{"id":30579,"date":"2012-07-01T06:52:22","date_gmt":"2012-07-01T10:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=30579"},"modified":"2012-07-01T06:52:22","modified_gmt":"2012-07-01T10:52:22","slug":"hanson-cib-revoked-admin-separation-in-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=30579","title":{"rendered":"Hanson: CIB Revoked, Admin Separation In Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some readers may remember Jonn\u2019s article on CPT (then 1LT) Timothy R. Hanson<\/a>, who received the CIB in Iraq under circumstances that were later questioned.<\/p>\n

A recap, for those unfamiliar with the story.\u00a0 On 16 January 2008 Hanson led a small group of soldiers (8 total) into an ambush near Balad, Iraq<\/a>.\u00a0 Per later investigation, during that engagement Hanson shot one of his own men, PFC David H. Sharrett.\u00a0 Hanson left the battlefield via helicopter approximately 40 minutes later with two wounded soldiers.\u00a0 Hanson was uninjured.<\/p>\n

Though wounded, Sharrett was not recovered until 20+ minutes after Hanson had departed the battlefield.\u00a0 Sharrett died roughly an hour later.\u00a0 (Times cited here are from my review of the initial AR 15-6 investigation report and vary slightly from those cited in the article linked above).<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why Hanson left the battlefield uninjured before he\u2019d positively accounted for all his men; you\u2019ll have to ask him that question. \u00a0 I’d certainly like to.<\/p>\n

Hanson\u2019s CIB orders are found here<\/a>.\u00a0 They note only a single date vice a period of service.\u00a0 That indicates that the engagement where Hanson shot Sharrett was either Hanson’s first or only actual ground combat engagement during his deployment to Iraq.\u00a0 Based on what’s been made public, my guess would be “only” – but I could be wrong.<\/p>\n

It is not my place to pass judgment on Hanson; I wasn\u2019t there, and I haven\u2019t seen all the evidence regarding what happened that day.\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t know why or how he shot Sharrett.\u00a0 In the proverbial “fog of war”, bad things sometimes happen.\u00a0 Hanson’s shooting one of his own men during the heat of battle appears to be one such case.<\/p>\n

But I simply don’t understand Hanson’s leaving the battlefield, uninjured, before positively accounting for all of his subordinates.\u00a0 Maybe there was a sound tactical reason for his departure at that point;\u00a0 maybe not.\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 But based on what I’ve seen so far, I certainly can’t see a compelling reason for him to leave at that particular point in time.<\/p>\n

In any case, what I think is irrelevant.\u00a0 The Army has re-investigated Hanson’s conduct and found it wanting.\u00a0 While Hanson’s actions that day were apparently not determined criminal, the Army has decided that he did not serve successfully as an Infantry officer in combat.\u00a0 Hanson’s CIB has been revoked, and he is being processed for administrative elimination from the US Army Reserve.<\/a><\/p>\n

DA often gets things wrong.\u00a0 But IMO, they appear to have finally gotten this one more or less right.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the system works.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Additional Background:<\/p>\n

One of the AR 15-6 investigations into this incident may be found here<\/a>.\u00a0 It appears to be the initial investigation.\u00a0 I found the site to be somewhat unreliable, so you may need to try multiple times before you can download the files and view them. \u00a0 Be forewarned that the files are scanned as images and are very large – 30 to 45 MB each.\u00a0 If anyone can locate the later two AR 15-6 investigations online, please advise and I’ll post links to them here as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some readers may remember Jonn\u2019s article on CPT (then 1LT) Timothy R. Hanson, who received the … Hanson: CIB Revoked, Admin Separation In Process<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-army","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}