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Many military-type Freepers may remember the heated thread that followed the post of 09 Oct 02

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/765810/posts

that discussed the death of one Marine and wounding of another in Kuwait when they were fired on by Kuwaitis during a training exercise. Many uniformed Freepers argued that the Marines were to blame because they only had blank ammunition and were unable to immediately return fire. This article reveals the potential tragedy in that approach.

My BIGGEST questions:

This was a marine SERGEANT
Who mixed live and blank ammo together
Who picked up a magazine of live ammo (they weigh about 3x what a magazine of blank ammo does)
Did not notice live rounds in the magazine (live and blank rounds look completely different).
Chambered his weapon and fired THROUGH HIS BLANK FIRING ADAPTER (if doing this does not make you go "what the f*ck" - I do not know what will). Then he KEPT FIRING.

And they make fun of officers...

Many uniformed Freepers argued that the Marines were to blame because they only had blank ammunition and were unable to immediately return fire.

Yep. I remember that. I participated in one of those threads. People were going over the top- saying we were crazy for suggesting that the Military shouldn't mix live and blank ammo during a training exercise. This is what happens when you do. Training is intense- it's an adrenal rush. MOUT training is even more so. You act without thinking often. I can well imagine it never entered this Marine SGT's mind what he was doing as he slapped that mag in his weapon.

You can't allow Marines or Soldiers to be running around with both types of ammo at the same time. I'm surprised the barrel didn't explode with the blank adapator in place...

A momentary lapse in standard safety rules caused that Marine's death. They say that familiarity breeds contempt and I guess that the sargent had shot his M4 with blanks so long that pointing it and pulling the trigger at other Marines no longer caused any danger flags to go off.

Check your mags, double check your mags, and then have a buddy check them for the correct loads.

This was no accident. With the BFD in place, the M-4 (m-16) in the hands of that Sgt would have blown up in his face. They are built that way. I have seen what happens to an M-16 that had a live round up the spout with a BFD installed. Trashed the weapon and put the trooper in the hospital for a week (and out of the Army) There is no mention of a BFD in the report, but one can assume that they would be in use during a "blank-only" operation. At the very least this was gross negligence and tops the scale at premeditated murder.
I, as a regular habit, carried live rounds quite often (against regs!) while training, as did many of my buddies. We were VERY careful to seperate the live mags from any traing ammo(blanks) that we may have had. The best method was to use a 20 round mag for live ammo VS a 30 round for blanks. (we also taped the tops of the 20 round mags) I'm not sure why we did this (seemed like a good idea at the time) but as long as there was no trouble, it was not stopped by our NCOs, who were also packing live ammo. There may also be a vast gulf between the operational attitude that we had as scouts vs the average line infantry Marine of today. Whatever the reason behind the death of that young Marine, the morale of that unit will be trashed, the respect that the troops had for their NCOs will be eroded and the combat readiness of the unit will be reduced.