Report Cites Firefight as Lesson on Afghan War (Afghanistan's Black Hawk Down)

Inside Afghanistan 'Black Hawk Down', that's what the HuffPost calls this story from NYT:

Report Cites Firefight as Lesson on Afghan War

By THOM SHANKER
Published: October 2, 2009

The battle of Wanat is being described as the “Black Hawk Down” of Afghanistan, with the 48 American soldiers and 24 Afghan soldiers outnumbered three to one in a four-hour firefight that left nine Americans dead and 27 wounded in one of the bloodiest days of the eight-year war.

Soldiers who survived the battle described how their automatic weapons turned white hot and jammed from nonstop firing. Mortally wounded troops continued to hand bullet belts to those still able to fire.

The ammunition stockpile was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, igniting a stack of 120-millimeter mortar rounds — and the resulting fireball flung the unit’s antitank missiles into the command post. One insurgent got inside the concertina wire and is believed to have killed three soldiers at close range, including the platoon commander, Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom.

The description of the battle at Wanat — the heroism, the violence and the missteps that may have contributed to the deaths — ends with a judgment that the fight was “as remarkable as any small-unit action in American military history.”

The author, the military historian Douglas R. Cubbison, also included a series of criticisms in his review, sponsored by the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., that laid blame on a series of decisions made before the battle.

The draft report criticized the “lack of adequate preparation time” before arriving in Afghanistan, which meant there was little training geared specifically for Afghanistan, and not even a detailed operational plan for the year of combat that lay ahead.

Pentagon and military officials say those initial criticisms are being revised to reflect subsequent interviews with other soldiers and officers who were at Wanat or who served in higher-level command positions. After a round of revisions, the study will go through a formal peer-review process and be published.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/world/asia/03battle.html?hp

Blowing up the pickup trucks with fleeing Medical staff and the months long meetings to determine the location of the GI's camp.

I reoommend reading the NYTimes article for sure, start to finish. I'd be interested in seeing the final version of the report.

I forget, were these the guys who were going to greet the Americans with flowers or was that the Ir....never mind.

and like you, I would like to see the final version of the report.

Obama calls this a "war of necessity," while the Domino Doctrine was used to justify the war in Vietnam, and the WMD and "singing and dancing in the streets" were part of the sales pitch for the Iraq invasion.

Maybe combat troops don't make good social workers?
Hmmmm.