Air Force Sgt. being considered for MOH-fought alone after left for dead

Wishful

"Land of the free, because of the brave..."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/w...t-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0


Most importantly, everyone who was in this battle is a hero and no one has the right to second-guess Chief Slabinski's decisions, unless they've been there.


While the time frame (2002) is important to take into consideration, I have several questions in addition to the ones raised in the article.


#1 Was the senior leadership's decision to override the Chief’s recommendation for a 24-hour delay of the mission reviewed? (IMHO senior leadership being the only personnel whose actions should be criticized)


#2 Why was the AC 130 unable to engage? Should the mission been postponed if USAF were unable to provide any air support?


#3 Was there any way to have detected the enemies' position prior to the team’s insertion? Would the CIA's Predator drone (of that time) apparently on station prior to the team’s arrival, detect enemy present & relay that info to the SEAL team? Wouldn’t that drone be armed? Could the CIA at that time, be able to act to protect ground forces in real time, without getting prior approval (from a lengthy chain-of command at that time)?



Emotions of anger & frustration come over me when I read about leadership ordering missions that put our people into extremely dangerous situations then fail to provide a minimum of support, esp. air support. Think “Lone Survivor.” & probably dozens of others. In the NYT’s article, the stated mission was to kill Al-Qaeda members located in an isolated region; IMHO, if CAS for ground troops can’t be provided, that’s what B-52’s are for.
 
There are at least two books on this battle: Robert's Ridge and Not A Good Day To Die. They provide a lot more context. Part of the problem stemmed from the services not communicating their needs during planning. Air support was slow to respond and rather haphazard because most of the units did not know of the operation beforehand. That said, when people found out, we unleashed an incredible amount of firepower on that valley.
 
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