Carlos Hathcock is a perfect example of how there is no black and white in war. He demonstrates the blurry gray line quite well when for example, he had to occasionally shoot children who were being used as mules to transport guns on their bikes through american held territory. What would you do? Let the kid take a dozen rifles and ammo to the enemy, so they can shoot your fellow soldiers with them? Or take the shot?

@...WistfulD: They didn’t have .50 cal sniper rifles at that time. He sort of pioneered them with this. When he converted this rifle, he zeroed his scope to it, just as one would do with any rifle, and the bullet *will* go where the crosshairs say, accounting for wind and such. That’s what the skill of a sniper is all about. Accuracy of a round from this barrel or any isn’t ‘random’ AFIK. Machinegun barrels are really heavy too, so they are in fact quite accurate when firing single rounds. But I could be out to lunch, my war tools trivia is spotty at best.

I read Hathcock’s book a while back, it’s a good read for any of you Vietnam buffs.

@...titanzero: Umm, clans/tribes of chimpanzees actually war with other clans/tribes of chimps, for no discernible reasons (ie, in the presence of abundant food and without a direct threat to justify a claim of self-defense). They patrol the borders of their territory, they recon the “enemy” locations and plan grouped assaults, sometimes but not always they steal food and rape females after/as part of the attacks. Just food for thought.

Consider and remember the fact that we as humans, no matter how many tools we develop nor how many barriers we place between ourselves and the elements, we are still a part of and a force of nature and everything we do, destructive or creative, is quintessentially *our nature*

This includes sex that isn’t for procreation and murder that isn’t for food.

Every great warrior culture, the Samurai, the Spartans, the Myrmidons, the Vikings, etc etc, they understand their nature and they gloried in it. They knew damn well that the two polar heights of human existence ~in the culture we have developed~ is the act of making life, and the act of taking life. So they chose to master those experiences. You will never be fully human so long as you deny one side or the other. We cannot have love without fear and we can’t have sex without death. We don’t have any predator other than ourselves. If we didn’t keep our populations trimmed with war, we’d succumb to horrid diseases. I’d rather be blown up or shot, than rot to death from a plague.

There is nothing unnatural about war today. It’s brutal. That’s nature my dear. The sun will burn you to death. Nature is fucking brutal no matter how many pretty pictures you take or lovely sunsets you admire. If you can’t appreciate the storms, you don’t deserve the rainbows.

@...titanzero: I really can’t stand painfully ignorant people like you.

Tell me what is a natural death that any human deserves? Helpless and shitting your diaper in the degradation of pathetic old age? Splattered grotesquely across the pavement in an accident? Rotted from the inside out by a disease?

A sucking chest wound or slow painful death from a gut shot is still on the more merciful side of the immense pallet that Death has to paint our demise with.

Try considering that death of ANY kind is a harsh reality we all have to face in one form or many.

I sat upside down in the back of a car for over an hour in a ditch, unable to look at anything but the gore in front of me that used to be my friend, listening to and watching my other friend screaming and bawling as she bled out slowly while waiting for any help to come.

so FUCK YOU and your snobby idiocy. Death is a bitch in peaceful utopia and a bitch in war, so fuck off with your childish whining and YOUR ignorance over the realities of human existence.

Maybe you faced death once and it was awful. Rather than humble you, it turned you into a prick. When you grow up, you will learn that ‘deserves’ and ‘justice’ have absolutely nothing to do with death and nature.