home made it seem that the entire unit, it's officers and training were geared towards producing this civilian killing machine.

Finally by doing this, showed that if you can somehow get enough civilians killed with collateral damage you can insure that an entire unit may be removed from theatre with minimal cost of your units life.

If I was fighting for the muzzies and had enough time, I'd could set up a line of IED's with radio/cell phone/garage door opener/or delayed charges and put my RPG's/automatic weapons in the houses with some civilians that were made to stay in the house with my men. Have them fire a magazine load, let off two RPG's and then scoot out before I got flanked. Wait for the Americans to dismount and attack the hooches I was in and then go up the road and repeat the process to the next kill zone.

I would make sure that I hit towards the end of the column in order to make sure all the other trucks kept pushing forward. The key would be setting up the firing positions so that once my ambush team fired a short load into the kill zone and pulled out another team could lay down cover fire and draw the men further along the trail/road in order to "attack into the ambush". As they come forward and attack their positions (inside of houses/schools/mosques/holes in the deck) the prior team would let off another IED, followed by short firing to move the ambush a little further up the road....and on and on till choppers arrive.

Then as a muzzie I would bend over, kiss my rear good bye cause the choppers are gonna turn me into red mist if I'm caught in the open.

That's unless I can get my hands on some Strela or Igla missiles, then I want the choppers to come around too.

Of course that's just me.... usually when I set up ambushes I would probably just wet myself and panic. Marines tend to do that and also lie and cover up there mistakes like you said.

I'll defer to your opinion and judgement of the Marines in question since you know the Army officer in question would never do that (sell out his men for his star), the area in general is impossible to conduct ambush operations and the Marines probably felt like killing a bunch of civilians and got caught this time...(thank God).

They should open up a Marine barracks in Leavenworth with some apartments on the end for Blackwater. Cause there's a whole lot of plundering and killing going on.

Your tactic wouldn’t work on this road. It is the main road linking Kabul to Pakistan via Jalalabad. This did not take place inside the city, but in a fairly open area. I’ve gone jogging within sight and easy rifle range of this road many times.

At no time before or since has there been any indication the enemy is capable of putting together an ambush running for miles along the road, nor would there be any reason to do so immediately next to a major FOB with regular helicopter patrols and helicopters on alert. There are regular patrols going into bad guy country nearby offering excellent conditions for an ambush, except for the fact that it is still uncomfortably close to the FOB.

There are also regular patrols going into bad guy country not too far away that ARE ambushed because the terrain is so favorable...remember, the Pech River and Tora Bora are close to Jalalabad. The Korengal Valley isn’t too far away, and a number of men have been killed during operations there within the last few months.

One of the things the Army guys I talked to frequently mentioned (not in response to this incident) was the need to match training with the role expected in theater. If you spend 6 months training to kick ass no questions asked, and are put into an area where counterinsurgency tactics say ‘work with the locals and pass up opportunities unless you are completely certain of the target’...bad things will happen, particularly during the first few months.

There is more that will be covered by the official investigation. I’ve made comments on this thread because I think people should be aware that sometimes - certainly not always, and I would NEVER trust a press report about anything the military does - but sometimes people do the wrong thing, and this may well be one of those cases. We’re not talking about a press driven circus based on civilian accounts.

The military already has done a lot of investigating, and has already decided to pull the unit out of country and fire some individuals. It has been investigated by several services.

Even the General in the article here is not saying nothing bad happened - “Hejlik, however, stopped short of clearing the Marines of any blame in the incident, saying he could not speak to what may have happened after the initial ambush, when the unit was returning to their base.”

And frankly, I don’t know of anyone who was excessively concerned with the initial response. We KNOW they were hit by a VBIED, and they might have taken fire in the immediate area. The focus of concern is what happened as they made their way BACK to Jalalabad.

Believe what you want, but this is not a case of mean Army guys or butt-kissing paper pushers conducting a witch hunt based on press accounts.