Quote Originally Posted by Schmedlap View Post
What baffles me is that Steele's antics were well known for years. The guy was notorious throughout the Army for being a loud-mouthed, arrogant, arguably incompetent, and reckless leader. My NCOs had the displeasure of working with him in 3/75. Their assessment bore true in real life when I was deployed at the same time in Bosnia when he was there as a Bn Cdr - thankfully I did not have much interaction with him, but even then his antics got ample attention throughout the MND. And as noted earlier on this thread, I had the misfortune of doing RIP/TOA with his BDE when they arrived in theater. Within one week, tales of his antics were circulating and BDE policies that he put into effect left us all scratching our heads. The guy was a clown.

Steele has been a known quantity for years. Why was he put in command of a Brigade (let alone a BN before that)? I'm glad that some ADC finally took the initiative to look into this and officially record it, but it seems like too little, far too late. The damage has been done - to the mission, to innocent Iraqis, to the reputation of the Army and 187, to any decent subordinate who chose to ETS (to the detriment of the Army) after enduring his crap, and to any Soldiers who may have been misled by his disgraceful example and thought it right to emulate him.
The sad thing is that some of this is very reminiscent of the conduct encouraged by the CG of the 9th ID in Vietnam during 1968-1969. Seems we never DO learn.....