When do you Fire?

Seven ex-CIA chiefs singed a letter to President Obama regarding opening up the criminal investigation of the CIA terrorist interrogations and the damage that it will cause.

When do you Fire at the enemy?

One night in Nam the radio crackled to life. A chopper had been shot up and the co-pilot was at the stick. He was directed to our hospital. Shortly thereafter, he radioed that he went down. Wide Minnow (the group that directed choppers to hospitals) wanted a fix and would try to get help to them. The co-pilot said "No" and he got the chopper back up in the air.

I was on the helipad that night watching the bird swaying all over the place as he tried to land which he finally did. The skids were bent from going down earlier and it wobbled on the helipad. We got off the pilot, crew chief, door gunner and the co-pilot walked in. All had been wounded with the pilot being injured the worst. As I remember it, his heel was pretty much torn off.

After everything settled down, the wounded taken care of and the pilot in surgery, we heard the tale from the crew. They were over the Saigon River hovering over a Sampan. There were two South Vietnamese Advisers on-board. The crew kept asking for the ok to fire. That approval never came. But the NVA on the Sampan didn't need approval and shot up the helicopter. It was a miracle that the GI's were not killed . And how were the Advisers injured? They weren't. I was on the helipad again as the co-pilot started up the bird and hopped over a small road to the small helipad that choppers used to load up on herbicides to spray the foliage to kill it. (Do you believe that? And taht close to the hospital) Again, with much difficulty he got it over to the pad and shut down.

In a time of war the emphasis should be on keeping our country, citizens and especially those in the direct line of fire safe. What happened to the rights of soldiers, this country and it's citizens? When do we fire? Do we become so immersed in the rights of the enemy that we risk the lives of our citizens and make them less important? Right now we are facing an enemy that places no value on the country, and men, women and children of their country. When do we fire? Human life must be valued but I do not believe that the enemies lives should be valued before out own citizens.

When do we fire?