Tip of the Spear, but at the end of the line
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I tweeted about this http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520182,00.html on my twitter account at www.twitter.com/bouhammer when it was happening. I was alerted to this right after it happened by my friend Old Blue, asking me if I could verify this had happened. I quickly reached out to my contacts in country and starting working them for info.
At first it appeared that SSG Vile was MIA and I was afraid that he may have been captured. Then I heard that up to 20 ANA and a terp were captured as POWs and taken back towards Pakistan. I figured right then that those ANA would probably be killed, and the terp was for sure to be tortured and killed. The enemy may hate Americans, but they despise terps becuase they view terps as traitors to the Muslim faith. Everything went silent by the next day, but then again we knew that SSG Vile was not missing, it just took a while to identify him. However I was never able to verify if the ANA and terp were taken prisoner or not. Now after reading this, I know it was true and to see that they ANA and the terp were released and this wreaks of traitors to Afghanistan. There is NO WAY that the Taliban would have allowed that terp to be released without torture and death unless he was working for them. It is also very rare that the ANA would have been so easily let go also.
This story highlights the risk ETTs take every single day. ETTs operate in small teams, sometimes as small as 2-3 or even one individual American working and fighting along-side Afghan Army soldiers. ETTs and PMT are embedded with those Afghan forces having to put some trust in them and at the same time always wary of the Afghans. It is a fine line to walk and unlike MITT teams in Iraq, the terrain and rural make-up of the Afghanistan countryside put these small teams of Americans at great risk with no other Americans in close proximity.
I hope this incident opens the eyes of American Leadership to the risks our young fighting men are living under 24/7/365.
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