Follow up on the shooting (attempted murder) this week of Captain Paul Watson written by Marc Gaede

[Omaha Steve]

Another person who wrote me was Allison Lance Watson. She forwarded me an email to Capt. Watson written by Marc Gaede, an accomplished and respected anthropologist, author and photographer, among other things. With permission from both Allison and Marc, here is what Marc wrote:

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"Paul,

"I feel it important to point out a few things that I see in your shooting. As you know, this is a subject I know a lot about.

"You were shot by a sniper with a rifle and with a special bullet. The vest that protected you is meant for pistol rounds, not high velocity military bullets. Had you been shot with a military rifle cartage, you could be dead. Had you not been waring the vest, you most certainly been dead by a massive untreatable wound, which is what they intended.

"By what I see in the pictures, the compression of the bullet means it was a soft lead 'Dumb-Dumb' round. Because of the tissue destruction these bullets cause, they were banned for military use by the Hague Convention of 1899 although most people now call it the Geneva Convention. All militaries conform to the convention because no one wants to go there due to the unspeakable carnage they would cause. Even the Nazi SS didn't use Dumb-Dumbs.

"The Japanese Coast Guard (or a special agent - AM) shot you with a Dumb-Dumb bullet which is in violation of the Geneva (Hague) Convention because the JCG is part of the military. This is significant because the world's military will pay attention that the Japanese military used Dumb-Dumbs. It may be one shot, but it is significant and governments will pay attention.

"Next, I want to point out that this was not a a knee-jerk reaction to shoot you. I was the best shot in HQ Company at Camp Pendleton for two years (1966-67), and couldn't have done this in my prime. Apparently, you were shot from high to low involving two moving ships on the high seas. Also, you were probably moving at random, and the shot was within three inches of your heart. This sniper practiced this shot for months back in Japan , and no doubt, they used a moving target ship that was lower than the moving shooting platform, and they practiced in varying wind, distance, and seas to perfect every situation. I'm guessing they brought in a Japanese Marine sniper because Coast Guards don't have this kind of talent. The flash-bang grenades were used to cover the rifle shot but should be audible on tape. Like earthquakes, gunshots will show up electronically from all the other noise. There might be other shots, but I don't think so, it was just one shot, I think.

"The Dumb-Dumb bullet is a give-away because it was chosen specially to kill. No pistol shooter in the world could have made this shot, it had to have come from a rifle and a sniper rifle for sure. The Dumb-Dumb was caught by your vest so it was low velocity such as fired by most pistols. Why would the JCG fire a low velocity Dumb-Dumb at your heart? Well, they didn't know you had the "Second Chance" vest on under your Mustang suit. The low velocity Dumb-Dumb should have blown a 5" hole in your chest and you should have died quickly from massive blood loss. Every black powder (low velocity soft lead bullet) hunter knows the low velocity allows the bullet to expand within the animal causing extreme damage. High velocity bullets go through too fast for maximum destruction.

"So this was a special bullet, probably hand loaded, for you. Low velocity, soft lead for a modern military rifle. I don't believe I have ever seen such ammunition for sale in my life.

"Ok, the Whale Gods were with you. Everyone now knows you have a cop vest under your suit, so you can expect to get shot next time with a high velocity full-metal-jacket round which will go through your vest. The only vest that can help you is the ceramic-plate armor. You might look into "Dragon Skin," which is what most our Iraqi troops want but can't get. When you are outside exposed in confrontation, keep moving, don't stop but for a few seconds and stay out-of-view as much as possible.

"Make no mistake, the Japs intended to kill you.

"Return safe,

Marc"

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Obviously, this cannot be verified until the forensic report comes out, but I deem it a highly credible assessment based on intimate knowledge and experience on the subject matter. If this doesn't pan out, it would at least be a sound piece of technical analysis, and should give pause to skeptics, nay-sayers and conspiracy theorists.

A parting word of advice to all whalers and whaling-supporters: For you to assassinate Capt. Watson, or anyone on board the Steve Irwin, or anyone in the whaling movement, is tantamount to you committing Kamikaze, again. Maybe you've forgotten, but it didn't work when you tried it the the last time.

Anthony


Anthony Marr, founder
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
www.HOPE-CARE.org
www.MySpace.com/AnthonyMarr
www.ARConference.org
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[sasha031]

1. thank you for posting this

Captain Watson is one of my heroes, that was to close a call on his life.

[sasha031]

2. to think they have the tenacity

use the term eco-terrorist.

I hope he remains safe,

[PDJane]

3. thank you..........

and yes, a credible and very logical piece of analysis.

I sincerely hope that the man does purchase the recommended vest.

[1monster]

4. Off to the greatest. Link to video of the incident...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xem3K8E4Nk

[GliderGuider]

5. I regret that I have but one rec to give to thy post

n/t

[LostinVA]

6. Kick -- Watson is a hero

[Annces]

7. Excellent

Thanks for posting. So many of the media interviewers are treating this as a hoax. One newspaper article from China was the most neutral on the subject. But everyone else is so pro-Japan government.

I am almost leary to post about this, because guns bring out the crazies. If the Japanese are exposed though, that will be a good thing.

[GliderGuider]

8. I don't think even the pro-gun folks support using sniper rifles with dumdum ammunition on civilians

Gaede's analysis seems spot-on to me. If the forensic analysis bear this out, the Japanese are in for a world of hurt.

[Annces]

9. I hope so

It seems like governments have a way of covering things up, calling things "suicide" and such. Even the IWC is just criticizing Watson.

here is a link to Sea Shepherd page for their videos, with a clip of the exchange where Watson is hit. It makes sense now why the Japanese were throwing the noise bombs, to cover the sniper shot. When people act differently, then you know something is up.



http://www.seashepherd.org/migaloo/video.html

[benEzra]

12. Softpoint bullets are common hunting ammunition sold around the world...

If you walk into any sporting goods store around the world and look for ammunition for a deer rifle (a sniper rifle by any other name), most of the ammunition on the shelf will be softpoints, which is the reverse of the situation for smaller target calibers or military calibers. A Kevlar vest won't stop any rifle bullet inside a couple hundred yards or so, but beyond that a good vest will stop both softpoints and full metal jacketed once the velocity drops enough (bullet construction is not as relevant for Kevlar penetration).

It is pretty obvious the shot came from the Japanese vessel; it would not be a particularly difficult shot if there was no relative motion between the vessels, but would have been quite tricky from anywhere else.

If the velocity was low enough for the vest to stop the bullet, then it may be possible to tell from the bullet the make of the rifle that fired it, which might give clues as to who the perpetrator was.

[spoony]

10. Interesting, but an uncomfortable closing line

"the Japs intended to kill you." What's up with that?

[Omaha Steve]

11. I don't read minds but....

I think it was a shot at the government. Not the people of Japan. The populace is over 75% anti-whaling.

[benEzra]

13. Photos and observations...

I couldn't find any decent photos of the bullet on the Sea Shepherd site, but from the very grainy bullet on the video, it looks too short and fat to be a rifle bullet. An expanded rifle bullet will generally look something like this:







unless it fragments. All of the above are civilian hunting bullets, which are designed to expand on impact.

A rifle bullet downloaded to slower velocities would be less expanded and might look like this:



It would not be squashed flat. Note that rifle bullets are quite long for their width.

Here are two .45 caliber handgun bullets:



which looks much more like the round in the photos. The bullet on the right underwent a core-jacket separation.

Compare to the round he is holding:

http://afp.google.com/media/ALeqM5jjSj_IpjeFzLh93PKqUNS17rlGbA?size=s

BTW, that is not an "illegal dumb dumb (sic) round", it is a law-enforcement-style jacketed hollowpoint like a police handgun would use; both pistol and revolver bullets can look like that. I believe that round may have undergone a jacket separation. Coast Guard handguns of most nations would likely be loaded with that type of bullet.

The bullet in the grainy video is larger and didn't hold its shape as well, so I suspect it may have been a handgun round. The fact that the ships were closer than I expected mitigates against my earlier rifle-bullet scenario.

To me, it looks very much like some idiot aboard the Japanese vessel decided to unload a handgun in the direction of the ship, perhaps in some very Hollywood-esque conception of a "warning shot", and hit the captain (the odds of which would be pretty low, but not so low as to rule out an unintentional hit). There are some carbines (small rifles) chambered for handgun rounds, but are not the thing one would use for a shot against a moving target; handgun rounds are abysmally slow compared to rifle rounds (~Mach 1 instead of ~Mach 2 to 3), carry relatively little energy (0.5 kJ or less instead of 3 to 4 kJ for a typical deer rifle/sniper rifle), which would make this an extremely unlikely choice of rounds for an intentional shooting from one ship to another at 150-200 feet.

This whole episode is very strange, but my best guess would be an idiot aboard the whaling vessel shooting at the Steve Irwin with a police-style handgun, perhaps trying to hit someone (and getting rather lucky), or perhaps just trying to hit the ship.

BTW, from a braced position, hitting a human-sized target at 150 feet with a pistol is not particularly hard for a well practiced shooter (especially with a full sized police handgun). I have hit smaller targets than that at 110 yards with my 9mm Ladysmith, shooting from sandbags. That doesn't mean it was intentional, but it was at minimum aggravated assault and/or reckless endangerment, and quite possibly attempted murder, depending on the motivation of the shooter. I don't buy the "marine sniper shooting patched lead bullets" theory, though.

(Terminology trivia--jacketed hollowpoint bullets are neither illegal, nor "dumb dumb". That particular silliness is a conflation of the name of the old British arsenal at Dum Dum, India (Bengali দমদম Dômdôm, Hindi दमदम Damdam, per Wikipedia), which was where the British first experimented with soft-nose spitzer designs in an attempt to give them the same stopping power as the older unjacketed patched-lead bullets. A "Dum Dum" bullet would be an experimental British .303 rifle round made at Dum Dum in the late 1800's/early 1900's, and using the term to refer to jacketed softpoints/hollowpoints in general (particularly when spelled "dumb dumb") tends to make one the object of great derision in shooting circles. Pet peeve.)