"Permission to engage denied," Captain Joni Marquez heard over her communications as she piloted her "eye in the sky" gun ship above the old Chinook helicopter carrying SEAL Team 6 and other Special Ops and National Guard soldiers to help American Rangers in the Wardak Province war zone on August 2, 2011. Marquez soon would see her infrared monitor turn from red to blue as she watched the life spill out of one of our doomed warriors, shot down by the enemy. (Video available at link.) She knew the insurgents she just had seen slinking from this American graveyard hurried back to their enemy outpost to give a go ahead launch of their MAN PADS-RPGs- directly into the Chinook.
Circling for 13 minutes over a fire zone, the soldiers trapped in the old, Viet Nam era copter, were given a death sentence by a no fire decision from a commander who obviously was following the then Rules of Engagement (RoE)which hobbled our soldiers and in this case, cost them their lives. Killed that night were 15 American Special Ops, five US Army National Guard, Army Reserve, Afghan Commandos, their interpreter and a US military working dog and the flight crew. As Wikileaks puts it, "This is considered the worst loss of American lives in the Afghanistan campaign." Hard to understand is this edict by Commander in Chief Obama who sent our men into deadly battles yet stopped them from fighting, literally turning them into defenseless pawns for enemy target practice!
As a new Congressional investigation may be in the offing, Captain Marquez is coming forward to recall the horror of that night, a series of images which have led to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms that refuse to go away. "If we would've been allowed to engage that night...
(Excerpt) Read more at thecoachsteam.com ...
