Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
Jeff your comment could be interpreted as you're advocating shooting unarmed civilians. I haven't seen the AAR on this incident and have no inside knowledge, but in general we can run missions pretty much when we want (weather dependent obviously) to nab or a kill a bad guy, which means you generally have the option of aborting the mission if you have been comprised, because you can come back another day. The article stated that these men thought they may have been compromised, yet they agreed to accept the risk and drive on with the mission anyway. I don't think shooting unharmed civilians was an option to begin with, and either did they. They had two options apparently, one was to drive on with the mission, and the other was to abort. As they suspected in (according to the article), the civilians they released reported their location to the Taliban, thus the ensuing fire fight. I don't question their judgment for a minute (I would if they shot unharmed civilians for a target of moderate importance), unfortunately the situation took a turn for the worst, and we lost several brave men that day.
--- If you read the book, you'll see that the circumstances surrounding the mission, which had been attempted multiple times in the past, and which involved tracking a very high profile target, made the decision about what to do with the goat herders a bit more complex then just re-scheduling it for another day. In fact, even if they aborted the mission and headed for an extraction point, they'd still be exposed by the goat herders, and tracked by the Taliban. A fight was inevitable if they let them live.

Further, they were not of one mind regarding killing them. One team member favored it, one abstained, one opposed it, and Luttrell couldn't make up his mind, although eventually he says that he was swayed not by his military training but by his religious upbringing to let them live. Today, he believes that he made the wrong decision, and should have killed them.

Two Taliban sympathizers versus 19 dead SEALs. What would you have done?