Thanks for the letter. That was powerful stuff. If the circumstances are as described, and I would believe the guys on the ground over ANYONE else, than personally, I would have had no problem disobeying that order.

Odds on the next frag?

Relatives of the soldiers noted their mission was logistically useless. Their gasoline to deliver was water contaminated. Upon return to base from a double haul the soldiers refused to send the SAME bad fuel to a second destination.

But Halliburton needed to rack up the billing money. If one of those humvees doesn't make it back they get to bill cost plus.

Hell yes there needs to be an investigation. Those soldiers are smart, staying out of harms way when the objective was not realistic.

But enough of this! It's time for me to get patriotic like all the neocons. Every two year point or four year election get my RAMBO betas , dust them off, and remind myself how John Kerry left those guys behind but Sly Stallone got them all back.

Because one roid addled gym rat with a blank firing M60 can rewrite history. All he needs is long hair, a headband, and bad acting ability.

If not the 'A team' can show up, shoot all the dirt around the enemy, and make them surrender without any blooshed.

I pity da fools who think don't think neocons know wassup.

Someone wanna tell us how their family members who contacted the media are not patriots?

Odds that this news made it back to green zone... match those of AWOL getting re-selected.

If this is the unit I think it is, Col. Hackworth over at sftt.org has been on the Cap'n Queeg clone running this outfit for the past couple of months. He's not gonna get fragged 'cause he never ventures out of his blast-wall-surrounded trailer (which has only two small gaps thru the barrier, guarded by MP's) and communicates solely through his secretary because he's scared of his men (for good reason, I might add).

Whatever the facts are, an entire unit basically mutinying is indicative of a CO who does not know how to lead. The first principle they tell you in OCS as a green wanna-be 2nd looey is "Never issue an order that you know will be disobeyed." The second one is, "Never issue an order that you wouldn't carry out yourself if you were in their place." This CO violated both of these Leadership 101 principles. He failed to keep in touch with his men so that he could tell they were about to mutiny, and I know damn sure he wasn't going to go on that trip with them.

Look, these were reservists, not NoGo's. These were for the most part grizzled veterans who'd retired from active duty, but were keeping their hand in by staying in the Reserves. It takes a helluva lot to make old dogs like that lie in the traces and refuse to mush. Some Captain Queeg clone needs to have his butt handed to him and demoted to licking his commanding officer's butt after bowel movements for the rest of his tour, then drummed out of the service. This kind of failure of leadership simply is unacceptable.

- Badtux the Libertarian Penguin

the army wants to court marshall these troops for refusing an order, and they want court marshall troops for not refusing orders at abu grarib .
it goes to show you catch 22 is alive and well

Mr Murder made my main point: "McClenny told her mother her unit tried to deliver fuel to another base in Iraq Wednesday, but was sent back because the fuel had been contaminated with water. The platoon returned to its base, where it was told to take the fuel to another base, McClenny told her mother."

There is either some colossal stupidity here, or some blatant corruption. Given the stories trickling out about KBR/Halliburton I am betting the latter. Someone decided that making a six-percent profit on a load of contaminated gasoline was more important than either the lives of 19 soldiers or the needs of the combat command that would unwittedly accept contaminated fuel.

(And Art, not to be the spelling cop, but it is 'court martial' (from Mars the God of War) and not 'court marshall'.)

"Look, nothing justifies refusing orders in a combat situation."

So, the Abu Ghraib soldiers were following orders from a higher up to soften up prisoners for interrogation, and this higher up was following orders from another one higher up, until, of course, we get to the ultimate higher up, Spurious George, the Commander-in-Thief.

The German soldiers at Auschwitz were just following orders that originated higher up. The North Vietnamese soldiers at the Hanoi Hilton were just following orders from higher ups. The list goes on and on. Sometimes the higher ups are brought to justice, other times they skate.

those troops will probably call their daddy's and go to alabama, get loaded and work on political campaigns. i hear that excuse has worked in the past. mission accomplished.

Ginmar says that if the trucks were really deadlined it could very well be "illegal orders."

Also, anyone else thinking these guys were bait for a Tonkin II incident?

We'll need a bloody shirt to wave to justify this upcoming Nov 3 offensive they've been planning for months, right?

Or am I too cynical?

"...and no one ever said that committing suicide was either a smart or particularly patriotic plan for winning a battle or doing a routine (?) resupply mission."

Now now, _someone_ certainly did say that! The Japanese adopted it as their major strategy in WWII. They figured it was a sure way to recover victory from...defeat.

When my Dad was in the Air War College in 1984 they studied Hitler's Wehrmacht as an example of a disciplined, accomplished army with strong espirit de corps. This always troubled me. I hope our brass and officers on the ground who have been exposed to this mentality remember, who won that war and who lost it.

Does Mark Kleinman include Mai Lai and Abu Ghraib on his list of situations where all the orders should have been obeyed? I might give him a pass on Abu Ghraib, but Mai Lai was a combat situation. Running gasoline in big, slow, unescorted tankers that make big, slow targets, does not, in my book, constitute a combat situation.

Mark might want to rent "Gallipoli" (sp?) as an example of where orders should have been disobeyed and were not.

CNN Headline News has a blurb ont he story today. They never mentioned the platoon's concern about the vehicles being deadlines or that they had no escort. Made it sound like the whole thing was over bad gas.

Jo Fish

You need to work on this ................ BBC paid lip service ............. get the parents to call BBC .............

This whole thing has a "Paths of Glory" feel to it... the question is, who's going to play the sadistic general with the scar on his face?

Removed my post, huh. Too sweet. I guess i hit a sensitive chord. Perhaps you and Kleiman are cut from the same cloth. What got to you, the comment about narcissism or that aviators are not god's gift to mankind?

No,
It was an accident from my mt-blacklist. I apologize profusely. I did not know what post had been removed.

I'm truly, truly sorry.

Jo

When I went through basic and AIT (infantry) we were briefed that we were indeed expected to refuse an order, one that we knew to be legaly or moraly WRONG!!!!!

The load was aviation fuel and for those that don't know: bad gas can get you killed in flying machines.

On the return from the base that rejected the fuel, the unit was attacked.

The unit lacks armor for vehicles and personnel, and lacks combat escorts on its missions.

These guys had already made one run with bad trucks, hauling fuel, and were attacked. How could any reasonable officer ask them to do it again with the same bad gas.

There is no valid, military purpose in transporting bad fuel to an aviation unit. Whoever ordered these guys to risk themselves and scarce equipment on this stupid operation is not going to want a court martial.

Bellatrys: Maybe. As I've seen the reports, there is no good grounds for a court (and lots of reasons the administration would want this under a rug).

1: If there was no good reason to send them (I've heard both water, and mixed fuel grades... the former makes it all crap, the latter means it could be used, albiet as a second choice, for M1 Abrams).

2: As described, the second order was after little sleep, with no convoy planning (which means they'd have had troubles if they got into trouble).

3: They had vehicles they wanted to deadline. This is the sticking point to a couple of things. A piece of equipment can be "x"d, which puts it out of commission, i.e deadlined. A commander can circle that x, and put it back into use. There are somethings (cracked rotor blades, or turbine housings) which can't be circled.

Mission requirements will determine what gets circle xd.

If it wasn't a critical mission, or if the defects were mandatory deadlines, the commander is the one in trouble.

TK

Terry, apparently there are stories out there about the commander that make Captain Queeg look like a saint. (I guess they've been floating around on Hackworth's boards, from what was said on dKos and Eschaton.) If any of them are true - that he hides perpetually in his trailer surrounded by blast barriers and passes all his orders out through an ADC, never seeing the troops in person, frex - then it's a tossup whether he's just someone who should never have escaped the pages of an Evelyn Waugh novel, or someone who should never have escaped the pages of Catch 22.

But the closeness of it in timing taken with the talk of a push set for Nov 3 is all very disturbing.

Wow, My uncle was in veitnam and just 2 days ago told me his experiance with vietnam. He told me it was like a game of checkers and each town was a square on the board. Our soldiers has to get permission to move from town to town by the mayor of each town when ever they wanted to enter a town. If our soldier left a town they had to once again ask permission to go back in. Now the people living in these towns where not supposed to be armed, but the russians where supplying them with arms and goods through thier back doors. Our soldiers where stuck in town unable to leave and unable to protect themselves. That is one reason why when my uncle came home from vietman just as Kerry did he prostested the war. My uncle is a true hero and served his time. Just because one does not believe in fighting a never winning battle doesn't mean this man is not a hero to his counrty. our troops in vietnam was based on the profiting gain of some the senators pocketing money from a company by the name of Land-Sea corporation which was distributing goods to our soldiers during the vietman era. This all sounds to fimiular to the soldiers in iraq today being sent on a death mission that does not have to exist!!! God Bless our Troops!

"The Japanese adopted it as their major strategy in WWII."

you need to study your history a bit better. Suicide attacks by the Japanese were not adopted as a major strategy in WWII.

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