Probe Into Murders of 3 GIs in Iraq Faults Commanding Officers

[sg1987]

WASHINGTON — Three U.S. soldiers slaughtered in a grisly kidnapping-murder plot south of Baghdad last June were not properly protected during a mission that was not well planned or executed, a military investigation has concluded


Story here:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,273160,00.html

[The Reaper]

Isn't hindsight wonderful and our "support the troops" mantra special to the media till they have a bad story to run?:rolleyes:

The way I see it, troops were lost, the CoC screwed up and was punished for it. Everyone wants to play CSI or Law and Order these days and be the judge while the media investigates.

What if every bad military decision had been dissected and publicized like this in past wars. Washington, Taylor, Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, Grant, Pershing, Marshall, MacArthur, Patton, Eisenhower, all made mistakes, got soldiers killed, and were allowed to learn from them and continue. Today's media would have crucified them at the first one, and they would never have risen to the successes they did.

This really pisses me off.:mad:

TR

[sg1987]

What if every bad military decision had been dissected and publicized like this in past wars.
TR

This was an interesting read for me:

http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/rcq/Ryan.pdf

I agree with some of the authors observations and disagree with some. I do think this analogy is relevant:

Both soldiers and construction workers may accept a risk of
dying, but soldiers actually accept more than this. When you become
a soldier you are not just expected to risk death, you are expected to
die—if the circumstances require it. This is implicit in the fact that a
soldier, unlike a construction worker, can be ordered to die if need be.
Hence soldiers are taught that they have a duty to die for their
country, but no construction worker is taught that there is a duty to
die for a bridge. War is about dying in a way that building bridges is
not, and this is why the fact of death is treated so differently. When
soldiers die they are honored for giving their lives for their country,
the assumption being that the sacrifice is one that they have chosen
for themselves. But while workers may die in the course of construction,
no one “gives” his or her life for a bridge; the loss is an accident
to be regretted, not a sacrifice to be honored.

I think many today do see some of the sacrifices made today as an accident to be regretted.

[The Reaper]

Pat Tillman's death, while tragic, seems to be among the worst of these.

I guess the fog of war is a foreign concept to most civilians, and definitely the MSM.

What QP here has not done something stupid, endangering themselves or others, and gotten away with it while learning a valuable lesson? Do we really want a risk averse military?

TR

[rubberneck]

Pat Tillman's death, while tragic, seems to be among the worst of these.

TR

I guess the media can't pass on a "big fat juicy news story" when Ranger Tillman's younger brother is telling everyone that will listen that Pat was a victim of cold blooded murder. What a way to honor your brothers memory.

[aricbcool]

Does anyone know when this report came out? The story is talking about an incident that happened last year. I don't know if the Army takes this long to run investigations, but the story doesn't list a release date on the report. Personally, I think they're using this story as filler until more news about the current missing soldiers is made available. The way that the MSM runs news as an entertainment business, they've got to print something to keep this story fresh in people's minds. Don Henley comes to mind...

--Aric

[Firebeef]

. The way that the MSM runs news as an entertainment business, they've got to print something to keep this story fresh in people's minds. Don Henley comes to mind...

--Aric

.......we all know that crap is king
feed us dirty laundry

[x-factor]

In the last 15 years or so, the rise of 24-hour cable news stations has combined (ironically) with our own military's excellence to create this perception of war as a sport to be watched (same thing with politics, but thats another thread) and not as a national endeavour to be participated in by all citizens.

Its an incredibly myopic and dangerous thing...especially when it filters down to the tactical level like this.

I don't much like when commentators talk about the "American Empire" (because I don't think its an accurate description), but that kind of attitude might be best described as "Imperial." Its very reminiscent to me of the late Roman Empire.


TR - You're the resident civil war scholar. Didn't many of the Union generals (McClellan especially) suffer from a lot of stinging press before Grant (especially when Lee and Jackson were running them ragged)?

And didn't the Army leadership take a pasting in the press after Operation Torch in WWII and TF Smith in Korea?

[The Reaper]

In the last 15 years or so, the rise of 24-hour cable news stations has combined (ironically) with our own military's excellence to create this perception of war as a sport to be watched (same thing with politics, but thats another thread) and not as a national endeavour to be participated in by all citizens.

Its an incredibly myopic and dangerous thing...especially when it filters down to the tactical level like this.

I don't much like when commentators talk about the "American Empire" (because I don't think its an accurate description), but that kind of attitude might be best described as "Imperial." Its very reminiscent to me of the late Roman Empire.


TR - You're the resident civil war scholar. Didn't many of the Union generals (McClellan especially) suffer from a lot of stinging press before Grant (especially when Lee and Jackson were running them ragged)?

And didn't the Army leadership take a pasting in the press after Operation Torch in WWII and TF Smith in Korea?

Pretty much all of the Union Army Commanders got beat in the Civil War press, but they were a pretty bad lot till Grant, Sherman, et al took over. Meade succeeded where the others had failed at Gettysburg, but he was sacked as well.

Some of the leadership got toasted after Pearl Harbor as well, but that was for gross negligence (or they thought so at the time). I am talking about junior leaders making mistakes.

TR