Awarding Six Medals To The Three Released — страница 2

the line was damn near 400. Audie Murphy, America’s most decorated G.I. from WWII, gets 13 awards for 400 days of battling with Nazis, killing Nazis and seeing his friends killed day in and day out. These three Cavalry troops who didn’t return fire,were the victims of rough treatment, and who surrendered receive half as many awards as Audie Murphy? Audie actually punched holes in enemy troops. Against a superior force, Audie used a .50 cal while atop a burning tank destroyer for damn near an hour — he single-handedly could account for 50 enemy KIA’s. He was awarded the Medal of Honor and lost half his ass in the process. It seems to me that these three troops are, like Capt. O’Grady and W.O. Durant, being used, and are victims in all this. From where I sit the whole

fiasco sounds like “meritorious underachievement” while being used as part of some “Clark Clinton Super Spin” campaign by the Army, NATO and the Administration in particular. Soldiers who deserve a Purple Heart are troops such as Navy Lt. Jack Daly. Jack was lasered by a lasing device from a Russian ship, the Kapitan Mann, in 1997. His eyesight is deteriorating and he is in constant pain. He may eventually go blind. The U.S. Navy has not awarded him a Purple Heart, however. Why? Because you cannot see his wounds? Or is it that acknowledging his wounds may create another National Security crisis, further hurt our relations with the Russians and wouldn’t make good Clinton “spin”? Don’t focus your anger and derision at the three troops involved in this mess. The Army

failed in its primary mission to these troops — prepare them for combat. The current “Be All You Can Be” and “Consideration Of Others” training crowd of PR types is to blame. Troops in a combat area should be trained for combat and resistance. Weapons carried should be loaded, enough ammo made available and the will to use them instilled. These poor fellows were trained for failure, I’m afraid. Now, it seems, that “failure” must be hidden behind the smokescreen of creating heroes out of three very used and confused poster-boys. (Hack Note: The other day I saw a woman soldier at an airport who had five rows of ribbons. She looked like a cross between a Russian General and Douglas MacArthur. If this give away program — which has made the US military’s awards

system a Barracks joke among our NATO Allies continues, the Pentagon will soon be issuing awards with the MRE. Kind of like the toys that used to be in Cracker Jacks.)