If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
On CNN today: The RESCUE, R-E-S-C-U-E of Jessica Lynch.
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
You'll find links off of this story on CNN today. Y do anti-American liars think you can't look something up for yourself on the Internet?
Report: Fatigue, errors led to fatal convoy ambush
Pfc. Jessica Lynch was among those captured
Thursday, July 10, 2003 Posted: 11:36 AM EDT (1536 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Fatigue, stress, mechanical malfunctions and a disastrous series of errors beset members of the Army's 507th Maintenance Company as they neared Nasiriya, Iraq, on March 23, according to a draft report from the Army.
The result was an Iraqi ambush that left 11 soldiers dead and seven others captured, the report said.
This is the incident in which Pfc. Jessica Lynch was wounded when her vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The event was among the highest-profile struggles U.S. forces encountered in Iraq. Lynch would later be rescued in a raid on an Iraqi hospital. Her best friend Pfc. Lori Piestewa would die of wounds from the assault. (More on the attack)
Elements of the unit found themselves "in a desperate situation due to a navigational error caused by the combined effects of the operational pace, acute fatigue, isolation and harsh environmental conditions," the report said. (Interactive: The 507th's wrong turn)
Soldiers and vehicles from the 507th began what would become a 42-hour push toward Nasiriya March 20 from their camp just inside Kuwait. The outfit was deployed from its home post of Fort Bliss, Texas.
They were under the leadership of Capt. Troy King, who had misunderstood his briefing orders, the report said.
King thought he was to follow "Route Blue" to a region south of Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad and northwest of Nasiriya.
Instead, the convoy should have followed "Route Blue" to "Route Jackson" and back to "Route Blue," which would have taken it west of Nasiriya instead of directly through the town.
In the dark early morning hours of March 23, elements of the convoy, which had become separated from the other vehicles and troops, crossed through the center of Nasiriya and emerged at the north of the city before realizing a mistake had been made, the report said.
The soldiers in those elements had experienced some small arms fire in their trek through the city, it said.
A decision was made to make a U-turn and go back through the city to find the correct route.
The convoy was already plagued by vehicles running out of gas or getting stuck in the sand, and the distances between vehicles increased with each new problem.
Iraqis also had placed debris and disabled vehicles in the roadway to block U.S. troops.
As some elements of the convoy searched for a turn they had missed earlier, they came under a "torrent" of fire from Iraqis for as long as 90 minutes, the draft said.
Lynch was captured and then treated at the same hospital, where U.S. forces eventually rescued her April 1. The other soldiers who were captured were recovered about two weeks later.
During the firefight, some soldiers tried to fight back but were hampered by malfunctioning weapons and debris in the road.
The draft report said Pfc. Patrick Miller was surrounded by enemy fire and may have killed as many as nine Iraqis before he was captured.
Miller later apparently told his Iraqi interrogators the pieces of paper inside his helmet were prices for water pumps.
They were actually radio frequency codes, and Miller later received a Silver Star and a Purple Heart for his actions.
The draft said Sgt. James Riley made a lifesaving decision when he surrendered himself, Spc. Edgar Hernandez and Spc. Shoshana Johnson after their M-16 rifles jammed.
The Army is still investigating the deaths of the 11 soldiers to determine whether they were executed.
The draft report concluded the soldiers "fought the best they could until there was no longer a means to resist."
"Every soldier performed honorably and each did his or her duty," it said.
CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr contributed to this report.
Report: Fatigue, errors led to fatal convoy ambush
Pfc. Jessica Lynch was among those captured
Thursday, July 10, 2003 Posted: 11:36 AM EDT (1536 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Fatigue, stress, mechanical malfunctions and a disastrous series of errors beset members of the Army's 507th Maintenance Company as they neared Nasiriya, Iraq, on March 23, according to a draft report from the Army.
The result was an Iraqi ambush that left 11 soldiers dead and seven others captured, the report said.
This is the incident in which Pfc. Jessica Lynch was wounded when her vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The event was among the highest-profile struggles U.S. forces encountered in Iraq. Lynch would later be rescued in a raid on an Iraqi hospital. Her best friend Pfc. Lori Piestewa would die of wounds from the assault. (More on the attack)
Elements of the unit found themselves "in a desperate situation due to a navigational error caused by the combined effects of the operational pace, acute fatigue, isolation and harsh environmental conditions," the report said. (Interactive: The 507th's wrong turn)
Soldiers and vehicles from the 507th began what would become a 42-hour push toward Nasiriya March 20 from their camp just inside Kuwait. The outfit was deployed from its home post of Fort Bliss, Texas.
They were under the leadership of Capt. Troy King, who had misunderstood his briefing orders, the report said.
King thought he was to follow "Route Blue" to a region south of Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad and northwest of Nasiriya.
Instead, the convoy should have followed "Route Blue" to "Route Jackson" and back to "Route Blue," which would have taken it west of Nasiriya instead of directly through the town.
In the dark early morning hours of March 23, elements of the convoy, which had become separated from the other vehicles and troops, crossed through the center of Nasiriya and emerged at the north of the city before realizing a mistake had been made, the report said.
The soldiers in those elements had experienced some small arms fire in their trek through the city, it said.
A decision was made to make a U-turn and go back through the city to find the correct route.
The convoy was already plagued by vehicles running out of gas or getting stuck in the sand, and the distances between vehicles increased with each new problem.
Iraqis also had placed debris and disabled vehicles in the roadway to block U.S. troops.
As some elements of the convoy searched for a turn they had missed earlier, they came under a "torrent" of fire from Iraqis for as long as 90 minutes, the draft said.
Lynch was captured and then treated at the same hospital, where U.S. forces eventually rescued her April 1. The other soldiers who were captured were recovered about two weeks later.
During the firefight, some soldiers tried to fight back but were hampered by malfunctioning weapons and debris in the road.
The draft report said Pfc. Patrick Miller was surrounded by enemy fire and may have killed as many as nine Iraqis before he was captured.
Miller later apparently told his Iraqi interrogators the pieces of paper inside his helmet were prices for water pumps.
They were actually radio frequency codes, and Miller later received a Silver Star and a Purple Heart for his actions.
The draft said Sgt. James Riley made a lifesaving decision when he surrendered himself, Spc. Edgar Hernandez and Spc. Shoshana Johnson after their M-16 rifles jammed.
The Army is still investigating the deaths of the 11 soldiers to determine whether they were executed.
The draft report concluded the soldiers "fought the best they could until there was no longer a means to resist."
"Every soldier performed honorably and each did his or her duty," it said.
CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr contributed to this report.
0
Comments
A CNN correspondent includes the word 'rescue' in a long report about the capture of some US soldiers, and that is enough for jocko to maintain the fairy tale alive.
What you don't seem (or want) to notice is that most people would call picking up a soldier from a hospital in enemy territory 'a rescue'. That, however doesn't prove a thing.
The fact remains that the US soldiers knew the Iraqi soldiers had long fled the place (simply because the Iraqi doctor who informed them where Lynch was in the first place also told them this) so they went and staged a rescue operation with cameras everywhere, shouting 'go! go! go!' and pointing their rifles everywhere as if expecting enemy fire. However they were fully aware there was no enemy in the hospital. This was done for the benefit of the TV crews and so that people at home could have a wankfest thinking how effective and brave their soldiers are, and God bless America. And it obviously worked, judging by your willingness to believe it.
Not very good, even by your standards. Why don't you go back on the net and try to come back with credible information that DENIES the rescue was staged for the cameras?
And don't forget what your government has already admitted : Reports of Jessica being wounded in combat and subsequently tortured by the Iraqis were LIES. What do you think about that?
Boy oh boy! When is pnj back from holiday? He won’t be happy at this.
El jocko is hasnt the mind to offer any substance to the debates anyways nor will he ever accept anything as truth until he sees it on Fox News so we're truly wasting our breath on this dullard.
Plus im personally getting fed up with being constantly infuriated his regurgitation of news reports which were already demonstrated as false ages ago.
Susie or LadyJade please take this matter under advisemnt
When they start acting like humans and not gung-ho warrior types who converse without resorting to using a rifle or have to wait for the cameras to be present.
If that is your conviction, then you should just pack up a couple of ham sandwiches, hither yourself on down to Baghdad, and demonstrate to the world exactly how big a joke they truly are.
Yeah, everyone knew that the US military was going to be handed its collective ass in Afghanistan, and Iraq. After all, the Iraqi dis-information minister told us on a daily basis that there ARE NO US TROOPS IN BAGHDAD, and you all still suckle up to that hope.
Pfc Lynch was a "remf": support, not combat arms. If you want to judge SpecOps, 11b's and 0311's by remf's, well...
Your edification awaits.
Why do you not consult with Moscow as for what "a joke" they find the US forces to be... after all... Russian advisers were in Baghdad, demonstrating and instructing as to the use of all that "high tech" equipment and the Russian tactics (not to mention the Frnch and German, also :rolleyes: )... until they ran for their lives.
Last I heard, there is a fecal tsunami crashing in Russia...
Ever had a rifle fired at you, in battle?
How about an RPG?
Easy to talk trash about what you have not the slightest comprehension of, isn't it? After all... there ARE NO WEAPONS, THEREFORE NO GUNCRIME IN BRITAIN, right? So you are simply the hypocrit spouting more rhetoric TOTALLY outside of your experience...
The US troops have no idea how to conduct themselves, their training is as bad as the Iraqis they were fighting and they are unable to tell the difference between a Scud and an RAF tornado.
Yes, your troops are awfully good at making a mess, just not so good at telling the truth or directing the mess to the right point.
CNN also has a special show on that shows reports from various countries on newsworthy items...so people can see how different countries are viewing the same incident.
You would do well to stop considering it as any basis for comparison with any other news agency (even one as equally dubious in its agenda as CNN) except to demonstrate how far below any standard of quality Fox truly is.
Well, true. His point is that their "Elite" troops recieve as much training as our regular forces do in basic training.
Their public relations are as good as a rottweiler's ability to give back someone's leg.
from the observer
There were always two prospective versions of the fall of Baghdad: one fearful, the other fantastical. The first accorded with America's fear that Saddam would defend the capital and that it may be necessary to either lay siege or take the city street by street. The second was the vision of an entry into Baghdad met with exuberant gratitude and crowds cheering a force of liberation. In the event, America's passage into Baghdad was a cannonade that resulted in probably the heaviest bloodletting of the war: the so-called 'Thunder Run'.
The Thunder Run, as it was branded by some American media, consisted of two armoured punches into the capital, on 5 and 7 April, respectively. They departed from the southeastern checkpoint to the city and forked - one wing heading for the airport, the other towards Saddam's palace. They were, essentially, demonstrations of force rather than attempts to take the city, and a finger stuck up against what was being said on Iraqi television by 'Comical Ali' - Iraqi information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf - that US forces were nowhere near Baghdad.
'It was very confusing,' recalls Ali Mahadi, a welder. 'I was having breakfast in the front of my house, and when I heard the first shooting I presumed it was the Iraqis, because we'd been told there were no Americans near Baghdad. I went upstairs to see what was happening, and saw the first armoured car coming over the bridge there. Bilal Abdul Muhed was driving his taxi, and another man. They got out, put their hands up, and were shot to pieces. A lot of people rushed out to try and help Bilal - fools, they were killed, too, by the shooting, right and left, as the Americans came through.' Bits of Bilal's car are still strewn along the roadside, but he was merely one of the first among hundreds to die that day.
Sahad Majul Majit had set up his cigarette stall at the Khadessia junction at 6 o'clock on the morning of 5 April, as he had done for 16 years. 'They came from nowhere,' he says, 'suddenly, at about 7 o'clock, shooting everywhere. I didn't think the Americans were in Baghdad after what I had heard on television - and there were some Fedayeen between the houses. But I didn't expect the Amer icans to come into Baghdad like that, and when I saw what was happening, I grabbed some of my cigarettes and ran into that supermarket over there.
'They were firing at anything that moved for three days. I myself helped get 30 bodies into the supermarket - what a smell they made. Across from Majul's now re-opened stall are two bus shelters, on either side of the road, now riddled with heavy-calibre fire. Majul saw what happened: 'There was a military car, and the soldiers ran into that far shelter. The Americans shot that one up. But then a bus came down the road, and the people ran off it to hide in the other bus shelter - and they fired at that one, too. I could hear people screaming as they died, even with the noise of the guns.'
Majul is glad to be back in business, but says, 'It's hard to know what to think. First of all we had Saddam, now we've got Saddam without a face. And by the way, could you write that I don't smoke? If I did, I wouldn't have any cigarettes to sell.'
'ONE WAS A BABY, JUST EIGHT WEEKS OLD'
Arabia Jamal and his son Jamal Rabir began to worry about Arabia's brother, sister-in-law and three children when the car journey to their house that should have taken 15 minutes stretched to a two-hour wait, in the tumult outside their electrical shop. It was young Jamal, aged 20 and a biotechnology student, who began the search. It lasted a week, during which, along with the Imam of his mosque, Jamal became immersed in the recovery and burial of 'more people than I can remember, maybe 30, maybe 50'. All week we buried them, some by the roadside, some we took to the hospital and helped to bury them there. I didn't sleep for three nights, and had the stink of burned flesh on my clothes. I did it for three reasons: because I was looking for my cousins and their parents, because it is our religion that the dead must be buried by an Imam and because I studied anatomy, so I am not squeamish. Finally,' rasps Jamal, 'I found my uncle and aunt and cousins. And not from their faces, they were so burnt. My aunt had a ring - her father had worked in Russia, and it had Russian writing on it.'
The hospital to which Jamal took some of those he did not bury by the road was the Yarmouk infirmary. There, on the wall in reception, are lists of the dead and missing that provide the basis for at least some anecdotal calculation. There are 37 sheets listing the dead between the period 5 and 8 April - each bearing a minimum 20 names, a total of at least 740. Those still missing from the same period are listed on 48 sheets, with an average of 25 names apiece - some 1,200. The hospital director, Hamed Farij, has been restored to authority by the Americans - like most of his peers - despite having held the office under Saddam Hussein, as part of an infamously corrupt health system. He has signed the disclaimer handed out by the Americans denouncing his former party and now praises the American entry into Baghdad as being 'very beautiful', adding that most of the names on this list are those of the Fedayeen or Iraqi soldiers.
But Dr Nama Hasan Mohammed overhears this conversation and, the director departed, tells a different story. 'Mr Hamed Farij was a Ba'athist and left before the war, he has only just returned. I was here day and night all the time. I can tell you that we passed anyone in uniform or with a black ribbon to the al-Rashid Military Hospital. These dead are all civilians, although there are some soldiers among the missing posted. Those are the ones whose names we know. How many are there without names? We don't know.' Dr Hasan takes us out through the hospital grounds, to show us the fresh earth where many of the dead - unclaimed - remain buried in eight pits. There are roughly 25 to each pit. 'Many are children. One was a baby, shot at the bus stop. He was eight weeks old.'
The American military is invincible , no country on earth can oppose them , as was shown when the Iraqi armed forces were swept aside with minimal casualties on both sides.
Its training may not be as rigerous as the British armys , but its bloody close , and the Americans have all the best kit and technology , which more than makes up for it.
Remember the British armed forces are quite small , and have to make up for their lack of numbers with superior training.
As for their conduct , young soldiers are bound to get jumpy in a large city filled with a very small minority of guerilla fighters.
These people will be stopped eventually , its simply a matter of time.
lol, the Iraqi army was a joke. They were using outdated equipment from the 1960's/70s and had virtually no training, they were conscripts.
Look at Serbia, or Korea. Yes their equipment is outdated as well, compared to ours but only by a few years. An American ground attack into either of the countries would have ground to a halt within days. It's easier to fight on a flat desert than it is a hilly countryside.
But alas you are right, no COUNTRY on earth can oppose the USA. Countries on the other hand can. One day America will piss everyone off enough and face the conscequences from countries able to kick ass.
With Iraq the US could not have had an easier ride if it had invaded The Vatican. One of the most piss-poor, worst equipped, demoralised armies you could find. And no aerial resistance whatsoever so the B52s could carpet-bomb from a safe distance any heavy resistance that might be found.
Find a place where the US might find decent resistance- North Korea for instance- and see for yourself how willing it is to engage in battle there.
The US is the most powerful military power on earth, but you are seriously deluding yourself if you see them as invincible. Perhaps it would be impossible to conquest the US short of using nuclear weapons, but it wouldn't be that difficult to successfully reject a US invasion in many a country.
A number of nations have the capability of sinking any US fleet advancing on them. Remove the fleets, and other than launch a few missiles from far away the US would be seriously impaired.
Name those countries please.
1 American carrier battle group has the firepower of an entire medium sized country.
Adn they have about 10 of them.
Dont delude yourselves , North Korea would be crushed just as easily as Iraq was.
Forgive me if I am wrong because I may have missed something here, but isn't that precisely what a soldier should be? Good at killing, crap at PR?
It's the politico's job to do the PR, not the soldiers.
Drop a tactical nuke and that battle group is out of the picture. it can take many weeks to sail a carrier group to its destination, all the time it being harrassed by long range patrols of the country it is attacking and that country's allies. Any country with medium range missiles can destroy a carrier battle group, which means an American attack of any country in Europe, or Far East Asia would be reduced to a corpse.
Yes America has proven it can easily defeat a poorly trained and ill equipped army, it hasn't yet proven it can defeat a well trained one with good equipment.
Look how reluctant they are to put Korea in its place, despite KNOWING Korea is well on the way to creating ICBM's.
Matadore and PNJ, America isn't invincible, not by a long shot. Every country gets some time as top dog, even Iraq was, about 5000 years ago admittedly, but it was still the most powerful (Babylon and Messoptimia in them days). Look at Britain and Italy, as empires go we kicked royal ass, each having huge global influence for over 300 years. America has been topdog for 50, and the people have become blinded by the claim that their society will survive forever. it won't, in a few years time some sort of event will bring the USA crashing down from the top spot only to be replaced by another. My money's on China or the EU.
As was pointed out the last time this story reared it's ugly little head, "war games" have rules. Sad but true. In this instance the OPFOR didn't follow those rules, hence the restart.
Tommy Franks put himself in the place of a Middle Eastern country, and rightly thought he could not defeat the US by conventional methods. That's why he used word-of-mouth, messengers in donkeys and orders given through loudspeakers at mosques in order to avoid electronic surveillance. That's why he didn't use his poorly equipped Navy and Air Force or wait for the US forces to arrive, and instead arranged for suicide bombers to load small civilian boats with explosives and approach the unsuspecting American Fleet.
Bottom line: he won. The Americans went on to say he had not played by the rules so they refloated the Fleet.
I wonder if next time they go to war they will ask the enemy to play nice as well, and simply engage them with their forces in old-fashion style, like wars used to be... They will be praying the enemy obliges.
If this was not the case then the US could just "pretend" to nuke everyone, couldn't they?
I don't think that they expect Gen Franks to act by the book, more that the game didn't allow for other assets which the US would have in place. And I'm talking about human assets on ships such as spotters etc.
I'm sure Greenhat covered this before...?
Thought so, it's here
It is a good point he was making, however instead of restarting the game they could have simply carried on and seen what the result would have been anyway.