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2011-01-29 Home Front: WoT

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Posted by Steve White 2011-01-29 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11125 views ] Top

#1 But superior officers decided to ignore the advice because the unit was short of intelligence analysts and needed Manning's skills

Think a letter of the findings will be in the aforementioned superiors' personnel file for lookie when promotion and assignments come up. Nah, I don't think so either. Good old boyism triumphs over accountability.

Posted by Procopius2k 2011-01-29 00:06|| 2011-01-29 00:06|| Front Page Top

#2 At one time assaulting co-workers and insubordination to superiors would have gotten unit discipline if not a dishonorable discharge.

Posted by tipover 2011-01-29 02:34|| 2011-01-29 02:34|| Front Page Top

#3 The result was a "comedy of errors" as one commander after another assumed someone else was addressing Manning's problems, one official said.

And as we all know, commanders have nothing better to do than to monitor a enlisted man and his mental problems.

Posted by badanov 2011-01-29 09:57|| http://www.freefirezone.org 2011-01-29 09:57|| Front Page Top

#4 Commanders have a lot of responsibilities. It's voluntary, one can decline the assignment. If you don't want to do the job, then don't stop someone else who can and will. And yes, one of those jobs is to monitor the behavior of their troops. They rely upon the chain of command, but when one soldier exhibits abnormal and aberrant behaviors it's suppose to be get everyone's attention.

Posted by Procopius2k 2011-01-29 10:27|| 2011-01-29 10:27|| Front Page Top

#5 Whoever his 1SG and squad leader were, they dropped the ball bigtime if this little shitbird was doing things like that - he should have at least been counseled, formally, and maybe a company grade Art15 with extra duty. With those in place, the CO and Bn Cdr would have had much more firm means to deal with the little traitor.

Usually if something is sever enough to push beyond a company grade Article 15 (come to the BnCdr's attention), then that's when they pull your ticket.

Being weird is allowable in MI, we had one interrogator in our "Tactical Exploitation" unit who would talk to the flagpole at night from time to time, but was otherwise vary capable.

Posted by OldSpook 2011-01-29 11:07|| 2011-01-29 11:07|| Front Page Top

#6 Bottom line: some people screwed up, and the Army is going after them. More importatnly, Manning knew what he was doing was wrong, and did it anyway.

The little traitor should never see the light of day as a free man. reduction in rank to E-1, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, 40 to life, with a bad conduct discharge at the end.

Posted by OldSpook 2011-01-29 11:10|| 2011-01-29 11:10|| Front Page Top

#7 Old Spook, betcha there are a lot of servicemen (in certain categories) making trouble to disqualify from being deployed.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2011-01-29 13:35|| 2011-01-29 13:35|| Front Page Top

#8 If he threw a chair at me, I'da wrapped it around the little flit's head...

Posted by tu3031 2011-01-29 13:53|| 2011-01-29 13:53|| Front Page Top

#9 one commander after another assumed someone else was addressing Manning's problems,
As the old saying goes. assume makes an ass out of u and me.

Posted by tipper 2011-01-29 15:08|| 2011-01-29 15:08|| Front Page Top

#10 The problem of shortages of personnel, whether in absolute numbers or within MOSs, has came up repeatedly in my readings about US military disasters in Iraq. The fiasco at Abu Ghraib was due in part to a lack of enough MPs and senior soldiers to keep an eye on things, the horrible rape of an Iraqi 14 year old girl and the brutal murder of her whole family was lead by a bastard who got into the Army despite having a criminal record because the Army was short of enlistments (There is a book out reviewing the situation of the unit this bastard and his accomplices belonged to, it reports the unit had too few troops for the mission it was assigned, so they were over worked and there were leadership issues. This lead to low morale and discipline problems.), and now it comes out that Manning went to Iraq despite being unstable because there was a shortage of intelligence analysts.

So many of our problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan arose because Rumsfeld and company, plus many generals in the Pentagon and CENTCOM believed the US could not only conguer these nations but also reform their societies with a relatively small number of troops on the ground. They convinced Pres. Bush, and themselves, of this, and it is a seductive argument, its big selling point was that fewer troops on the ground was supposed to mean fewer dead soldiers. What it nearly meant was mission failure.

On a personal note, my two tours in Iraq, Fall 2003 to Fall 2004, and all of 2005 were examples of the shortage of people in general and Intel Analysts in particular. I changed MOSs when I went from the Regular Army to the Texas Army National Guard, from 11M to (then)96B. My first trip to Iraq was because the Division Rear of the 82nd Airborne did not have enough S-2 (Intelligence) folks. The 82nd had control of the Al Anbar area at the time. When I went back in 2005 (I volunteered) with another Texas Guard unit the Battalion I was assigned to had the FOB security mission as well as some VIP escort duty. The S-2 section at the FOB was one Intel trained LT , one intel analyst qualified soon to be E-5 sergeant (me), one enlisted trained on ground radar, and a cook. The cook was put in the S-2 section because she was a super fast typist. Fortunately both of the other enlisted had good heads on their shoulders so we did okay. We did 24/7 operations in the BN TOC with 2 shifts of 12 hours, two people on day shift and one on night shift. Every few months we rotated people between day and night shifts. Therefore, at times, one of these enlisted, the female cook for example, was virtually unsupervised for months on end while having complete access to the Secret Internet Network just like Manning. Again, fortunately, both of those soldiers were not traitors.
Rifle308

Posted by Rifle308 2011-01-29 16:58|| 2011-01-29 16:58|| Front Page Top

#11 Thank you for explaining, Rifle308. And for what you and your team did.

Posted by trailing wife 2011-01-29 17:08|| 2011-01-29 17:08|| Front Page Top

#12 There is no perfect. One of the lessons unlearned from the rebuild of the nadir in the 70s, is that its better to have an undermanned squad of 7 motivated and good soldiers out of 10 men, then to add two or three trouble children to fill the Unit Status Report check box on manning but who'll pull everything down.

Posted by Procopius2k 2011-01-29 17:08|| 2011-01-29 17:08|| Front Page Top

#13 So many of our problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan arose because Rumsfeld and company, plus many generals in the Pentagon and CENTCOM believed the US could not only conguer these nations but also reform their societies with a relatively small number of troops on the ground. They convinced Pres. Bush, and themselves, of this, and it is a seductive argument, its big selling point was that fewer troops on the ground was supposed to mean fewer dead soldiers.

I could be wrong, but I think the bolded part is contrary to everything we've seen in the history of military operations. Maybe he meant fewer dead enemy soldiers.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2011-01-29 17:42|| 2011-01-29 17:42|| Front Page Top

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