Pi$$ poor shooting indeed——That’s reminding me of the incident in India when the Brits weren’t ready to leave yet and a bunch of Indian protesters confronted a Limey platoon. the Brits had 400 rounds of ammo and eliminated 399 rebels. The Brit Colonel apologized to the investigating Parliamentary committee for the unaccountable miss “no excuses sir, one of us just missed”.
It’s worth recognizing that the Egypt military has a serious axe to grind with the Morsi’s. The Army pretty much runs the industrial side of the economy and Morsi was putting it into the terlet. Tourism, their biggest cash draw, was/is pretty much dead, and the Army is going to have trouble meeting payroll. And notice the difference in the crowds: Morsi’s are scruffy old bureaucrat type guys with baggy pants who really don’t have the oomph to put up much of a fight and are most likely really skeered for their kushy jobs.
That's another valuable viewpoint, while a little loose in the economic definition, the Army responds to the producers rather than the self appointed Islamic elite betters, too good to produce, destined to live lavishly in exchange for issuing suicide bombing orders.
Pi$$ poor shooting indeed
I read somewhere - perhaps UK papers that the Army was using riot rounds to include birdshot to try and disperse the crowds. That is likely why so many were wounded and so few were killed.
The Egyptian Army has plenty of belt-fed machine-guns - MG42’s, RPD’s, and M-60’s. If they wanted to mow down the crowds I am pretty sure the numbers would be far different. This was a riot response - not a kill them all response.
I attended a course with an Egyptian Officer and he detested the radical Islamists - from what I understand most of their military dislikes the radicals. This violence and the casualties cemented what I believed already - the Egyptian Army is now in an all-out war with the MB and they will never give in to them - their survival is at stake and the Army is the real power in Egypt. Morsi was a moron - too much and too fast. The MB should have found someone a little less arrogant.
Like someone else said - Go Army!