Hey Guys,
The thing to remember is that weapon mounted lights were originally used by operators in the special operations/hostage rescue arena, and most notably the SAS as far back as the Princess Gate siege in 1980. In the CQB environment it is certainly necessary, and the skill level of the operators far surpasses most if not all of us, and most if not all of the SWAT shooters out there.
Current Army doctrine does not promote holding the light out away from the body, ala the FBI method of the late 70's early 80's. During the SRT course it was weapon mounted lights for the teams with good budgets and command support, and the Harries technique for the rest of us.
While in Korea, I got in a heated discussion with my First Sergeant and some Major about the old FBI technique. My belief was that unless you are pointing the light directly at someone's eyes from that position, there will be enough ambient or reflected light for the bad guy to see exactly what you are doing. Not being able to back that up, a buddy of mine and I tried it in pitch black (minus the guns). We each took the light and held it away from our bodies and scanned the barracks area. Sure enough, unless the light was pointed directly at you, you could tell where the "good" guy was and where his light was. Try it!
On another note, if someone is pointing a sure-fire at you in the confines of a building, the last thing you are going to be able to do, is fire one or two into the light, much less their face. Again, try it. I do know that even at 15-20 meters on a vehicle stop at night, we'd often see the drivers looking at us through their wing mirror, so we used to shine our lights on the mirror so he couldn't watch our approach; invariably he'd look away.
If any of us has to use a weapon/light combination to clear our own house:
a: we're in trouble, cause clearing alone sucks.
b: we should be doing it nice and slow, using cover, and pieing our way into uncleared areas.
The thing that has always struck me about commandments 11-14, is that they are redundant. IF you accidentally muzzle flash someone, your finger is off the trigger. IF your finger is on the trigger, and you slip and fall and have a negligent discharge, your weapon was pointed in a safe direction. IF you have to evaluate a threat, your weapon may be temporarily pointed at the target, but you have trained to never let your finger enter the trigger guard unless you have positively ID'ed him/her/it, and you are prepared to fire.
And you NEVER play with the gun, so you have always maintained a healthy respect for what it is: a weapon.
If that makes you uncomfortable, I would suggest holding the flashlight in your left hand, across your body, and placing the butt of it on your right shoulder. In your right hand you can hold the weapon in a one-handed low ready, and still pie a room, minimizing body exposure, while maintaining an ability to fire without muzzle flashing anyone. It's not perfect, but nothing is.
I can stay in the dark until I hear him raising hell.