To Whom It May Concern

Friendly Fire

Listening to the news today, I heard more about possible deadly accidents being attributed to 'friendly fire' in Iraq. Friendly fire is when you are engaged in combat by your own troops, or vice versa. I had to just shake my head though when I listened to the reporter's idiotic comments about friendly fire, as though it is a completely avoidable risk and our troops are just being a bunch of morons out there killing one another.

Let's get a few things straight about 'friendly fire'. First off, there has always been friendly fire in wars. Thankfully, as technology has moved along and brought about better weapons and battlefield tools, the number of casualties due to friendly fire has also gone down. Now, technology advancing has also brought along easier methods for determining death and injury due to friendly fire. This is a double edged sword. Although determining casualties due to friendly fire is a tremendous asset and learning tool for the military to use in determining battlefield tactics, it also paints this broad picture of the military as being prone to blundering stupidity. This is just not true.

Battlefields throughout time have been graphic, fast paced, and tremendously confusing. This is especially so during modern warfare. Although methods of determining friend or foe are as advanced as ever, the speed at which things move on the battlefield has also become astronomically fast. A patriot missile battery operator may have only 5 to 10 seconds to determine if an incoming 'blip' on the radar is an enemy missile or a friendly plane flying in at high speed. The marines use an amphibious armored personnel carrier called the LAV-25 that looks remarkably like a soviet block armored personnel carrier, so much so that there have been at least 2 cases I know of where AH-64 Apache attack helicopters or A-10 Warthog attack planes have destroyed them, creating more friendly casualties.

But even with all of this going on, one needs to realize that there are far less friendly fire casualties today than ever before. I spoke to a relative who told me that in the Pacific theater, during World War II, if a new lieutenant was not listening to his sergeants and getting lots of people in the platoon killed, someone would take the lieutenant out on a hill to 'recon' something, and a sniper in his own platoon would shoot him. For obvious reasons I won't say who this relative is, but things like that were a lot more common during WW2 than most people would believe, and probably even during later wars.

To change the topic just a bit here, something I hope a lot of people understand... when American troops begin door to door combat withing the cities of Iraq, otherwise known as MOUT warfare (Military Operations, Urban Terrain), there are going to be a LOT of casualties. I don't like it, but that's just how it is. Don't be surprised if the death-toll for United States military personnel ends up around 1000 or higher, that's just an indicator of how incredibly dangerous MOUT warfare is. My only hope is that somehow, the people in Iraq will realize that things can be better with Saddam gone, and embrace the freedom that the United States wants them to have. If not, it's going to be a long drawn out affair within the cities.