RIP: Col. David Hackworth

[Ronin]

A warrior and a gentleman.

Far and few between.

RIP.

[Shadowdh]

RIP Sir...

[VikingPower]

He was one helluva warrior. It's a sad day.

RIP, Hack.

[poidog]

Fade away, Col. RIP. Semper Fi.

Glad to see your still kickin, Hawk.

[punchingdummy]

"If I were King, I'd close Army entry training and send all future Infantry grunts to the Marines. The Corps still produces trained and disciplined soldiers who know how to make it on a killing field."

--Col David Hackworth, USA (Ret), WorldNewsDaily.net 11Nov98

[patfromlogan]

...

Within 10 weeks, the fiery young combat leader had so transformed the 4/39 that it was routing main force enemy units. He led from the front, at one point getting out on the strut of a helicopter, landing on top of an enemy position and hauling to safety the point elements of a company pinned down and facing certain death. Thirty years later, the grateful enlisted men and young officers of the 4/39, now grown old, are still urging the Pentagon to award him the Medal of Honor for this action. So far, the Army has refused.

So far... They will NEVER give Hack the Medal of Honor.

[patfromlogan]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarti...56&ItemID=5639

info on Agent Blue...




Over a ten-year period from 1961 to 1971 the US used an estimated 20 million gallons of herbicides as chemical weapons for "defoliation and crop destruction" in Vietnam. Unable to control the Viet Minh's access to food supplies or their grassroots village support, the US military response was simple: If you can't control it, kill it. Killing food crops was both a military strategy and -- with the procurement of many millions of gallons of toxic herbicides from US chemical companies -- it was also a very profitable business. Indeed, the notion of killing what can't be controlled suited perfectly the logic of the agro-chemical industry.



At least 15 different kinds of non-selective or "burn-down" herbicides were purchased from US chemical corporations and shipped to Saigon in 55-gallon barrels, each marked with a 4-inch colored stripe identifying its content. These colored stripes became the code names for each toxic herbicide used as a chemical weapon. Most barrels used in the destruction of mangroves, forests, grasses, bamboo and food crops in Vietnam were marked with an orange stripe to signify they contained a mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T -- what became known as Agent Orange.



Fewer in number but still significant were barrels ringed with a blue stripe, containing an arsenical herbicide (cacodylic acid) that starves plants of moisture, killing them by drying them out (desiccation).{1} This was Agent Blue. By starving rice plants of moisture, the enemy (including millions of rice-growing villagers) would be starved of their most basic food. With its first recorded use on rice paddies in November 1962, over 1.2 million gallons of Agent Blue were sprayed over the next nine years, forming an essential part of the US government's "rice-killing operations."{2} According to a new study of US military flight records that exposes far greater use of herbicides in Vietnam than previously thought: "Agent Blue was the agent of choice for crop destruction by desiccation [drying-out] throughout the entire war, but more than four million litres of other agents, primarily containing 2,4,5-T, were also used on crops."{3}

[Zendetta]

I heard a eulogy for Hack (on Public Radio no less) and it didn't even fucking mention that exposure to defoliants was what probably killed him. Thats bullshit.

[Sam Browning]

I heard a eulogy for Hack (on Public Radio no less) and it didn't even fucking mention that exposure to defoliants was what probably killed him. Thats bullshit.

I was privleged to meet Hack once, at a speech he gave before a group of Republicans in Greenwich Ct right before the second gulf war started. I was struck on how this man who had spent his life on battlefields was in favor of containing not invading Saddam's Iraq, BEFORE this war started.

I asked him about Master Sargant Eric Haney's allegations (in his book about his service in Delta Force, "Inside Delta Force, Delacorte Press, 2002, pp. 250-256) that we had left POWs behind after the Vietnam conflict and Hackworth told me that his best information was that like Haney said, there were servicemen left behind but like Haney wrote, they were murdered in the 1980s when their existance became a continuing problem for the Vietnamese government. (and ours as well) He then said some negative things about Henry Kissinger, which while not constituting proof, indicated that he felt Kissinger had some involvement in this episode.

A good man who managed to adopt his mission to the internet.

RIP

[Tiffer]

Hack was the combat leader a military man is supposed to be. He was harsh with the military because he loved it so much, and most were too stupid to realize that. If the Marines guard the streets of heaven, Hack's in charge of the Q.R.F.

R.I.P. Hack. Feel free to ruck flop, sir.