{"id":19499,"date":"2010-06-20T13:57:26","date_gmt":"2010-06-20T17:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=19499"},"modified":"2010-06-20T14:04:03","modified_gmt":"2010-06-20T18:04:03","slug":"ethan-mccord-360-degree-fire-was-sop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=19499","title":{"rendered":"Ethan McCord: “360 degree fire” was SOP"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the two soldiers who have been the “go to” guys for the Wikileaks so-called “Collateral Murder” video, Ethan McCord charges that “360 Rotational Fire” was the standard operating procedure for reaction to an IED attack in Iraq in 2007. In an interview published in OpEd News<\/a>, Steiber said;<\/p>\n

…we had a pretty gung-ho commander, who decided that because we were getting hit by IEDs a lot, there would be a new battalion SOP [standard operating procedure].He goes, “If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherf*cker on the street.” Myself and Josh and a lot of other soldiers were just sitting there looking at each other like, “Are you kidding me? You want us to kill women and children on the street?” And you couldn’t just disobey orders to shoot, because they could just make your life hell in Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Throughout the interview, there’s no unit designation, no one names the company or battalion commander – it’s just a completely irrational charge against some unnamed commander in an unnamed unit vacant of any details. <\/p>\n

Of the Wikileaks video, McCord says;<\/p>\n

McCord says the scenes captured in the Wikileaks video are “an every-day occurrence in Iraq.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Really?<\/p>\n

McCord says that when he found the two children wounded in the van, another soldier began to vomit and ran off.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A soldier reacts by vomiting and fleeing to an “every day occurrence”?<\/p>\n

I ran up to the Bradley and placed [the injured boy] inside. My platoon leader was standing there at the time, and he yelled at me for doing what I did. He told me to “stop worrying about these motherfucking kids and start worrying about pulling security.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would have told him the same thing. They were in an unsecured area in indian country and unsure of the situation. The first thing infantrymen do is secure the area. How much good would any of them been to the children if they were all dead? Typical private BS – they always think they know better than their leaders.<\/p>\n

Both Ethan McCord and Josh Steiber<\/a> were in Bravo Company, 2d Battalion 16th Infantry when the video was shot in 2007. Steiber is a member of IVAW, and McCord may be a member by now, although I can’t find evidence of it yet, so they have an agenda. <\/p>\n

I have to think that there’s someone among my readers who was either a member of this company or knows someone who was there during this time who can verify or deny the accuracy of this order. My opinion, based on my decades-long experience as an infantryman, is that it’s bullshit, but I wasn’t there, so if you were, or if you know someone who was, speak up.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Rob for the heads up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the two soldiers who have been the “go to” guys for the Wikileaks so-called … Ethan McCord: “360 degree fire” was SOP<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,37,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antiwar-crowd","category-ivaw","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}