In Kandahar, Looking To Petraeus On Rules Of Fire

At a combat outpost north of Kandahar city, Army Capt. Jeffrey McKinnon peers over a wall of sandbags and points to a location 100 yards away, a tangle of grapevines, trees and brush. "We found an enemy fighting position there about three days ago. They shot at our tower — very brief. I think they were actually test-firing one of their weapons," says McKinnon of the 101st Airborne Division. But the Americans didn't return fire. "We actually didn't see it, that's why we went and patrolled over there" to find the source of the gunfire, McKinnon says. By the time they got there, the Taliban and their weapons were gone. In another incident, taking fire from another Taliban position at a crumbling mud compound, the Americans were able to shoot back. We can't engage until fired upon, and it's not really giving us a fair chance, I don't think. - Spc. Jeffrey Cole "That contact was pretty sustained, a good 10 or 15 minutes. And we fought them off of that," McKinnon says. The difference in the two situations? In the latter, McKinnon says, his forces could "see all the way through that thing," making sure there were no women and children in the compound. The rules of engagement — when and under what circumstances troops can fire on an enemy position — require that soldiers see the enemy, or innocent civilians, before they decide to shoot. The rules are strongly debated among U.S. soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan. The man recently ousted as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, tightened the rules a year ago because U.S. bullets and bombs were causing a high number of civilian casualties.