A flag is flying at half-staff in San Diego where Navy SEALs train. I’m worried. The Taliban claims it has one of our soldiers, according to Reuters, and will videotape his execution. This is the top story at The Guardian.
PHOTO: Army Master Sgt. Michael Russell, who died in the crash, is shown with wife Annette in an undated photo. (CNN)
From The Guardian:
A small team of US soldiers was today still missing in the same eastern Afghan mountains where a special forces helicopter was shot down earlier this week.
The MH-47 Chinook helicopter came down on Tuesday while trying to help the reconnaissance team on the ground. All 16 US personnel on board the aircraft were killed.
The Taliban claimed to have shot down the helicopter, and US officers at the crash scene today said it appeared an unguided rocket-propelled grenade had hit the aircraft with a “pretty lucky shot”…
Good thing all they were was “lucky.” I’d hate to think what would happen if they had some real skill such as intel that’s superior to ours and excellent outside communications (“Intel Expert: “Disturbing News From Afghanistan‘”).
We have no business putting soldiers such as Sgt. Russell in such jeopardy unless we have good intel and a damn good reason to be there.
More photos and more complete bios — and a very detailed description of the events leading to the crash — below the fold:
All photos here are from the Honolulu Advertiser, which has an extended story on the Navy SEALs’ deaths:
BELOW THE PHOTOS AND CAPTIONS, much more about the soldiers’ lives from the Honolulu newspaper.
CAPTION: Dan Healy, 36, was among 16 American soldiers killed when their MH-47 Chinook helicopter was shot down this week by insurgents in Afghanistan, his mother said. Healy, a 1986 graduate of Exeter (NH) High School, was on a six-month tour of the Middle East since March. — Foster’s Daily Democrat, Dover, NH
This photo provided by the Reich family shows U.S. Army Maj. Steve Reich and his wife, Jill Reich, who married March 19. Reich, a graduate of Shepaug Valley High School and the U.S. Military Academy, was killed in Tuesday’s helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
Army Master Sgt. Michael Russell, then a staff sergeant, is shown with his wife, Annette, in an undated photo provided by his family. According to his family, Russell, who lived in Savannah, Ga., was among 16 U.S. service members killed when their helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar province. The Taliban claims it shot down the aircraft with a rocket-propelled grenade.
“He was a lovely young man who loved his children, his family, his service,” his mother, Natalie Healy of Exeter, N.H., told the newspaper. “He was proud to serve his country. He was very happy to have the opportunity to fight.”
Dan Healy was a 1986 graduate of Exeter High School. He had been in the Navy for at least 15 years and was stationed at Pearl Harbor, said Natalie Healy.
He had four children — two who live in San Diego and two who live in Honolulu. Other survivors include two sisters, Jennifer, 36, of San Diego, and Shannon, 22, of Exeter, his mother told the newspaper.
Healy was sent overseas in March for a six-month tour, Natalie Healy said.
Healy’s children were the focus of his life, despite his having to move a lot, she said.
“His greatest joy was being with his children,” Healy told the newspaper. “He loved to enjoy life. He loved his friends.”
[……]
The names of some of the Navy and Army personnel killed in the crash surfaced yesterday in various media reports:
• Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Jeff Taylor, 30, of Little Creek, Va., was one of the Navy SEALs aboard the helicopter, The Associated Press reported. It was not known last night if he was stationed at Pearl Harbor.
Taylor is survived by his wife, Erin. They have no children.
• Army Maj. Steve Reich, 34, of Washington, Conn., was a company commander and pilot in the 160th Special Operations Aviation regiment. He was a newlywed, having married his wife, Jill, in March, according to The Associated Press.
Reich pitched briefly in the minor leagues and carried the American flag as a member of Team USA at the 1993 World University Games.
Army Master Sgt. Michael Russell, then a staff sergeant, is shown with his wife, Annette, in an undated photo provided by his family. According to his family, Russell, who lived in Savannah, Ga., was among 16 U.S. service members killed when their helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar province. The Taliban claims it shot down the aircraft with a rocket-propelled grenade.
• Army Master Sgt. Michael Russell, 31, of Fredericksburg, Va., a flight engineer, was serving his sixth tour in Afghanistan since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to the Free Lance-Star newspaper of Fredericksburg.
He is survived by his wife, Annette, and two daughters. Russell and Reich were based at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Ga.
• Army Sgt. 1st Class James W. “Tre” Ponder III of Clarksville, Tenn., was among those aboard the helicopter, his father-in-law told the Tennessean newspaper of Nashville. He had been deployed for only three weeks. He had a wife, Leslie, and two daughters. Ponder was stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky.
The newspaper also has a highly detailed report on what happened:
SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One, based at Pearl Harbor, has 45 officers and 230 enlisted personnel — 93 of them Sea, Air, Land commandos — and provides special operations forces in the Pacific and Central Command areas. That team has deployed elements in support of Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Team Two is based at Little Creek, Va., and conducts operations throughout the Atlantic, Southern and European areas.
The events that led to the tragedy began when a helicopter inserted a four-man reconnaissance team from Little Creek into mountains near Asadabad, in Kunar province. Intelligence had indicated a large enemy force, according to military sources quoted in the Army Times.
The SEALs hiked to a spot in rugged terrain where they established an observation post. Within several hours, al-Qaida or Taliban forces attacked with small-arms fire, and the SEALs called for help, the sources said.
A quick-reaction force, or QRF, consisting of at least two MH-47 Chinooks from the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, flew toward the beleaguered SEALs. It is not clear whether the SEALs on the ground were still at the observation post or had moved to evade their attackers. When the helicopters arrived near the observation post, a rocket-propelled grenade hit one of the Chinooks.
The pilots of a second aircraft on the mission saw and reported that their sister ship had been hit by an RPG, said Marine Lt. Gen. James Conway, director of operations on the Joint Staff, in a Pentagon news conference yesterday.
The Chinook was fired upon as it approached its landing zone at dusk, Col. Jim Yonts, spokesman for U.S. operations in Afghanistan, told The Associated Press. The aircraft flew on but crashed about a mile away, he said. If Yonts’ account is accurate, that would indicate that the four SEALs had not been picked up.
Movement spotted
The stricken Chinook, from the 160th’s 3rd Battalion, stationed at Hunter Army Airfield, Ga., either crashed into or tried to land on a mountainside, but rolled down the steep slope into a ravine, according to military officials.
“We were right in that valley,” an Army pilot who was previously deployed to Afghanistan told the Army Times. “It’s very steep and it’s unforgiving terrain.”
A Predator unmanned aerial vehicle captured images of movement around the crash site and infrared strobes of the type U.S. special operators use in emergencies, a military source told the Army Times. “There was definitely movement around the aircraft,” the source said.
The Washington Post reported that the Predator also crashed or was shot down.
In addition, U.S. forces detected a PRC-112 survival radio beacon emitting from the vicinity of the helicopter, the military source said. The beacon appeared to be moving. “The last location was a good distance away from the crash,” he said.
By yesterday, U.S. forces had secured the crash site and recovered “all 16 bodies of those servicemen who were on board the MH-47 helicopter that crashed,” Conway said.
As part of the U.S. military rescue operation, Marines established “blocking positions” to prevent enemy forces from reaching the site, a Pentagon official said. Rangers secured the crash site itself, he added.
A Pentagon official told Army Times that there were still four men “unaccounted for — the original four that were in trouble.”
Reach Mike Gordon at 525-8012 or at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com. Reach Peter Boylan at 535-8110 or at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.
That soldier will be very lucky if he’s executed, may the Holy Father please watch over him.
What the Afghans do to their prisoners you do not want to know. The cruelty and viciousness from that part of the world is the worst the planet currently produces.
God damn it. This is bad and I’m worried too.
True, true. I’ll never forget the story of the aid worker who was captured and skinned alive … about 4-5 years ago.
By the way, that was the only photo I could find at CNN although they just showed photos of four of the soldiers who died… it makes me so sad and sick. Such fine people and soldiers. Wasted. Gone from their families. For what.
For what? For this.
Unocal should give his widow all its profits
I listened to part of the house debate about China’s proposed takeover of Unocal last nite. Repubs and Dems were opposed on “national security” grounds. I hadn’t even clicked into the Caspian pipeline connection until I posted the above link. So, if China takes over Unocal, they’ll get control of that pipeline too I suppose (?). This is quite the situation…
Seriously, what is the point of making stupid statements like this? Where are they then? On a field trip looking for goats??
It’s as idiotic as that Pentagon press briefing replay that you and I caught late last night, Catnip. Those two jokers trying to massage just the right words.
btw, whatever happened to Conyers’ floor hearing on DSM?
Regarding the Pentagon briefing – Di Rita said that coalition forces cannot stop this insurgency – that’s up to the Iraqis. Then why the hell is the training taking so long and why are troops still dying along with 8000 Iraqis in the last 6 months?
As for Conyers et al, I have no idea what’s going on now because there’s nothing about the proposed House discussion on his blog.
What really pisses me off is that after Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman no journalist ever prefaces their text with something like this:
“Even though US Army credibility has been smashed with the lying over Lynch and Tillman, US officials insisted they had no word the on the whereabouts of the men.”
Run a sentence like that for 120 days and see if the scumbags lie to you again. Really.
I hate this. Lord I loathe obsequious fear. Get up, you little shit journalist, and do your fucking job! It’s not hard!
These military spokespeople are a joke. Well trained Rumsfeldesque sock puppets.
who could talk so much and say so little.
that was also an RPG modified apparently according to instructions from Al Qaeda to make it more effective against helos
and a shot does not have to be particularly lucky to hit a helicopter that is hovering or descending in a fixed pattern — it doesn’t move that fast
That “lucky shot” quote sure stood out for me as well – as if the Taliban has no battle experience whatsoever. That phrase is out there just to try to calm the fears of the masses who will lap it up – believing the Taliban are just a bunch of disorganzed, rogue fighters who try to shoot down aircraft as some sort of a hobby when there’s nothing better to do. Let’s get real here…
In the phone call from “Taliban Bob” he said that they had a new or modified weapon. This guy hasn’t been very reliable giving info in the past, he often embellishes with untruths. If it was shot down with an RPG then it was a “lucky shot”, or as lucky as someone can get with RPG experience waiting patiently for helicopters to fly in using the same route that they have probably been using for a very long time. It could have been a surface to air missile though and that has heat seeking capabilities and they are mobile and can be shot from someone’s shoulder. With that it requires much less luck…..much less. They can be purchased on the black market, or if they had an old stash from an old war and the batteries were old they may have figured out how to rig new batteries which I’m told isn’t that difficult to do if you are a little handy. It was one of these kinds of surface to air missiles that brought down the Apache around Fallujah in Jan 2004. Our helicopters are equipped with a system that shoots out flares to confuse the missile when it locks on, but this system is easy to forget to turn on (and may be why the Apache in Fallujah was brought down and it remains unprovable if the system was turned on). There are so many things the pilots are doing while running up and flying that it would be easy to over look turning on the system, particularly if you believed that your enemy didn’t have surface to air capabilities. The system is also not foolproof, it isn’t 100% able to divert the missile all of the time.
The Army Times has a more detailed article about what happened.
I thought we put them out of business forever.
.
It’s been clear to me from the many casualties and the circumstances during the past year in Afghanistan, most military assets have been pulled out. Flying AWACs, A-10 Thunderbolt, Apache helicopters, F-16 fighter support have been lacking or had taken too much time to be engaged in battle when the Special Forces had requested assistance. Result is unnecessary loss of valuable life of our men and women performing an impossible mission.
The region south of Khandahar to Pakistani border and north-east to Khost and Jalalabad have been cleared of most Al Qaeda and Taliban troops. The even more rugged area beyond Jalalabad is where the US Special Forces went missing and the Chinook heli was shot down.
Contrary to the ArmyTimes.com report, I understood that in the rescue mission allied forces were involved, without further specifics given in the news item.
Asadabad is located in the northeastern province of Kunar. It is a mountainous region, and Asadabad is about five miles from the Pakistani border.
CIA Contractor Indicted for Abuse of Afghan Detainee
June 17, 2004 — A 38-year-old North Carolina man has been indicted for assaulting an Afghan detainee while working as a contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency at a U.S. military base in Asadabad, Afghanistan.
CS Monitor – Background Info Kunar Province
USA WELCOME: Make Yourself Known @BooMan Tribune and add some cheers!
A rescue mission attempting to save Americans in a hostile land went horribly wrong and 16 more Americans died in the rescue helicopter.
Wasn’t Jimmy Carter held personally responsible and ridiculed for something similar.
Oh c’mon now! Carter’s a Dem. Get with the talking points, Ed.
We discussed this already this week, but this is a pretty plain-speakin’ editorial on how BUSH IS FUCKING OVER THE TROOOPS and VETERANS:
The Senate, after several days of urging by Washington Sen. Patty Murray and others, not only beat Bush to the punch Wednesday but did him one better, authorizing an additional $1.5 billion for the department.
Rising health care costs for surviving veterans of all eras, combined with the administration’s failure to budget for an increasing number of veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, brought on the budget crisis.
“It was not easy for them to eat crow on this,” Murray said Wednesday night from Capitol Hill, in reference to Republican senators who had earlier squelched her call for emergency funding for veterans services. “But as I’ve said so many times in the last few days on the floor of the Senate, this is not a Republican issue and this is not a Democratic issue; it is an American issue.”
“We were in error. Sen. Murray was right,” said Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn. “I’m not happy that we were put in a position to vote against an amendment (Murray’s) that we now find out was needed, but we got bad information.”
That bad information was still coming as late as Tuesday, when department officials insisted they could deal with the shortage without asking for more money.
Now that Bush has called for the new funding, the House shouldn’t be far behind. “Congress needs to provide the additional resources now,” said Rep. Jim Walsh, R-N.Y. “We’re at war.”
Yes, congressman, and war produces veterans, veterans with physical, fiscal and psychological needs that a grateful nation should do all it can to meet.
“The Senate stood together tonight, and I’m very proud,” Murray said.
(Seattle PI)
Give our warriors a raise!
Christian Science Monitor Op-Ed
I’m talking about the fact that members of the US military can look out the windows of their Humvees on street patrol and see passing SUVs driven by private security contractors earning salaries that dwarf the average pay of GI Joe and Jane.
A recent PBS Frontline documentary reported that some employees of Blackwater Security are making up to $1,000 per day in Iraq.
Why not just line up our soldiers, slap every one in the face and say, “Numskull! You joined the wrong organization!”
The funds required for securing and stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan are coming mostly from American taxpayers like me. I’m willing to pay whatever it takes to fight terror, but I think I’m justified in demanding that nobody wearing “the boots on the ground” should get paid more than our men and women in uniform.
Everyone who has one of those “Support Our Troops” magnets on the family car should immediately demonstrate that support by calling their congressional representatives and demanding that American troops stop getting the short end of the stick in the war against terror.
There’s not enough room here for a detailed plan, but I’m sure Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has plenty of number crunchers who can rearrange the flow of reimbursement funds.
By the way, Mr. Secretary, when you made that statement about “going to war with the Army you’ve got,” it would have been more honest to add “and whatever freelancers you need to hire along the way for jobs that the Army decides to outsource.” …
Still earn peanuts in my opinion. It is embarrassing to find out how much these kids are “making” while they completely put their asses on the line. I think that total extra pay they receive while they are in Iraq amounts to about $500.00 extra a month. They have extra monthly hazard pays that they kick in and that is about what they amount to.
At the end of the Honolulu story above:
A Pentagon official told Army Times that there were still four men “unaccounted for — the original four that were in trouble.
NOW, if that’d happened on Clinton’s watch, the GOP would be screaming to the high heavens. Jimmy Carter and Pres. Bartlett would have worked around the clock on the problem. Not our W. Doesn’t even mention them.
..and their families.
and, yes, it burns me that we have troops in Iraq when the Taliban and Osama and the ISI in Pakistan should be the focus of any military action…and even so, it’s such a dangerous situation.
as far as military comments…this is at least one case where I would imagine it might be good for the soldiers if as little information as possible were given out in order to possibly increase their hopes of survival.
SusanHu, you break my heart every day with your posts. It is so hard to see all the suffering. I appreciate the work you do to stop that suffering by giving information, by requesting actions to advocate for people, by bearing witness.
…or the taliban has the gorund group and they had them call for help or support while being held captive to lure the heliocopter in. My mind is going wild just thinking of it all.
I can only hope if there were prisoners that they are dead by now, for fear of the toruture that can come their way. NOt a lovey light even for the mind to imagine.
Seals and covert operations casualties are not reported. The lost recon patrol wouldn’t have been publicized except for the shooting down of the Chinook. The Pentagon couldn’t hide the copter crew’s deaths with the Taliban crowing about it.
Decades ago, I heard a speech by General Westmoreland who really and truly didn’t get it. But, all I remember is his boast that firebases were built throughout South Vietnam so not one square foot couldn’t be hit by artillery. No matter how far out in the boonies you were, as long as the radio was working, you could call in fire support. The USA still lost the war. In Afghanistan, US troops are going against true believers defending their homeland who already defeated the Soviet Union with only sporadic long distance high altitude air support. The USA doesn’t have the manpower or the artillery for a war of attrition to wipe out the Taliban and their families.
The one guarantee is that the US troops will depart Afghanistan one day. The question is what kind of country and government are going to be left behind.
to land on the side of a mountain either, I don’t know any pilot who would think that that is a good landing spot and I think that that army story in the papers is bullshit! Flying a mile and trying to land on the side of a mountain?!?! A Chinook has two rotors which means MEGA moving parts. When they get hit and the moving parts are affected stuff tends to begin to fly apart everywhere. A helicopter requires constant inputs from the pilot, it is very different from flying fixed wing. The pilots were most likely fighting for control of the aircraft, it may have been completely locked up and everybody on board was just along for the ride!