Sniper !

[spmetla]

Well, I've finally got around to see these Juba videos.

Firstly @ crossLOPER
The American's are running around because as you saw someone got shot. Put yourself in the situation before you critisize.
Hearing:
Our Helmets like all do, restrict hearing, it's easier to hear from the front. It's mandatory for all troops to wear earplugs when 'outside the wire', this is done because of the heavy use of RPGs, IEDS, VBIEDS, and mortars which as you can imagine will cause permanent hearing loss when used if nothing else. There's also a lot of ambient noise, the diesel engines of the Humvees, radio chatter, civilian personnel and vehicles all combine to hinder the hearing of the soldier. So when a single shot goes off generally you haven't a clue in the world as to where it came from. In my year in Iraq a lot of potshots were fired at me, unless the shot is damned close it's very difficult to place where the shooter is.

As for the soldiers running around not knowing what to do, well when you don't know where a shot came from you don't know where it's safe to be. Anywhere but where you just were seems like the best place to be, especially if the guy right next to you got shot. If you think it's cowardly to seek cover for yourself before tending to a wounded/dead buddy then by all means go out there and be a hero for yourself. The clips are only a few seconds long for each victim so undoubtably you're missing the part where they drag the guys to cover and give buddy aid. American doctrine is to never leave a fallen comrade behind and we try to live it as best as possible but putting yourself in the line of fire where someone just got shot a half second before isn't too bright. It's also not what we're trained to do, we take cover when we recieve fire as does every military on Earth.

While it twists my stomach everytime I saw a soldier get shot in these clips I have to say I'm glad to see that our armor is having good effect. Although a lot of soldiers simply dropped (presumeably dead), a lot were obviously wounded, how serious no one can tell from these clips.

As for the trend toward snipers I have to say it's only to be expected. When a force like the US Army can dominate any normal fire fight it's only normal for a foe to resort to different tactics. IEDS, snipers, mortars, and hasty ambushes all represent this. I'm worried that they're using snipers more often for obvious reasons and there's little that can be done about. The CROWS system for remotely manning the turrets of humvees is slowly being implented and those gunners represented a large number of the victims of Juba's snipers. As for dismounted soldiers not much can be done, too much armor makes a soldier combat ineffective. All we can do is hope that the residents in these areas don't allow snipers to operate there. You can be damned sure the everyone in the neighborhood knows who fired what where, if only they'd tell the coalition forces that way these snipers can be found.

And to those of you that are against seeing these videos just cool it a bit. As a US soldier I hate seeing comrades being killed, especially up close like Juba's video but it's no different then when we watch AC 130s blowing up Taliban in Afghanistan or Apache's shooting guys planting IEDs at night. I know that the US soldier for a lot of us is 'our side' but that doesn't make him more sacred then the next man.

As for Juba himself, he seems to be a damned good shot, especially against the guys in turrets. You can see that he has a bit more trouble against the guys that are dismounted, no doubt because they are moving around. I'm really curious at what distance he's shooting at, my guess would be usually around four to five hundred meters but who knows.

And Wachizashi perhaps you should spell it "awful to look at" instead of "aweful", you might get the wrong idea across.

EDIT:
Oh, and as for the American soldier being portrayed as supermen it was actually a common idea for the Iraqis. Having lost Desert Storm so quickly they were expecting, as some of my Iraqi friends told me "That US Soldiers were all gigantic Arnold Schwarzeneggars/ Stallones that could crush people's skulls with their bare hands", lots of the teenagers were surprised and rather disappointed when they saw that they were beaten twice by people that really weren't much different than them, just really well equiped.