All About Snipers

Three links regarding snipers this morning:

• Video: "Shooting is only 10%..." Check out a short video of the international sniper competition at Ft. Benning.
• NYTimes 30OCT06 remarkable story "Tending a Fallen Marine, with Skill, Prayer and Fury"
• Another C.J. Chivers NYTimes story on enemy snipers' toll.

In conditions where killing the snipers has proved difficult, the marines have tried to find ways to limit their effectiveness. Signs inside Marine positions display an often-spoken rule: “Make yourself hard to kill.”

Many marines, on operations, do an understated dance they call “cutting squares.” It is not really a square at all.

They zig and zag as they walk, and when they stop they shift weight from foot to foot, bobbing their heads. They change the rhythm often, so that when a sniper who might be watching them thinks they are about to zig, they have zagged.

Now and then they squat, shift weight to one leg and stand up beside the place where they had just been. Maj. Sean Riordan, the battalion executive officer, described his own unpredictable jigs as “my little salsa dance.”

As they move, the marines often peer down their own scopes, looking at windows, rooftops, lines of brush. Then they might step backward, or forward, or duck, as if saying: try to shoot that.

(Hat tip JustOneMinute)