First of all I apologise for the poor quality of the earlier article.
I was tired and let it go without proofreading. You all have been
kind in avoiding criticism.

"ian maclure" wrote in message ...
On Sun, 18 Jul 2004 22:30:57 -0700, Fred the Red Shirt wrote:

[snip]

Over in sci.mil a while ago a fellow who said he was a vegteran of
the Swedish army (don;t know if he was as they say, 'on the net
no one knows you're a dog and that doesn;t jsut apply to
alt.personals)
who said in his basic training he was taught to not fire their
heavy machine gun (equivalent to .50 cal) ar individual personell.

Do they use the .50M2? I don't think they do or didn't in
years past. Some of their vehicle mount as 20mm cannon
though.

I haven't been able to find the discussion but recall that he was
refering to their 'heavy' machine gun which if they had one I
would guess to have been 12.7 mm or equivalent. Like most Swedes,
he seemed to have a better grasp of English than most Americans
but might have faltered on some of the technical lingo.


He was taught that to do so was a violation of the Geneva Conventions,

Incorrect.


Ambiguous.

Historically, (and on-topic for re.aviation.military) some .50
caliber ammunition has been incinidiery or explosive. It is
probably a violation of the GCs the Hague, or other treaties
to use these directly against persons.

Possibly there were objections voiced by other nations about the
use of .50 caliber machine guns in Vietnam predicated on the
presumption that explosive or incindiery (or tracer) rounds
were the norm.

I agree that the statement by Kerry appears on its face to be wrong,
absent elaboration.

My point is that I've heard other folks say that using a .50 cal
machine gun against people is a war crime, though I didn't agree
with them.

Digressing, were there not objections to the effect that the US
used napalm in Vietnam in a manner that violated the GCs?

--

FF