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I posted this on another thread, I hope you don’t mind me copying it into here.

This situation was forseen by the SEALs in the book “Lone Survivor” by Marcus Luttrell.

Those guys, out there in the mud and the cold, came across a couple of goatherds. The goatherds were clearly hostile, and the SEALs discussed what to do with them.

These guys were out there, on their own, with a mission to accomplish. If they let the goatherds go, they would go to the enemy, no questions asked. The enemy would come back for them in force, to let them go would be akin to putting their own heads in the noose.

But if they killed them, they knew that they would be at the mercy of their own countrymen, the politically correct chain of command, the politicians, the media, and ultimately, you and me.

If they killed these goatherds to accomplish the mission and save their own skin, they had to depend on their own chain of command to understand the circumstances and stand up for them, because they knew DAMN well that the politicians, the media, and ultimately, you and me would call for them to be thrown to the wolves.

They made the hard choice, all of them against their better judgement, knowing it meant their own lives, to let those goatherds go. The goatherds did what was expected, came back in force with the enemy, and left three of the four SEALS dead, the leader awarded the Medal of Honor, and 16 Special Forces men dead when their helicopter was shot down trying to rescue them.

Those guys made a choice, based on the knowledge that WE...YOU AND ME would hang them out to dry, because we have the luxury of NOT being there. We, their chain of command, the politicians and the media all have the luxury of not getting our hands dirty, but being able to pass judgement on them.

I am not saying they did the wrong thing by not killing those goatherds. I admire that they had the courage to make that choice. But the lone survivor, Marcus Luttrell, thinks the “right” choice was to kill those goatherds on the spot, and maybe there would be the families of 20 Special Forces guys who would have their loved one back.

The guy these SEALs punched was one of the terrorists responsible for the death of the Blackwater contractors, which eventually resulted in the death of another 50 Marines in addition to the 500 or so wounded there. This was probably one of the same people who was hanging around with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, sawing the heads off of people in film studios. In Bing West’s book “No True Glory” he talks about the studio the Marines found, with a guy who had had his legs cut off, but hadn’t died immediately (which was their intent) and they left the guy to suffer for who knows how long holed up in a little cell. This guy and the people he hung around with don’t deserve the protection of civilized society.

So, if these guys lied because they socked a scumbag responsible for the deaths of a lot of people to cover their ass, I don’t fault them a bit. I don’t give a rat’s ass if they covered it up.

Turns out they were well justified in trying to cover it up, seeing the way their chain of command and countrymen have left them twisting in the wind and the way this has turned out.