An incident in Iraq (true story)

Got this while I was on my vacation:

Seems some US Marines were guarding the perimeter of their base when a car pulled up a few hundred yards out with its horn honking and lights flashing, making all kinds of racket and drawing the Marines attention with several rifles and a couple of .50 calibre machine guns….the two occupants of the vehicle then launched a mortar round that luckily fell as a dud 10 feet from the nearest marine…needing no further incentive to keep these guys from lobbing ANOTHER round at the Marines, they opened up with small arms fire and the .50’s, killing both men and riddling the car. After coming off watch, the Marines were informed that they had fired their weapons without authorization and were going to be written up as having done so, and for not going through proper military channels to request permission to fire, something that would have taken a few minutes to get and would certainly have allowed the insurgents to launch a few more mortar rounds at the Marines. Given the chance to explain the whole incident to their company commander, the Marines involved did so….and the company commander told them all that he did not believe them and that paperwork for write ups and possibly even courts martial would continue. It was not until 6 days later when a Marine patrol came across the wreck of the car, the dead bodies of the insurgents, the guns and mortar rounds and other bits that the whole story was confirmed (I keep wondering what was done with the dud mortar round that landed ten feet away)…the Marine higher ups never thought to verify the story, just proceeded with the paperwork to chastise the Marines involved, until the whole story was verified by the patrol who discovered the car….and then, no one told these poor guys that charges had been dropped against them, they just ‘caught wind’ of it through military channels and the whole thing sort of ‘dissappeared’….
Incidentally, the reason I know about this is because one of the Marines involved is my brother, back fresh from his deployment to Iraq….and NOT thrilled to go back with that kind of crap going on. Great way to support the troops, huh?

Mark