Professional Soldiers ® - Pentagon recommends Medal of Honor for a living soldier

Professional Soldiers ® (http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/index.php)

- The Early Bird (http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=45)

- - Pentagon recommends Medal of Honor for a living soldier (http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29505)

Pentagon recommends Medal of Honor for a living soldier

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

Quote:

Pentagon recommends Medal of Honor for a living soldier

By Greg Jaffe and Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 1, 2010; A01

The Pentagon has recommended that the White House consider awarding the Medal of Honor to a living soldier for the first time since the Vietnam War, according to U.S. officials.

The soldier, whose nomination must be reviewed by the White House, ran through a wall of enemy fire in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley in fall 2007 in an attempt to push back Taliban fighters who were close to overrunning his squad. U.S. military officials said his actions saved the lives of about half a dozen men.

It is possible that the White House could honor the soldier's heroism with a decoration other than the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor. Nominations for the Medal of Honor typically include detailed accounts from witnesses and can run hundreds, if not thousands, of pages. The review has been conducted so discreetly that the soldier's family does not know that it has reached the White House, according to U.S. officials who discussed the nomination on the condition of anonymity because a final decision is pending.

Pentagon officials requested that The Washington Post not name the soldier to avoid influencing the White House review. Administration officials declined to comment on the nomination.

The nomination comes after several years of complaints from lawmakers, military officers and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that the Pentagon had become so cautious that only troops whose bravery resulted in death were being considered for the Medal of Honor. Gates "finds it impossible to believe that there is no one who has performed a valorous act deserving of the Medal of Honor who has lived to tell about it," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, who declined to comment on specific nominations.

George W. Bush similarly lamented during the latter days of his second term as president that he had never had an opportunity to present the award to a living recipient.

The presentation of a Medal of Honor to a living soldier would be an important moment for President Obama, whose relationship with the military has been complicated in recent months by controversy over the administration's Afghan war deliberations in the fall and the recent firing of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal for remarks that belittled senior Obama administration officials.

The honor would also mark an important moment for a military that is exhausted after nine years of repeated deployments and increasingly worried that the rest of the country has tuned out the wars and their service. "There has been a certain emotion that is almost like martyrdom within the military," said Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina. "It's a feeling that they are sacrificing a great deal while the rest of the country is going about its business."

Obama presented a posthumous Medal of Honor in September to the family of Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti for his heroism in exposing himself to enemy fire to retrieve a wounded comrade. But honoring a living soldier with the nation's highest award for valor would give the president an opportunity to ease some of the military's feelings of estrangement from the rest of U.S. society.

Such a ceremony also would allow the president to honor military heroism and virtue, sentiments that Republicans say Obama does not celebrate frequently enough.

The award has the potential to produce something increasingly rare in today's wars: a recognizable hero in uniform. "The Afghan and Iraq wars really haven't produced heroes with a face," said Peter Feaver, a professor at Duke University who served in the Bush White House. In World War II, Medal of Honor winners such as Audie Murphy and John Basilone came to represent the ideals of the U.S. fighting force.

Some senior Bush administration officials worried that the lack of visible heroes made it tougher to convey the importance of the Iraq and Afghan wars to the American people, Feaver said. Early efforts by the Pentagon to weave heroic narratives out of the lives of soldiers such as former NFL football player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman collapsed when early military accounts of battlefield valor proved to be untrue. He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star.

Six posthumous Medals of Honor have been awarded for heroism in the Iraq and Afghan wars. The honorees exposed themselves to enemy fire to call for reinforcements or pull wounded colleagues to safety. Three of the six jumped on grenades, sacrificing their lives to save their fellow troops.

In response to the paucity of Medals of Honor awarded since 2001, the House Armed Services Committee directed the Defense Department to conduct a formal review of its award policy. Pentagon officials insist that the criteria for awarding the Medal of Honor hasn't changed since Vietnam.

But the nature of battle has changed, said Eileen M. Lainez, a Pentagon spokeswoman. Precision bombs and lethal attack helicopters typically give U.S. troops a huge firepower advantage over lightly armed insurgents on the battlefield. To compensate, fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq have relied heavily on roadside bomb attacks and ambushes that lasted for only a few minutes. Previous Medal of Honor recipients have typically displayed extreme bravery in battles that last for hours.

There are at least three Medal of Honor nominations, including the one at the White House, working through the system. The three nominees served in sparsely populated valleys in eastern Afghanistan that U.S. troops have abandoned in recent years.

The valleys, which are within 30 miles of each other, are dominated by treacherous, mountainous terrain that frequently allowed enemy fighters to move within close range of U.S. forces before launching their attack. The remote nature of the valleys meant that troops often had to fight for an hour before attack helicopters arrived on the scene to drive back the enemy.

Senior military officials described the fighting in those valleys as some of the toughest since the Korean and Vietnam wars. "It is a very, very challenging fight," said one military official. "It is sustained lengthy ground combat."

The relatively large number of potential Medal of Honor nominations emerging from this remote area of Afghanistan also reflected a war strategy that asked U.S. commanders to do too much with too few resources, military analysts said. Frequently troops were overextended in hostile terrain.

"We should be stationing our troops in places where they won't be earning the Medal of Honor because the population and terrain favor us and we have quick access to air support," said John Nagl, one of the authors of the Army's counterinsurgency doctrine and president of the Center for a New American Security, a defense think tank.

Staff writer Anne E. Kornblut and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Hope to see those deserving of the Award Earn their place among our other Heros. Would like to hear the story of heroism......

FWIW, I think this guy is an Idiot....Obviously he's never left that "Think Tank" and been pinned down between the Enemy, ROE, and the Drop approval from Higher.........

Quote:

"We should be stationing our troops in places where they won't be earning the Medal of Honor because the population and terrain favor us and we have quick access to air support," said John Nagl, one of the authors of the Army's counterinsurgency doctrine and president of the Center for a New American Security, a defense think tank.

I don't like this statement, it almost seems they are looking for an excuse for the President to present this award, That it would helped the Presidents image, always turning things into a political matter instead of just honoring a job welldone.

Quote
The presentation of a Medal of Honor to a living soldier would be an important moment for President Obama, whose relationship with the military has been complicated in recent months by controversy over the administration's Afghan war deliberations in the fall and the recent firing of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal for remarks that belittled senior Obama administration officials.

I hope the award is better deserved than the POTUS' Nobel Prize.

TR

Don't know if this article is talking about who I think it is, but if it is, it's a QP.

This soldier was a apart of Battle Company from the 173rd BCT. I went to high school with guy and he is an incredible individual. I stumbled across this New York Times article during my research of the documentary entitled "Restrepo" (which is based off his company). The story of this soldier is under the title "Killing Together". The whole thing is a great read I believe.

:lifter

Thanks for that link Mark

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Reaper (Post 337398)

I hope the award is better deserved than the POTUS' Nobel Prize.

TR

That shouldn't be much of a problem.

Quote:

Pentagon officials requested that The Washington Post not name the soldier to avoid influencing the White House review.

We'll see how long that lasts. I expect his name will be plastered all over the web shortly and probably be on CNN tonight.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Reaper (Post 337398)

I hope the award is better deserved than the POTUS' Nobel Prize.

TR

And this think tank type needs a jolt of reality. It does not take 7-8 hours of solid combat to get shot up real good either, nor; does it take mountainous, rough, or Vietnam like jungle to be in one hell of a mess. Drew Dix was amazing in a built up area.

That was a well written article from the COs point of view and showed the difficulties being a small unit commander in that type of war. It will be interesting to see the write up of the young man who has been nominated although one can pretty much guess the details.

I would like to think that Nagl's comment was misquoted or taken out of context considering his background.

Then again, it is consistent with the CNAS's courtship of the current administration.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Reaper (Post 337398)

I hope the award is better deserved than the POTUS' Nobel Prize.

TR

And al gore's, and jimmy carter's.

RF 1

Quote:

Originally Posted by mark.chappen (Post 337402)

I work with a past member of that unit. He has good words about that NCO as well.

Oh, he also gave me this link to that documentary.

restrepothemovie.com

I just found this too.

http://www.youtube.com/user/RestrepoTheMovie

Ah my mistake, the action was published in a newspaper some time ago, but not the consideration.

It's mentioned on this website.
http://www.sebastianjunger.com/forum...o-be-awared-to

Quote:

Originally Posted by Broadsword2004 (Post 337508)

That article is really eye-opening from a civilian point-of-view. He says the soldiers in that area are not supplied as much, why is this?

Isolation...........Not Everywhere is Kandahar or Bagram..........the ones you don't hear about are the ones that are less supplied and harder to get to, and thus not as well supplied or supported. The guys out on the fringes are the ones who suffer the most, and in many cases face the enemy a lot more.

Here is the article regarding the proposed recipient. I hope he earns it, we are surely lacking MoH veterans for this war. The living recipients is a whole other topic.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/07/army_MOH_070101w/

A soldier who served in Afghanistan could be the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War.

News outlets in and around Cedar Rapids, Iowa, have reported that Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta, who is from that area, is believed to be the soldier being considered for the nation’s highest valor award. Giunta is currently stationed in Vicenza, Italy.

The recommendation has been sent from the Defense Department the White House, according to an Army source, who confirmed that Giunta is likely the nominee.

The Washington Post was the first to report the nomination, but did not reveal the soldier’s name.

A source close to the nomination said the soldier fought through a barrage of fire to repel enemy fighters in a fierce battle in late 2007 in Afghanistan’s treacherous Korengal Valley. His actions saved the lives of several other soldiers.

The White House and the Army refused to comment on the nomination. Efforts to reach Giunta and his family were unsuccessful.

The AP reported officials are concerned that early disclosure could be seen as pressuring President Barack Obama to approve the medal, creating a potentially embarrassing situation if the award is not approved.

If approved, the award would be just the seventh Medal of Honor since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. All six prior awards were posthumous, including four for acts of heroism in Iraq and two in Afghanistan.

The small number awarded and the fact that all were awarded posthumously has raised questions among members of Congress and senior military leaders.

When asked by reporters, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in September the issue has been “a source of real concern to me.” He added: The Medal of Honor nomination process is “a very time-intensive, thorough process. But I would say that I’ve been told there are some living potential recipients that have been put forward,” he said during a Sept. 17 news conference.

Military officials have said it’s difficult to compare the number of awards from previous conflicts to those for Iraq and Afghanistan because warfare has evolved so much.

“The types of actions that we have in Iraq and Afghanistan, although they can be brutally violent for short periods of time, they are not the long duration, force-on-force type of battles that we fought in the past,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said June 7 during a meeting with Army Times editors and reporters. “That said, I think … you’re going to continue to see awards for Medals of Honor and Distinguished Service Crosses continue to process through, and I would expect that some of those, especially for a living soldier, would be favorably approved.”

Giunta’s heroic actions are chronicled in a new book titled “War,” by Sebastian Junger.

A specialist at the time, Giunta deployed with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team for its June 2007 to August 2008 tour in Afghanistan.

According to Junger’s book, late on Oct. 25, 2007, Giunta and his fellow soldiers from B Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, were on their way back from a major operation when they are ambushed by the enemy.

Giunta was the fourth soldier from the front; Sgt. Josh Brennan was walking point, according to “War.”

The enemy fired machine-gun and small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades from such close range that the Apache attack helicopters overhead were unable to help the soldiers on the ground.

“First Platoon is essentially inside a shooting gallery,” Junger wrote. “Within seconds, every man in the lead squad takes a bullet. Brennan goes down immediately, wounded in eight places.”

As the battle progressed, Giunta “sees two enemy fighters dragging Josh Brennan down the hillside. He empties his M4 magazine at them and starts running toward his friend,” according to the book.

“Giunta jams a new magazine into his gun and yells for a medic. Brennan is lying badly wounded in the open and Giunta grabs him by the vest and drags him behind a little bit of cover.”

Brennan doesn’t survive surgery, Junger wrote.

Giunta later talks to Junger about his actions. “I did what I did because that’s what I was trained to do,” he told Junger. “I didn’t run through fire to save a buddy – I ran through fire to see what was going on with him and maybe we could hide behind the same rock and shoot together. I didn’t run through fire to do anything heroic or brave. I did what I believe anyone would have done.”

Wow! He sounds like the personification of an infantry NCO. The battle isn't over until one side is victorious. If he's the soldier who's been nominated, they've gotten the right one.

Quote:

I did what I believe anyone would have done.

Pretty much what every MOH recipient says. I hope he gets it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Broadsword2004 (Post 337508)

That article is really eye-opening from a civilian point-of-view. He says the soldiers in that area are not supplied as much, why is this?

Ironically some of the most primitive conditions I have seen were Soldiers and Marines living under highway overpasses guarding the main supply routes in Iraq.

Updated - 10 Sep 2010.

Inspiring! :lifter

Richard :munchin

Living Afghan War Vet To Receive MoH
10 Sep 2010

President Barack Obama will award the first Medal of Honor to go to a living service member who fought in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta served as a rifle team leader during combat operations in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. The White House says Giunta went beyond the call of duty during an October 2007 attack when he exposed himself to enemy fire to pull a comrade back to cover. When he later noticed two insurgents carrying away another fellow solider, Giunta engaged the enemy, killing one and wounding the other before providing medical aid to the wounded U.S. soldier.

Obama spoke with Giunta Thursday to inform him he would receive the nation's highest military honor.

(cont'd)

http://www.wane.com/dpps/military/Fi...ar-vet_3577576

Congratulation SSG Giunta,, :lifter:lifter:lifter:lifter

Quote:

http://www.army.mil/-news/2010/09/10...ex.html?ref=nf

WASHINGTON (Sept. 10, 2010) -- Thursday, President Obama spoke with Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta to inform him that he will be awarded the Medal of Honor for acts of gallantry at the risk of his life that went above and beyond the call of duty.

Giunta will be the first living servicemember to be awarded the Medal of Honor for service in Iraq or Afghanistan. The President thanked Sergeant Giunta for his service and extraordinary bravery in battle.

Further information about the date and time of the ceremony will be released at a later date.

ACTION FROM WHICH THE MEDAL OF HONOR WAS EARNED:

Then-Spc. Salvatore A. Giunta distinguished himself by acts of gallantry at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a rifle team leader with Company B, 2nd Battalion (Airborne), 503rd Infantry Regiment during combat operations against an armed enemy in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan on October 25, 2007.

When an insurgent force ambush split Specialist Giunta's squad into two groups, he exposed himself to enemy fire to pull a comrade back to cover.

Later, while engaging the enemy and attempting to link up with the rest of his squad, Giunta noticed two insurgents carrying away a fellow soldier. He immediately engaged the enemy, killing one and wounding the other, and provided medical aid to his wounded comrade while the rest of his squad caught up and provided security.

His courage and leadership while under extreme enemy fire were integral to his platoon's ability defeat an enemy ambush and recover a fellow American paratrooper from enemy hands.

Well done SSG Giunta.

Video with MOH winner

You definitely get a good feel for the man with this video.

http://vimeo.com/16662374

Thanks for that link.

Quite apart from being one hell of a soldier and man, SSGT Giunta is incredibly eloquent. A sincere thanks to you and your unit, SSGT, and stay safe out there.

I saw this picture today of SSG Guinta receiving the MOH. Watching that medal being placed around a warror's neck inspires absolute awe. I am proud we have young men like him.

Well done warrior, thank you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Green Light (Post 357765)

I saw this picture today of SSG Guinta receiving the MOH. Watching that medal being placed around a warror's neck inspires absolute awe. I am proud we have young men like him.

One of the local papers printed this picture yesterday but it was a shot straight from the front. It gave me chills. I wish it had been printed in color.

And I'm pissed off it was on page 2.

For those who are interested here is a link directly to the documentaries website. The film apparently is coming out as a 'limited' release and is on the 'Oscar nominee' list as well. http://restrepothemovie.com/

Thanks to all of our warriors for your service and sacrifices.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ACE844 (Post 359563)

The movie Restrepo airs on Mon, 29 Nov, at 7 pm on the National Geographic Channel according to the website.

Check your local listings, though; here in HI it's on at 4 pm on digital cable, 9 pm on analog.