Post #102,608
5/19/03 3:59:58 PM
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Since it reads as a Hollywood production,
Why not bring in Hollywood weapons? They seem to fire forever without reloading, nor causing serious bodily injury.
And technically, only one soldier would have to be firing blanks. The rest of the unit would be loaded and ready for defense.
If their intel was adequate, then they would have known that there were no Iraqis on site.
Many scenerios to play with. Give each troop one blank, w/o BFA. Each fires one blank, clears weapon and ready for combat. Bunch of blanks fires, no damage do, Hollywood gets its script.
Sorry, myth not debunked.
[link|mailto:jbrabeck@attbi.com|Joe]
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Post #102,645
5/19/03 7:52:57 PM
5/19/03 11:23:51 PM
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Re use of blanks
First question that comes to my mind is how would a witness really know the difference ? - one way they might know is if there were no bullet holes anwhere but there were shots fired (inside).
I agree re the point made about recycling the gas pistons of the mentioned weapons but when we (Air Force) used blanks in similar weapons we had to fit a special plug to the barrel that allowed some gas to escape but left enough gas to cycle the piston & reload mechanism. This attachment was clamped over the barrel of the rifle. The excess gas exited through the muzzel flash elimination slots at the tip of the barrel.
Just to add impressions on reporting 'facts'. I had been in Manila just after a major coup there (when Major 'Gringo' Hosnan tried to lead a coup against Cory Aquino's govt). In the Makati district, several weeks later, there were bullet marks in many walls of buildings - very clear evidence of a lot of shooting.
Also was in Tienanmen just after the infamous 'Tienanmen Incident' & whilst walking round the square was completely puzzled at the lack of bullet pit marks allowing that our press had painted a picture of 3000+ dying there. There appeared to be no new brick work on the bulidings but there were some new flagstones at one corner of square. It was later during further research that I learned that the actual shooting and most deaths had not happened in Tienanmen square at all but in the Muxidi district (at the Muxidi overpass) and also several students died outside the university.
The point I am making here is that sometimes events are inaccurately described or portrayed, but that also doesn't mean they didn't happen. It can be difficult filtering the 'noise'. As for debunking the BBC report, the guns story in BLOG does nothing of the sort. It merely raises the issue of were blanks really used and of the problems in firing blanks in gas piston rifles. My military experience was that we had special attachments that allowed us to shoot blanks in them so it could be argued that I have just debunked the BLOG article. Both positions assume the eyewitness knew what he was talking about in saying blanks were used. That in turn is dependant on the reported words of the Iraqi witness being accurate.
But as always, we are likely to believe what we want & the facts don't always play a role in our beliefs. I lean toward the BBC/Iraqi story as being more credible that *anything* that came out of the US on the topic.
Cheers
Doug Marker
Edited by dmarker
May 19, 2003, 11:23:51 PM EDT
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Post #102,743
5/20/03 10:07:08 AM
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Re: Since it reads as a Hollywood production,
Exerpted from a salon.com satirical NBC interoffice "memo" re "Saving Private Lynch": But -- and this is the wildest part, as Dr. Harith al-Houssona told the Guardian and the Toronto Star, two days before the American raid, a few of the senior hospital staff attempted to send Jessica back to the Americans in an ambulance. "I told her I will try and help you escape to the American Army," he said, "but I will do this very secretly because I could lose my life." They bundled her into an ambulance and instructed the driver to take her to the U.S. checkpoint, just a kilometer away. "But when the ambulance got within 300 meters, they began to shoot," said Dr. al-Houssona. "There wasn't even a chance to tell them, 'We have Jessica. Take her.'"
...
Three days after the raid, an American military doctor showed up at the hospital. He came, he said, to thank them for the superb surgery.
"You do realize you could have just knocked on the door and we would have wheeled Jessica down to you, don't you?" Dr. Mudhafer Raazk replied.
Which raises another ticklish question: According to two different reporters, the day before, the raid, a waiter from Nasiriya's al-Diwan restaurant is approached near the hospital by U.S. Special Forces with an Arabic interpreter, and they ask him if any Iraqi troops are still in the hospital. "And I say, 'No, they're all gone,'" the waiter replied.
There's more: Fox News reports that, to confirm Jessica's location, "officials with the Defense Intelligence Agency equipped and trained an Iraqi informant with a concealed video camera. On the day of the raid, the informant walked around the hospital, videotaping entrances and a route to Lynch's room."
If true, wouldn't the military planners have known there were no Iraqi forces inside the hospital when they made the raid? Were the slam-bang commando tactics mostly for show? According to different interviews with the doctors, there were anywhere from one to three cameramen in uniform with the raiding team.
Could we be making a made-for-television movie about a made-for-television movie?
These days, when told of stories that Lynch was abused while in their care, the hospital staff are outraged. Said Nurse Shinah: "This is a lie. But why ask me? Why don't you ask Jessica what kind of treatment she received?"
In fact, the Iraqi accounts of good treatment for Pvt. Lynch were corroborated by Pam Nicolais, a cousin serving as a spokesman for the family, in an interview with the Herald Dispatch in Huntington, W.Va. "That goes along with what Jessi told us," she told the paper.
Yet the same day, Fox News ran the story that Jessica can't remember anything that happened after her unit was ambushed through her 10 days of captivity. "She basically has amnesia and has mentally blocked out the horrible things we strongly believe she went through," one official told Fox.
So there you are, Marvin -- one of the messiest story lines I've ever had to deal with. Over to you. [link|http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/05/16/pvt_lynch/index.html|http://www.salon.com..._lynch/index.html] (As someone else has said, you know the drill: sit through ad, read piece and remainder of day's issue at leisure--or pay $30 and spare self ads; keep salon.com a going concern. I recommend latter.) "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
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