THE INSANE STORY OF LTC WEST

His men were dying. His prisoner refused to talk. He fired his pistol - not at the prisoner mind you. His prisoner talked. His men were saved.

He's been relieved of command. He's now being prosecuted.

Insane.

The informant said an Iraqi police officer was involved. Col. West had the policeman detained. When two interrogators failed to gain any information, Col. West went to the detention center, brought the detainee outside and fired his 9 mm pistol twice to scare him into talking.

Col. West said the detainee then provided the names of two accomplices and told of another planned sniper attack the next day.

"I have never denied what happened and have always been brutally honest," said Col. West. "I accept responsibility for the episode, but my intent was to scare this individual and keep my soldiers out of a potential ambush. There were no further attacks from that town. We further apprehended two other conspirators (a third fled town) and found out one of the conspirators was the father of a man we had detained for his Saddam Fedeyeen affiliation.

"[The Iraqi policeman] and his accomplices were a threat to our soldiers and the method was not right, but why should I lose 20 years of service or be forced into prison for protecting my men?"

Col. West's plight has struck a chord with military advocates. They complain the Army has put soldiers in a deadly environment, yet forced them to play by strict rules of conduct while their terrorist enemies do not.

Said Elaine Donnelly, head of the Center for Military Readiness: "Excuse me while I go to look up Marquis of Queensberry. No wonder we haven't gotten any information on Hussein's present location from all of those 'deck of cards' people we have captured. Has the Army lost its institutional mind? Or maybe they have forgotten that a state of war exists in Iraq."