You are creating your own picture of what may have transpired. I don't need to justify myself any further than the fact that my fellow marines and I are alive and uninjured. I made the right decision based on what my instincts were telling me at the time. There were plenty of other situations where I did engage, again the right decision. Were mistakes ever made? Sure, some of them that I witnessed were terrible but understandable under the circumstances. I'll even give you one example: We had checkpoints with wire and signs in Arabic saying to stop set up to prevent vehicles from entering our AO because the bad guys were driving vehicles laden with explosives into our lines. We had one car crash through the outer wire and come barreling towards us. A burst was shot in front of the car as a warning to stop, he didn't, so the gunner then fully engaged. It was a guy with his kid in the back. This was absolutely terrible and really played hell on our morale. We couldn't understand why in the hell the guy would do this. We hated them for things like this. We still didn't murder them because we felt like we were in danger; we still gave them every chance to retreat or surrender.
If I had encountered the victim in this video during Iraq, I would have easily incapacitated him without killing him.
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