US sailor dies in Iraq non-hostile shooting

So sad. wonder what happened here.

As per another thread around here a couple days ago.

If your position is being fired on, and one of your own people hits you, is that a hostile wound?

What, the guy who shot him was friendly about it?

It's suicide folks.

Very sad.

According to the story, that includes suicide and accidental weapon discharge (such as during a cleaning). Now, I'm no expert on guns, rifles and other instrumentalities of mayhem, but aren't you supposed to unload a weapon before you clean it? (This is a serious question, I really don't know.)

But more than that, at the bottom of the article are these two paragraphs:

The latest death brings to at least 50 the number of US service personnel to have died in accidents or other non-combat-related incidents since May 1, when the United States declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq.

At least 33 more have been killed in attacks.

___________________

That's a total of 83 dead since May 1. According to Bartcop today, there are a total of 224 fatalities for the whole shebang, from invasion through yesterday's figures. That means we've passed the halfway point of all the deaths during "major combat operations." I'm not a pessimist, but I have to believe that the level of hostility towards the troops in Iraq is only going to increase, and we've hit the halfway mark (death-wise) in less than three months since Chimpy's cock walk on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Even at this rate, it will be October 1 when the post "major combat" deaths outnumbre the "major combat" deaths, and it could easily happen before then.

You unload it and disassemble it before doing maintenance. I would be very leery of "death by cleaning accident" claims. Soldiers are, on the whole, very well trained on the weapons they have access to. Or they were 30 years ago.

yella

I appreciate the information about cleaning weapons (since I am highly unlikely ever to have first hand knowledge of such).

probably a navy corpsman.

a corpsman. Supposed to not have a weapon.

Also with his back ground likely pretty level headed.

Not suicide.

IMHO

'For their own defense and the defense of thier patients' as it says in the Geneva convention.

As for being level headed, I'll just say that a Corpsman in a war zone is under a lot of stress AND gets to see firsthand the suffering of his fellows, many his friends, when they are injured.