2nd Foot,
Obviously you are hell-bent on finding some fault in the US soldiers who were attacked in that convoy. But you have made some mistakes in so doing. I will bring them to light:
I guess you don’t know much about such convoy attacks, so let me help you understand them. There is not just one particular place where a convoy is attacked on a street like that. The convoy was attacked at several places on their route. AFTER the initial attack with grenades and small arms, and after the convoy has moved @200-300m forward, if you listen to the audio, you will hear an officer say,
“Is that them?”
Another states, “Yea it’s them.”
Then a couple of seconds later you hear a deeper sounding machine gun firing as the convoy fires back at their attackers. The officer says,
“THAT’S not them.”
The other replies, “No that’s not them. That’s us.”
So here you have a convoy that is attacked at numerous places on their route, and you hear the US troops firing back with the deeper sounding machine gun using very few and intermitten rounds of quite obviously retrained fire…
“boom boom… boom… boom… boom boom”
That is very common in Iraq. American convoys are often fired upon from several locations on the same road by insugents in buildings, around street corners, etc.
A minute later in the video, an officer says, “More on the route. We got more coming.”
Now why does he say that? He says it because he knows what is going on, and may have even been in that situation more than once. He knows that they are about to be fired on again, even though they have already been fired upon more than once along the way.
They were not traveling 50 mph either. They were moving probably less than 40. I have watched the video numerous times carefully. But their speed has nothing to do with it, since they were attacked here, and a hundred meters later, and 300 meters after that, etc.
The buildings on the right are 7-10m from the street. The building to the right where the soldier is firing is several stories tall. Watch the video again. That is where the soldier is pointing his weapon - at insurgents firing from the windows of that building. I hope he hit the f*uck too.
Indeed they were returning fire, as another report states. US convoys are attacked all the time, and they return fire all the time.
Again, they were not out of any “kill area”. There is not just one “kill area” to convoy ambushes in the cities in Iraq. There was no excessive fire that can be determined from that video. In fact, you can hear that a US machinegunner is using very few, carefully placed rounds un unsustained fire!
You are implying something which is impossible to determine by anyone except the men in the convoy. You did not see and you cannot hear all of the weapons fire from that video which was made from inside just one SUV with the windows rolled up in a convoy of several vehicles. When US convoys are attacked, their vehicles are often riddled with bullets. Sometimes they don’t make it, and are cut to peices. And you make the assumption that the US troops used excessive fire? Come on man. Don’t stray so far from reality here.
You have seen that they were firing at the enemy in and on top of buildings, not into the air. But even if they were, I would not condemn it under those circumstances.
If you don’t like it that soldiers return fire from convoys when attacked, I suggest you write a letter to Blair and ask him to tell the british military to be sweet boys and not shoot bullets in town when grenades and AK-47’s are riddling their vehicles with bullets. Tell him how that’s not being nice.