Quote:
Originally Posted by Guinness
...Do you drop them to half health and move on, or do you make sure they are dead?
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Killing the insurgent was not his undoing. If he had said:
"This one isn't going to make it, let's put him out of his misery." then the outcome would have been the same in terms of the insurgent being dead, but very different in terms Marine A's liberty. It wouldn't have even got as far as court. He could have considered collecting up their morphine and making it quick and painless, but they may have needed that later if they had been injured themselves. The bullet was the sensible option.
The insurgent had been fired on by an Apache at long range using depleted uranium bullets more than an inch thick that explode on contact. They are rated to have a "kill radius" of ten metres, so even if they don't hit the target directly, there is the shrapnel/dislodged landscape that become deadly (supposedly). Now these pilots decided that instead of flying a mile to do their own BDA, they'd rather let a squad of marines do it. If the pilots were concerned for their safety in their heavily armoured gunship which should shrug off AK47 rounds, and toting up to 38 rockets, 8 missiles and potentially more than a thousand more of these tank-killing bullets, surely nobody would expect a CASEVAC of a wounded insurgent putting more lives at risk?
He was probably quite badly injured, but even if he was mildly injured but just wasn't mobile, they did the right thing, they just said the wrong things while they were doing it.