New Yorker story: "Kill Company"

I feel compelled to draw some attention to a whopper of a story in this week's New Yorker. I'm not too familiar with the writer, Raffi Khatchadourian, other than seeing his byline in TNY from time to time, though I sure as hell plan to be from here on out. Up there with Evan Wright's "Generation Kill" piece in RS a few years ago and "Black Hawk Down" as some of the best dirt-under-fingernails war reporting in the modern era.

The New Yorker requires registration, but here's a link to a synopsis (basically an overaggressive Army commander - same dude as Bowden wrote about in Somalia, as a matter of fact - oversaw the unnecessary deaths of eight Iraqis):

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/07/06/090706fa_fact_khatchadourian

Lot of great stuff about the internal battle between the "Carnivores" (the military guys who just want to fuck shit up, basically) and the "Herbivores" (the guys who want to, you know, accomplish what we went there for):

Anyway, just a great piece of reporting and storytelling.

 

A really good example of fog of war. There's a lot in there to comment about, but I did note the enlisted guy's lament that they're the ones who get crushed criminally and the officers get a pass. See Abu Ghraib.

 

And Black Hawk Down was just on yesterday with Captain Steele of course being portrayed. This was outstanding, and also reminded me of a story in Esquire about a year ago, which focused on a guy who gave an order for his sniper to kill a guy. The sniper got sent to prison, the commander didn't. Here's that one.

http://www.esquire.com/features/michael-hensley-0708

 

I hate that the American people have Iraq War fatigue right now. There is some very compelling, very important stuff going on there day after day after day.

 

Waylon I think you have missummarized the story a tad but does not take away from being a riveting one- as usually the New Yorker stories of this type are.

Found it interesting that one of missions was routing out Al Queda - I thought they were not in Iraq.

I doubt surge would have worked if every one was a herbivore. Thank goodness for people like CPT Steele.

You can pull his speech up to the troops before they go into battle on You Tube.