The Sole Survivor

[Entropy]

Well, I have read Luttrell's book, was in Afghanistan at the time, played a very small role in his recovery and have read most of the AAR's, etc. That said, the events that day cannot be singly traced to the decision to let the goatherders go - there were other factors at play which I won't get into. The point being, it wasn't ultimately a simplistic question of "kill the civilians, save the Americans" vs "let the civilians go, let the Americans die." What happened with Operation Redwing was a wake-up call to many and served as the catalyst for a variety of changes at various levels of command. And so I agree completely with the others in here who warn of monday morning QB'ing that one decision and the danger of what amounts to murdering unarmed civilians. Besides the legal and ethical considerations, there are practical ones as well including ramifications. For example, would the friendly villagers have taken Luttrell in, protected him, and contacted US forces for him had he killed the civilians? Probably not.

BTW, Luttrell's target, Mullah Ismail, aka Mullah Ahmad Shah, was killed in Pakistan about two weeks ago when he tried to run a Pakistani Police checkpoint in the NWFP after kidnapping some poor Afghan refugee.

[oblong]

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/lo...,7551760.story

Murphy's father wasn't happy with Luttrell's book.

In the NBC interview and in the book, Luttrell describes a discussion by the four SEALs and then a vote to let the herders go. That account, said Daniel Murphy, a former Suffolk County prosecutor and now a law clerk in State Supreme Court in Riverhead, is a far cry from what he said Marcus told the Murphy family not long after the death of their son.

"That directly contradicts what he told [Murphy's mother] Maureen, myself and Michael's brother John in my kitchen," said Murphy, who watched Luttrell on television but said he hasn't read the book. "He said that Michael was adamant that the civilians were going to be released, that he wasn't going to kill innocent people ... Michael wouldn't put that up for committee. People who knew Michael know that he was decisive and that he makes decisions."

Luttrell suggests that he sugar-coated the story later in a visit to Long Island, where he met Murphy's mother Maureen. She asked, he writes, "He didn't suffer, did he? Please tell me he didn't suffer."