Are You Saying That you Killed People in Cold Blood?

I had posted an article Dissociative Spectrum on A Soldier's Perspective.

This response was registered first,

Are you saying that you killed people in cold blood? 

in response to my,

The Iraqi soldiers we killed that were trying to surrender.

The responder also asks,

Why?

and then the next comment:

Yes RG (Roman General, me also), what is the full story?

The full story:

On or around February 13, 1991 one day before my second son was born and four days away from my eldest sons second birthday.

We were getting close to moving out, Christmas had come and gone. I was able to call home during that time. By this time I was ready to go, it was February and I had been listening to Baghdad being bombed for about four months straight. Everyday, all day boom boom boom off in the distance, I can still hear them. All I could think about was how many people our bombs were killing, so when we got the call to go I was ready. We mounted up into my Bradley Fighting Vehicle and headed into Iraq.

Our assignment was to cut the Iraqi Republican Guard off from retreating back into Iraq. We set out on convoy toward the front line with me driving on point. A report comes over my headphones that a couple of Iraqi tanks with their turrets turned backward, Geneva Convention for surrender, approached some Marine armored vehicles. When they were in range they turned and fired on them, killing three of our troops. I was shaking all over, mad as hell and could not wait to get some payback.

I was getting myself psyched up going into driving straight for 24 hours. Later after 48 hours of continuous driving I saw silhouettes appearing on the left flank on the horizon during the night and reported it to my track commander. My TC and I hated each other, but respected one another and would have no other.

Having received the reports the night before we were weary of enemy activity. One of our Bradley's fired 3 warning shots, with permission of higher up as the ground war had not officially started yet. They kept coming and we were given permission to fire upon the enemy.

Later in the next day we received an account of the engagement. A brigade of foot soldiers had been trying to surrender and we killed them.