"First, in training up for Iraq..." is about training, not what happened or could happen on the ground. Which leads to the observation that the US Army gave up

"First, in training up for Iraq..." is about training, not what happened or could happen on the ground. Which leads to the observation that the US Army gave up on marksmanship in the '60s or thereabouts (in part based on SLA Marshall's fraudulent WWII "research"). Of course you aren't trained to take advantage of weapons capabilities available to mid-19th Century soldiers when your issue weapons are very weak in them. That you make the best of a bad weapon system and round does not say anything about what could be achieved with better ones, and more emphasis on personal marksmanship, something I'm told the Marines never gave up on. And aren't rifle rounds a little more discriminating than the alternatives? (My background, BTW: only JROTC in the late '70s due to eyesight, but my Senior Army Instructor was an Infantry officer who mentioned he fired around 10,000 rounds as part of the effort in fixing the original issue M16s and their ammo, and was a great rifle team instructor. The rest is based on growing up with guns and hunting, and studying this issue immediately after the Vietnam War when I wondered how things had gone to hell in the previous decade and a half while I was too young to really follow or study them, and preparing for a stint as an infantry officer that was not to be.)