{"id":31367,"date":"2012-08-07T07:36:32","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T11:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=31367"},"modified":"2012-08-07T07:36:32","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T11:36:32","slug":"army-officers-moh-nomination-lost-in-aftermath-of-crucial-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=31367","title":{"rendered":"Army officer’s MOH nomination “lost” in aftermath of crucial battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parachute cutie sent us a link last night to a Stars & Stripes\/ McClatchy<\/a> article about the nomination process for a Medal of Honor for former Army Capt. William Swenson it seems that the paperwork got “lost” in this here digital age we’re livin’ in. But the reasons it was “lost” might be more political than clerical;<\/p>\n

It couldn\u2019t be determined whether there was an effort to kill Swenson\u2019s Medal of Honor nomination, but there are several possible motives for doing so.<\/p>\n

Interviewed by military investigators five days after the battle, Swenson implicitly criticized top U.S. commanders in Afghanistan by blasting their rules of engagement. Angered that his repeated calls for artillery and air support were denied during the ambush, he charged that in trying to prevent civilian casualties for political reasons, the rules were costing U.S. soldiers\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not looking at the ground fighter and why he is using these air assets,\u201d Swenson said, according to a transcript obtained by McClatchy. \u201cWe just reduced an asset that\u2019s politically unpopular. I\u2019m sure there are a lot of people out there saying, \u2018I would really like that asset.\u2019 There are probably a lot of people who got killed as a result of not having that asset.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a politician. I\u2019m just the guy on the ground asking for that ammunition to be dropped because it\u2019s going to save lives,\u201d he continued.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His criticism of the folks who held back the fire power that Swenson so desperately needed to extricate his command from the firefight doesn’t change the facts that he saved his unit or the fact that he drove back into withering fire to rescue fallen troops repeatedly.<\/p>\n

If this is Big Army’s way of silencing critics about their inability to balance their rules of engagement against fighting an effective war, message received. Now do the right thing. I’m pretty sure that CPT Swenson could care less, but we, the public, do care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parachute cutie sent us a link last night to a Stars & Stripes\/ McClatchy article about … Army officer’s MOH nomination “lost” in aftermath of crucial battle<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-army"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31367","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}