SHOOTING LOOTERS IN IRAQ I'm a vet. Trained to kill. No way will soldiers start shooting unarmed civilians. Never. Oh yeah, I know Mei Lai but that was a case of hysteria and actually believing that the civilians were an enemy (see Kent State below). Being told to go out and shoot down unarmed civilians whom you know are not the enemy is not the same. I was in a similar situation and thank God I was never called upon to shoot but I can tell you that neither I nor my comrades would have pulled the trigger. We are not trained for that. This is a further example of the failure of planning for this circumstance. Soldiers do not shoot unarmed civilians. At least not our soldiers. Rummy better come up with something else, fast.

If any of you think of Kent State, check this: these were weekend kids from the National Guard totally untrained for the "mission" they were assigned. Nobody should have ever given untrained kids live ammo. When I had a similar assignment a hard assed Marine Sergeant let us know that HE had all the ammo and if HE thought we might need it HE MIGHT let us have some. We were all scared shitless but nobody died, nobody got shot at, nobody had a photo op because a PROFESSIONAL was in charge of kids.

Again: our troops are not going to shoot at unarmed Iraqi citizens. Period.