Saw some real ugly stuff

I was at work checking some server responses and casually glancing over at the projector where they get video feed from their UAVs. Well it is around dawn/dusk time and for those of you who don't know that's when the criminals, kidnappers, insurgents, and terrorists like to operate. Why? Night vision is least effective during that time of the day. It gives them some cover of night and reduces the effectiveness of US forces. Well the group I was with that day is in charge of doing surveillance on certain supply routes. They spotted a car that stopped on the side of the road and two people got out and popped the trunk. If you get out of your car and you pull anything out of the trunk besides a tire you are setting yourself up for failure. They zoom in on the guys and, I have to say the resolution on this thing was incredible to be as high as it was up, you can make out faces easily. So now if you ask yourself how do they know they got person X that how they know. With the right light and right angle you can get as much detail as you do when you see yourself on a security camera. Pretty amazing stuff.

At any rate they fly over and watch the guys set up the IED (Improvised Explosive Device) and then let them take off. The idea is that these guys will lead them to a weapons cache and they can take out the whole lot of them. While this is going on you have a flurry of activity going on you have people making sure they see what they think they see.

Is it an IED?
Are you sure?
How do you know?
What gave you that indication?

There is a real process to this and as we know mistakes are made I can tell you that it is not for lack of trying to avoid it. The Marines are VERY concerned with making sure they have the right target at the right time. These decisions to bomb something are not made willy-nilly. I think it is important to say that. There is an opinion in some circles that these military people have a hard on for blowing things up. Not the case, they are VERY particular about what they attempt to do. They shadow these guys back to their safe house and watch them back into the driveway and some more guys come out. I would say there were 4 or 5 of them.

They stand in a circle for a bit and then they start loading more ordinances into the car. Well at that time they had seen enough and called in an air strike. Seconds before they fire (because you have to lead the target) one of the guys gets in the car and moves it I assume he was trying to move it to get closer to the hatch where they were and I mean like 3 seconds later a missile hits where the car was and now those three guys are standing. Two of the guys are incinerated instantly. The third guy was not in incineration range but was in the blast range and you can see him rip apart. I think you see his head, one arm, and his chest or his lower torso and one leg either way it slaps up against the house next to it.

To get an idea how that it looked think of having a raw chicken leg quarter and having Randy Johnson pitch it like a fast ball at the side of your house. Same effect.

Well as expected the car tries to take off but it gets lit up. The engine explodes but the guy driving somehow lives. He jumps out of the car (bad idea) well the explosives in the back of the car catch and then blow up. This guy gets doused in flames. You can tell by the heat signature (they are using night vision at this time) that this guy is clearly on fire and clearly alive running around in circles. Well then two more things happen. They strike the house with a bomb and blast it and then a guy on a bike takes off. What the insurgents use guys on bikes or walking for
spotters. These spotters are unarmed they can walk up to a convoy to surveillance and then go back to there buddies. Of course if the soldiers or marines shoot an unarmed civilian walking down the street there is hell to pay but that's how the operate. Anyway they unload on him and you see him split in three pieces (I don't know if one of the pieces was the bike) but I know he was at least ripped in half (not including the larger chunks you spread out from the area).

Now this was the most amazing part 4 more guys come WALKING out of the house.
One of the ops personnel tells me that Iraqi houses are built very well and have a bunker like quality to them it can take up to 3 strikes to level a standard house. I think he told me it's cheaper to use 3 500 lbs. JDAMs as opposed to 1 Bunker Buster plus even if they use a bunker buster there is still a chance they don't get everyone. I was too caught up in the moment to really listen for details.

So the bail out and see their buddy who just stopped running (the guy tells me more than likely he is still alive but, his leg muscles have probably separated from his bones much like a meat on a grill) well two of the guys start throwing up (and probably a few other bodily functions as well). With night vision you can't see the faces per se but, I know what throwing up looks like plus they have zoomed out so the flash from the strikes won't blind the camera. Next thing you know BOOM another bomb hits the house and sends debris all over the place one of the guys is knocked down by the impact and a the other three start running. Well that didn't last long they
dropped a few 40mm round on top of those guys and they blew in to chunks. Then they
ran back over the last guy with some sort of ordinance to make sure he was dead.

They hit the house with another bomb and dipped.

Back home every Christmas time there is always some asshole politician that is whining about the effect of violent video games on our society. I can tell you this right here, right now videogames are exactly what a 21st century war is going to look like. But, these guys are going for the wrong ones. Games like Doom 3 or Grand Theft Auto are not going to have your child ready for war. Jagged Alliance 2 (from my perspective this game was really the closest to what I saw), Civilization 3, Starcraft strategy games are what will allow the warriors of the 21st Century to get used to war. If you are good at those games then I have a rich Uncle that has a job for you. I mean it looked just like a videogame, you can get the perfect camera angle, zoom in, zoom out, select your weapons, plan your attack. I didn't realize what I saw until after the fact. Then I realized that I have just watched people die in real life, in real time. Will someone have to go out there and verify the kill? Yes. Will someone have to look at what at one point were humans now reduced to giblets? Yes. But, these are things that while horrific in nature are something that a 3 year medical student could probably handle. With the introduction of unmanned vehicles I see us as Americans getting further and further away from the visceral violence that has encompassed all the wars that have preceded this one (well one on one violence).

Now then don't mistake my tone for weakness or sympathy for their situation I'm not sympathetic. These were killers plain and simple. Had they had the chance they would have killed anyone I know in a heartbeat. They didn't care who came down that road if they crossed that path at the right time they would have been dead. Still I had a front row seat to watching someone die. How do you cope with that vision? I'm not sure yet.