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the 3 golden rules of gun safety

1) all guns are always loaded

2) never let the muzzle cover anything you're not willing to destroy

3) be sure of your target

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Quote: "They will point their weapons at you if you ever go to Iraq. They recklessly wave the barrels of their rifles in every direction".

THAT brings back memories: I was in Aleppo, Syria in 1963 when the then leader, Abdul Karim Qasem, visited, (a few months before his ouster/murder), and sat by the roadside as haphazard Syrian troups and armed irregulars squatted on the curb or lolled on the ground while Qasem's procession went through town.

Afterward, the guy I was hitchhiking with and I went to a crowded 'chi' (tea) house......an armed man in mufti passed where we were sitting and dropped an automatic weapon on the table next to us as he went by.......the weapon bounced & spun on impact, and we sat up VERY straight, (having no room to move).

It sounds like they still have some work to do. Oh, well, it's a start.

Rule #4: Keep your finger off the trigger until you intend to shoot.

Watch for this error in the Hollywood goof crime productions.

Excellent outline. Thanks for the posting. How about when the Americans provide the Iraqi police with ammunition, guns and petrol, they then go and sell the stuff? It's going to take time, a lot of time, for them to move out of a tribal mode to a civic mode. But, it will happen, and thanks to the Americans for doing all this ground work.

Reminds me of a country walk I was on with a friend when we encountered a couple of guys hunting along a ridge. Regular guys, but one of them was a hand talker, and one of hands he was talking with was holding a rifle. I had to do a little side-shuffling to keep clear of the muzzle.

As the signs all over the skeet club used to say "Muzzle down, breech open"

There is just so much bizzaro politics at work in Iraq occupation that Americans really need to start kicking the asses of the politicians running this war/insurrection/policing action/stabilization action...whatever the hell they call it these days....no wonder US troops are so confused as to who is running things and who they really work for.

The major thing that struck me is they say they are enforcing "international rules" and civil standards yadda yadda...well if the "global community" wants to impose its quasi socialist civil systems on Iraqis perhaps they should have footed an equal part of the war bill and the policing bills and done some of the dying to maintain order.

Far as I'm concerned when I join the US army and risk my life for US interests I bloody well take orders only from US officers and command chain and when I subdue the enemy American martial law applies until the point the Iraqis can enforce their own laws.

Internationalism is as pervasively undermining in a war and occupation situation as it is in global diplomacy. The UN did not supply forces and financing for this action...their BS "rules" should mean squat to the US forces doing the donkey work and paying the bills.

US taxpayers and troops got screwed again by "internationaism" Gulf war 1 was the first time...they should have laid waste to the place cooked Saddam and his pals on a napalm bar-BQ then left the country with a warning that if we need to return it will be to deliver some hot isotopes.

Anerica made the sacrifices and payed the bills, and it should be Washington dictating the terms od occupation...not the pseudo-commies in Brussels.

“You have to release these people so they will be less mad,” the sheikh said. “Otherwise they might start it all up again.”

...watch this quote show up in Canada's next opposition leader speech.

Substitute 'sheik' for any left wing airhead.

".....habits that are rooted in Arab culture itself as much as they are legacies from the previous era."

Ain't that the whole story?

I read in another one of his posts that the Yanks don't patrol with the Iraqi cops at night. They go out alone because the Iraqis get -lost-. In their own town. Where they grew up.

All cultures are not created equal.