Taking Cover Podcast - Marines in Fallujah (cross posted from Politics)

Combat is stressful and confusing. The "fog of war" and "friction" are very real. Mistakes happen, and sometimes those mistakes lead to tragedies like a short mortar round that kills a couple of Marines. It's fricking terrible, and in a lot of ways more tragic than getting killed by the enemy. But when you're operating in a high stress, high tempo environment things like this can happen. We investigate them, we make whatever changes we think we can to avoid it again, we learn lessons, and we continue on.

Truly, my biggest issue is with the journalists who look at these things with the clarity of 20 years of hindsight and act like the Marines and officers making decisions and acting on those decisions in real time were operating with the same level of clarity. And then they use THAT context to make the principals involved look malicious, evil, or stupid. They never contextualize what it is like being the ones making those decisions - mainly because they've never been the ones in the arena.

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It's an interesting story on its face,

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Give us some insight on this

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more interested in smearing conservatives and the Marine Corps by assuming malice instead of trying to understand nuance.

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Need more info.

I was in Baghdad at the time of the fighting there and immediately after the fighting my boss, an 06 at the time, and I were flown in to Fallujah for an immediate AR 15-6 Investigation. The reason? a Red Cross (a French female) worker claimed the Marines had committed war crimes by shooting all the bad guys in the head. We inspected the dead most of whom were still where they fell. She was right most had been shot in the head...at a distance. Marines are good shots, lots of range time.

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Need more info.

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he makes an effort to make the situation look like a cover-up to protect Congressman Duncan Hunter because his son (and future congressman) 1stLt Duncan Hunter may have been the one that made the error resulting in the short round. They then add in a completely irrelevant section about the legal trouble Duncan Hunter got in regarding campaign funds decades later. They also go out of their way to blame Jim Mattis for the cover-up and to make sure everyone remembers that he was President Trump's SecDef.

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There will not be a Marine Corps in 15 years. This commandant and leadership has destroyed it. Taken away all the armor and heavy weapons. Now is removing all the things that created the ethos of the Marines at the altar of DEI.

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a little outside of the scope of the podcast discussion, but i agree. the Marine Corps is dead. i've just got to hang on for a few more years, but i dont even know if i can do that.

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1stLt Duncan Hunter may have been the one that made the error resulting in the short round.

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It happens man. I saw a regular Army artillery Battalion have their guns taken away because they were so bad.

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blame Jim Mattis for the cover-up

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That was his job, not everything is for public consumption.

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Lying about it and covering it up is not. See: Tillman, Pat.

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I agree with you that it is never ok to lie. So far the podcast hasnt really made it clear that there was a lie involved in this case, just that it wasnt widely reported. Maybe it will become more clear in further episodes. But even though I fundamentally disagree with lying on its face, i can understand in a situation like that why they wouldnt have been super diligent about making sure everyone knew it was friendly fire. for one thing, it's just easier to deal with for all parties if they think their loved one was killed by enemy fire or if wounded Marines believe their injuries are from enemy action and not friendly. again, i dont think it's right to do that, but i understand. the podcast, so far, hasnt even attempted to talk about that. they seem intent that there was malicious intent behind a cover-up based solely on teh participants.

i dont know anything about the Tillman case.

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I saw a regular Army artillery Battalion have their guns taken away because they were so bad.

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perhaps - but that was certainly not the case with 2/1. it was a one-off for sure.

Thank you all for your service.

from what I have taken from the podcast so far, this is what I think happened:

2 Marines were KIA, and the Marine Corps sent their CACOs to notify the next of kin. those CACOs were likely just a couple of random dudes who had had the training and had their blues already laundered. they probably thought that it was a regular enemy KIA situation.

the unit back in Iraq is investigating the deaths, and that is a process that takes time - weeks or months. there was probably confusion, unclear messaging, or jsut incorrect information passed somewhere along the way from the company to the battalion to the regiment to the division to the big Marine Corps and then down the chain, through the bureaucracy, to the couple random officers pulling CACO duty. not to mention that if the unit wasnt SURE that it was a friendly fire incident, and certainly if they didnt suspect early on, the first messaging out would have been incorrect. who knows which random piece of reporting actually made it through the bureaucracy to the CACOs. does that make it ok? no. accuracy in reporting is important. does that make it understandable in context? yes, in my opinion.

now four months later after the investigation was wrapped up and concluded that it was indeed FF, someone should have updated the families. full stop. someone dropped the ball here, whether or not it was intentional or not i dont know - maybe the podcast will clear that up (i doubt it).

but again, my greater point is that this entire process from Lt Beltbuckle calling in a fires mission in Fallujah in 2004 through 2007 when the families finally got the truth is an incredibly messy, complicated, bureaucratic nightmare of policies, plans, procedures, tradition, culture, and personalities any ONE of which could be the single point of failure in relaying the right information to the right people.

but like good journalists do, they always assume malice and twist the narrative to fit that because that's how they get more clicks.