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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLawrence of Afghanistan: Rise and Fall of a Special Forces Legend
(absolutely fascinating story!)
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/jim-gant-top-green-beret-officer-forced-resign/story?id=24266710
Top Green Beret Officer Forced to Resign Over Affair With WaPo Reporter
Jun 24, 2014, 10:21 AM ET
By JAMES GORDON MEEK, RHONDA SCHWARTZ and BRIAN ROSS
A legendary Special Forces commander was quietly forced to leave the U.S. Army after he admitted to a love affair with a Washington Post war correspondent, who quit her job to secretly live with him for almost a year in one of the most dangerous combat outposts in Afghanistan.
U.S. Army Special Operations Command never publicly disclosed that highly-decorated Green Beret Major Jim Gant was relieved of command at the end of a harrowing 22 months in combat in March 2012.
His commanders charged in confidential files that he had "indulged in a self-created fantasy world" of booze, pain pills and sex in a tribal village deep in Taliban and al Qaeda country with his "wife," journalist Ann Scott Tyson.
We did fall in love, I would say over the course of about a week, Tyson told ABC News in an interview, recalling that Gant asked her to marry him within a few days of meeting each other in 2010. She laughed him off at first, but eventually he won her over.
By the time he was yanked out of Afghanistan two years later because of his relationship with Tyson, Gant also had won over three Pashtun tribes with substantial influence throughout Kunar province. Top commanders had tasked him with turning the tide of a conflict America was losing, and in his corner of the war, Gant was winning.
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jollyreaper2112
(1,941 posts)To me it's always crazy how super high achievers can end up flaming out making crazy impulsive decisions.
Bandit
(21,475 posts)I am sorry for him, that he threw away his career, and sorry for the USA for it's loss of a truly great man. This man accomplished things other soldiers could only dream about..Now what is he going to do? I suspect he will become a mercernary, a soldier of fortune, and he will be a good one.. Nothing lasts forever..
jollyreaper2112
(1,941 posts)I am just glad Afghanistan is not covered in jungle with a big river running up it, right?