A lot of this story involves Politics and political motivations. I however have a military question and that is “why were so many Special Operations Troops put into a flying target like a Chinook and sent into a known Hot Landing Zone”? We learned in Vietnam that when you are going into a hot LZ, you disperse your landing parties into multiple light, fast manueverable aircraft equipped with firepower. Putting that many trrops on a “Chinook” and sending them into a Hot area is “criminal” and I haven’t seen anybody in the Military Command Structure address this decision.
IMO, Did removing forces from the tribal areas to centralized fortifications result in fewer if any available helos in the area. Couple that with the reported 7 “friendly” Afghan personnel on the ship, the fact that helo was probably made in the 1960s as it was a reserve craft, and the reason for the mission in the first place without suitable support leaves many questions unanswered such as why not dispatch single wing planes to attack something like 10-15 enemy fighters pinning the Rangers down. Also, how did His Excellency's rules for engagement affect the outcome, like no night operations, no firing into “friendly” villages etc.
This whole thing reeks. As a high school teacher I heard say when the class failed miserably on oral recitation: when the blind lead the blind, they all fall in the ditch.
yeah, that was my initial question when I heard about it. Why so many on one copter? We invest so much in training our SEALs and they are so incredibly valuable and rare, who the HE__ put them all on the same big slow copter? Has he been fired or better yet, put up against a wall?
It is infuriating and the responsibility should bubble all the way up to administration. Dear reader should be furious and demanding answers, but he isn’t. That is a further indictment against him and his realm of phony baloney officials.
First question who ordered the seals to all be in the same chopper.