[excerpt from Sean's e-mail
message sent today]
Yesterday we had an awful incident where a teenage kid pulled a gun on
us, we all drew down on him, and under our ROE (rules of engagement) could have,
really SHOULD have, shot him. He turned immediately and ran like hell when one
of my guys spotted him and yelled "GUN"! We ran him down, knocked him to
the ground to find that this IDIOT kid had pointed a toy pistol at us.
With a lot of cursing and rage, by us, we disarmed him, smashed the toy,
dragged him to the shop we saw him in and roundly cursed everyone in it.
The adults were all shocked and appalled, one minute we were all just talking to
them, the next minute we had everyone on the street flat on their faces and
storming around like the irate troops we were. The father of the kid was
there, owned the shop, and seemed shocked by the stupidity of his son.
That is the luckiest, and stupidest, teenager in Iraq; he came within a
nanosecond of being shot to death over a stupid prank. I shudder to think
of how my guys would have felt had they gunned him down only to find he was a
kid with a toy.