Friday, October 15, 2004

NewsClip: Support the troops

"A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a 'suicide mission' to deliver fuel, the troops' relatives said Thursday. The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq -- north of Baghdad -- because their vehicles were considered 'deadlined' or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook."

Read more ...

Hat tip to AntiWar.Com

This one requires some action.

In the normal course of things, if a particular NCO or enlisted man refuses to obey a lawful order, he's charged, his case is disposed of through Article 15 proceedings or a court martial, and that's the end of it. The next person down the chain of command takes over for him, and the order gets carried out.

That's not the case with this platoon from the 343rd Quartermaster Company. If the article is correct, every last man and woman in the platoon backed their platoon sergeant.

Ergo, something smells rotten in Denmark. This is mutiny, and mutiny is exceedingly rare in the Armed Forces of the United States. I have trouble believing that an entire platoon would refuse a mission unless something were dead wrong about that mission.

The claim of the platoon, in essence, seems to be that a) the mission entails a high likelihood of attack, and b) the state of their equipment is such that they would not be able to effectively defend themselves in case of an attack.

You know what to do. Here and here are the tools to do it.

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