According to the news story it was the Platoon Sergeant, not the First Sergeant, whose medical profile kept him inside the wire. That's even worse.

The PL should not be let off the hook, but I do sympathize with him to some degree. Sounds like he made some common rookie mistakes (e.g. focused on winning the affection of his platoon rather than being an effective leader) that one could normally walk away from with a lesson learned, but instead resulted in disaster due to the perfect storm of (1) inheriting a difficult group of Soldiers, (2) having an absent PSG, and (3) being detached from his regular chain of command. Numbers 2 and 3 almost guarantee that he wasn't getting the guidance and mentorship that a new PL probably needs to be successful.

Tim

We have CDRs who are so afraid to let their Jr. leaders do anything without a watchful eye hovering over them. If the Sr. leadership would stop degrading the Jr. leaders aka Millenials and actually mentor and train them we might not have some of the issues we have.

Off my soap box. I think you asked the two big questions I would want answers to. WTF was the LT doing? Good Lord! It didn't take me long to figure out I had a PV2 huffing canned air 24/7. What was this moron doing?

Second, that CSM has some splainin' to do. Who in their right mind thinks an Infantry 1SG does not need to go outside the wire needs to be in a different line of work.

As for the arrogant attitude, I can see it. He looked pretty full of himself last year when I met him. I could be wrong. It was just the impression I got.

Jim - when the news of the "kill team" broke, I wasn't too far removed from being a PL myself...the first thing that crossed my mind was "where the hell were the PL and PSG?!?" It took some digging but I found something somewhere online that said the PL and PSG had been removed shortly before all this stuff happened because they couldn't keep their platoon from shooting at dogs. I honestly have no idea where I read that, so it might just be RUMINT...but it goes a long way towards explaining the absentee leadership.

Either the brigade commander or the battalion commander should have been removed. They were at odds. The battalion commander was closer in his concept of operations to the division commander than the brigade commander was. But the battalion commander clearly was becoming insubordinate, so he provided reason to switch him out. Maybe move him to division staff, and move a senior staff guy to battalion?
Best,
Tom

but it's mostly NMCI's fault.

Have a few yourself Lester? ;)

But, I think it's a good opportunity to examine how we are preparing our new 2LTs before they deploy in charge of platoons consisting of troops with two or three deployments in the past.

It's easy to criticize now and hindsight is 20/20, but the fact is that this PL was an average officer per the investigator's findings and his CO's remarks. Read that as: any average new 2LT would have done pretty much the same as Ligsay did, but we are reprimanding him for his conduct. What does that say about how we train our PLs?

Apparently, the PL was simply fitting in to the command climate. The desire to fit in is a natural response, even in an unusual environment like a 'rogue platoon.' Also, don't forget that the company XO was also reprimanded. The details weren't clear, but it said that he 'issued an unclear order after a January 2010 incident that led to a soldier shooting a corpse.'

To me, that sounds like the company grade officers there were passive leaders who allowed their subordinates to do as they pleased - possibly because of their fear of personal conflict or of being unpopular. It's a mundane, ho-hum reason but it led to some catastrophic actions.

Anything short of baby-raping has been condoned this decade in the name of keeping MTOE.

There doesn't appear to have been a lot of digging (perhaps for fear of what may be found?) into the past deployments of this unit.

To what degree did highly permissive ROE and a general sense of impunity contribute to the outcome.

There is clearly a lack of political will to reign in self-defeating behavior. I can almost hear the ghost of Capt Willard: "Shit... charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500".

That seems to have become the policy, for all the talk of best counterinsurgency practices and accompanying doctrine.

The Rangers who shot Tillman did not have a senior NCO, the guy was an E5, the ones who shot him did so out of an eagerness to get into a fight. The thing got messed up due to the rush of info and pressure on the PAO to get out word on Tillman. Stop perpetuating myths and conspiracy nonsense.

All those CAT III and CAT IV recruits the Army let in with their lack of High School Education and myriad of moral waivers were in the E-5 range as of '08-'09. As such, requirements for WLC dropped dramatically so they could pass and "Lead to Train".

Now they're in the E-6/E-7 range, and as such BNCOC and ANCOC are being dumbed down to ALC and SLC. You'd think the Army would buy a clue on the massive cheating with online correspondence classes when these idiots are trying to make it to the board, they're now making the first parts of each ALC and SLC online correspondence.

God help us all when they make E-8/E-9, They'll probably introduce coloring into USASMA.

The problems this unit had, predated their deployment by quite some months. I worked with and provided DS to 5/2 Stryker for some time, specifically 2-1 IN BN, the very organization that the kill team originated from. As such, I can comment on them but only as an informed outsider. To put it bluntly: their command climate was shit. Their BN CDR during their train up, LTC Demaree, did not accompany 2-1 on their deployment, either due to relief for cause, or some other less aggresive reason (I never found out why). Most of the Soldiers in that unit hated their very existence and I seriously doubt the causalties or COL Tunnell made the situation any better during their OEF tour.

This should not have been news to anyone. Early in 5/2's deployment, I remember reading an Army Times - gotta love the green suiter's version of the National Enquirer - with a letter by LTC Demaree, retired by this point, blasting the BDE Command and its policies. It was definitely a cheap shot to smear your own BDE, especially during a deployment, but it shows that the issue was already out there in the open.

Here's the article where Demaree speaks on the matter:

http://axcessnews.com/index.php/articles/show/id/21133

How do you win a war while still maintaining a 21st-century standard of ethics?

Tunnell's answer was his own straightforward doctrine: destroy the enemy.

But there was a growing awareness among his subordinates and his superiors that Tunnell's emphasis came with a cost. "When you lay that general command philosophy out there, then there are thousands of day-to-day decisions from the first commander down to the private to determine what you should and shouldn't do," says retired Lt. Col. Richard Demaree, a battalion commander in the brigade for two years, until he was transferred weeks before the brigade deployed after publicly disagreeing with Tunnell on this issue. "Are you going to spend your time protecting the population, or are you going to destroy insurgents?"

...

Commanders at the NTC submit a campaign plan that highlights what their brigade will accomplish during their year-long tours. The plan is supposed to incorporate security, economics, governance, and education. "Tunnell wrote one where the only thing that was on it was basically saying in 50 different ways how he was going to destroy the enemy," says Demaree.

...

There's more there I won't post them all....but this is the best one:

"I had two staff officers [in Tunnell's brigade] separately tell me that they were afraid that the brigade was going to end up on CNN for 'all the wrong reasons,' " he says. BING - F'ING-O

Oh, and I love this:

"As a Stryker brigade commander, you have to motivate soldiers who you are asking to do very dangerous things," says the senior US military official who was at the NTC. "But you have to temper that with rule of law, and telling troops that, 'Hey, part of winning this conflict is going to be every time you pull the trigger, you've got to make sure it's the right thing to do.' Then 20 years from now when you're waking up in the middle of the night, that's what's going to keep you on the right side of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. That's what's going to keep you sane."

"Tunnell could be excused for having a different opinion about how to conduct the war.... What he couldn't do was allow his unit to deteriorate into lawlessness."

Fully agree. But he Army cleared Tunnell of any responsibility for the breakdown of discipline in his command. Wasn't the Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita executed by the US after WW2, on the grounds that he was responsible as CG for the misdeeds of the Japanese troops in the Philippines? He wasn't in contact with all his troops down the chain of command, due to geographic dispersal, communications breakdown, etc., etc., all caused by the disruption of the US invasion of the Philippines. But the US held him responsible because they were his troops. Same principle should apply to the Tunnells of the world?

His BDE even failed their NTC rotation.

5-2 was showing problems even before these incidents:

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/12/army_afghanistan_mixed_signals_122109w/