The latest report on the Battle of Wanat had been finished and apparently calls for adverse action against the Company, Battalion & Brigade commanders of the unit.I have a piece in today's WashingtonTimes that looks at the major issues about the battle and whether they were failures of command or friction of war. I also discussed this while guest hosting Frank Gaffney's show Secure Freedom Radio. The Battle of Wanat, Afghan istan, in July 2008 was a tough pill to swallow. We lost nine men and 27 wounded at a remote outpost in Nuristan province when a platoon from the 2nd Battalion (Airborne) of the 503rd Infantry Regiment was attacked by more than 200 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters as they were constructing a new combat outpost (COP). It was even more painful, as the unit was less than two weeks from finishing a brutal, 15-month deployment that saw an average of three troops in contact incidents daily. There have been multiple investigations and reports on the battle, including one that was just finished. The interest is understandable, given the loss of life, but it appears that what once was a hunt for lessons to be learned has turned into a search for scapegoats. The families of several of the fallen have been vocal in calling for this additional investigation and in criticizing the command elements of the unit for perceived failures. No one can fault a parent who has lost a child for attempting to find the truth about how it happened and to see any mistakes properly addressed. However, difficult decisions are made in combat that may lead to loss of life, but that does not always mean that those decisions were wrong or, worse, failures of command.
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blackfive/~3/1Drf7seK-rs/battle-of-wanat-in-the-washington-times.html
Posted
Feb 08 2010, 09:59 PM
by
BLACKFIVE