Eric sent us a link to Mitch Berg at Chanting Points Memo who does a fairly good job for a civvie talking about Jon Soltz’ latest drooling liberal bullshit trying to compare George Zimmerman’s situation in the Trayvon Martin shooting by claiming that Zimmerman, thanks to the “Stand Your Ground” aspect of Florida laws, had more leeway than the troops in Iraq had while Soltz was there. I won’t repeat what Mitch Berg wrote, you should go over and read it for yourself. It’s long but worth the read.
VoteVets.org has more than 105,000 members who take a wide array of views on gun control and the 2nd Amendment, but the Trayvon Martin case is less about the right to bear arms than it is the “use of force.” It’s impossible to ignore the legal protection George Zimmerman enjoys in suburban Florida vs. the Rules of Engagement that outline when one of our troops can shoot while in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Yeah, those 105,000 members of Votevets are largely civilians who have never served, except with MoveOn.org and George Soros’ foundations. Their views on gun control are pretty much monolithic opposition to private gun ownership.
To demonstrate how the troops are under more stringent rules than private citizens in Florida, Soltz recounts a story that he “heard” third hand. Dicksmith told him a story that Dicksmith heard from someone else about a lieutenant who shot an escaping, unarmed Iraqi while he was fleeing. The Iraqi bled out waiting for a medivac bird. But, whether this really happened or not is subject to investigation because Soltz heard it from someone who heard it from someone else. Not a real reliable example, Jonny.
Soltz goes on the recite the Rules of Engagement when he was in Iraq to make his point;
[T]he rule…explicitly instructs forces, “when time and circumstances permit,” to use the following “graduated measures of force” when responding to hostile act or hostile intent:
3.G.(1)(A) (U) Shout verbal warnings to halt;
3.G.(1)(B) (U) Show your weapon and demonstrate intent to use it;
3.G.(1)(C) (U) Physically restrain, block access, or detain;
3.G.(1)(D) (U) Fire a warning shot (if authorized);
3.G.(1)(E) (U) Shoot to eliminate the threat.
Yeah, on that “show your weapon” thing, the law calls that “brandishing” and civilians can’t brandish their weapon and demonstrate an intent to use it. Civilians can’t draw their weapon until they intend to pull the trigger – and not as a warning shot. So there’s half of the ROE that soldiers get to do and civilians can’t.
Again, Soltz takes third or fourth-hand information to judge George Zimmerman guilty;
Of course, comparing the Trayvon Martin case to a war situation is neither fair nor clean, and we still don’t know all of the facts surrounding Trayvon’s death. But insofar as what I’ve read about the case, it sounds to me that if Trayvon had been an Iraqi soldier, and George Zimmerman had been a U.S. Soldier, there would have been an immediate investigation, and most likely a manslaughter charge, and victim’s family financially compensated for wrongful death.
“What I’ve read…” I’m pretty sure, knowing Soltz like I do, he didn’t read any unbiased media (remember the NBC producer who was fired last week for manipulating the reporting from his desk). Now if Soltz had pried his dog-ass from behind his desk and actually conducted interviews in Florida, I might give him a little credit, but obviously, by his own admission, that’s not what he did.
If a soldier or marine faces an imminent threat, he or she must take the procedural steps of employing Graduated Force, and if they don’t, they may be criminally liable. By eliminating both the duty to retreat and by providing blanket immunity for a shooter who claims he felt reasonably threatened, Florida’s “Shoot First” law seems to me to be exponentially more lax than the law that guides our troops in a war.
Yeah, Jon, it’s not “shoot first” it’s “stand your ground” and since we really don’t know what happened that night in Florida your whole argument is weak. It may be that Zimmerman was retreating when he was attacked from behind, because that’s Zimmerman’s story which, in order to write your whole column, you had to completely ignore. It looks like we’ll find out soon because the Washington Post is reporting that charges are pending in the Zimmerman case. Maybe Soltz should have waited a day before he made an ass of himself – not a condition with which he’s totally unfamiliar.
But I think Soltz wrote the piece just so he could remind us that he served in Iraq twice.
ADDED: On Zimmerman; It’s second degree murder.
