Army Punished 2 Officers in ’06 After Failures in Iraq Ambush
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER | Friday, May 18, 2007
An Army general relieved a company commander and a platoon leader
of their commands last year after enlisted men were ambushed and killed
by insurgents at an isolated observation post south of Baghdad in June
2006, Army officials said yesterday.
An Army investigation into the circumstances of the attack, which
killed one soldier immediately and resulted in two others being
kidnapped and later killed, concluded that they had been left for
up to 36 hours without supervision or enough firepower or support to
repel even a small group of enemy fighters.
The investigative report, by Lt. Col. Timothy Daugherty, a deputy
brigade commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, which the soldiers
were attached to at the time, recommended that the platoon leader and
company commander be given written reprimands.
But Lt. Gen. James D. Thurman, the commander of American forces
in Baghdad last year, went a step further, Army officials said, and
relieved the company commander, Capt. John Goodwin, and the platoon
leader, First Lt. Timothy Norton, of their duties.
“This was an event caused by numerous acts of complacency and
a lack of standards at the platoon level,” Colonel Daugherty
wrote in a nine-page summary of his report. “The shortcomings
of standards at the platoon level was compounded by company leadership
that was not engaged in enforcing standards.”
The insurgent attack, on June 16 near Mahmudiya, killed three soldiers
from Company B of the First Battalion, 502nd Infantry. Specialist
David J. Babineau of Springfield, Mass., was killed in the attack, and
Pfc. Kristian Menchaca of Houston and Pfc. Thomas Tucker of Madras,
Ore., were abducted. Their bodies were found three days later, badly
mutilated and booby-trapped with bombs.
The Associated Press first reported the investigation’s
findings yesterday morning. The Army’s V Corps, in Heidelberg,
Germany, where General Thurman is currently the commander, released
a statement yesterday confirming the report’s conclusions and
the reassignment of the platoon and company commanders.
In the summary of his findings dated June 28, 2006, Colonel
Daugherty described the soldiers’ platoon as demoralized and
decimated. Seven soldiers, the report said, were killed during the
platoon’s rotation in Iraq — including a team leader,
a squad leader and a platoon leader. And at the time of the ambush,
five other soldiers from the platoon had been implicated in the rape of
a 14-year-old girl in Mahmudiya and the killing of her and her family.
“Although the leaders of this platoon care and are staying in
the fight, the platoon is frayed,” Colonel Daugherty wrote. He
recommended that the platoon be given immediate down time to recuperate.
The three soldiers who were killed were at a remote outpost near
a mobile bridge, more than two-thirds of a mile from the closest
Army checkpoint, and were ordered to not allow insurgents to mine or
destroy the structure. The platoon’s senior enlisted man, in a
statement to an Army lawyer two months later, called the outpost —
with three men and one Humvee stationed behind a two-foot-high wall
just 30 feet from a road with no traffic control checkpoint —
“a death trap.”
“The soldiers called it the Alamo, because it was essentially
your last stand,” the soldier, Sgt. First Class Robert Gallagher,
said in the statement to the Army lawyer. The statement was taken as part
of the investigation of the Mahmudiya rape and killings, and it was given
to The New York Times by David Sheldon, a civilian lawyer in that case.
In his interview, Sergeant Gallagher called Captain Goodwin “a
good man” who did not have enough soldiers or equipment to fulfill
missions ordered by superiors. “I felt it was the command above
him,” he said. “A captain is not going to tell a battalion
commander that he cannot complete a mission based on personnel and
based on assets.”
Colonel Daugherty’s report found that a “quick reaction
force” in the area took 25 minutes to arrive at the scene of
the ambush, where it found Specialist Babineau dead and the two other
soldiers missing.
The report criticized numerous aspects of the way the outpost was
situated, supported and supervised. “This platoon needs to take
a hard look at its standards and discipline,” the report said.
The report found no major fault with the battalion, led by
Lt. Col. Thomas G. Kunk, who supervised the company. But he recommended
that the overseeing brigade commander, Col. Todd J. Ebel, issue Colonel
Kunk a “letter of concern” on the need for “an absolutely
clear and concise flow of information down to the platoon level.”
