True american hero

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<p>A command decision</p>

<p>SEAL author speaks of regret, rescue, and the choice that cost 19 lives
By Sean Naylor - Staff writer</p>

<p>Read edited excerpts of Sean Naylor’s exclusive June 14 interview with Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Marcus Luttrell, the sole survivor of a SEAL mission gone terribly wrong.</p>

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<p>Q. Had you guys war-gamed or discussed during the planning phase of Operation Redwing what to do if you got compromised?</p>

<p>A. Uh-huh.</p>

<p>Q. And what did you decide?</p>

<p>A. It had to be an on-scene call, due to the severity of the compromise, the location of the compromise, how many people had walked on us. We were in the hornets’ nest. … This was uncharted territory. American soldiers didn’t go in here very often. It’s surrounded by the Taliban. They were living in caves and adobe huts and houses everywhere in that valley. And when we dropped in in the middle of the night, we walked through right to the middle of them.</p>

<p>Q. During BUD/S and your follow-on training, had you received much instruction on how to handle the situation if you were compromised?</p>

<p>A. Yeah.</p>

<p>Q. What was the bottom line of that training?</p>

<p>A. Like I said, that all depends on the compromise. How far out we are. In Afghanistan, it’s inevitable you’re going to get walked on. We had never been compromised before, to tell you the truth. That was a reputation that we were proud of, that we had never been walked on. But we got walked on this time. We sat there and talked about it. They were no threat to us, they weren’t brandishing any firearms. They were goat herders, obviously — they had like a hundred goats with them. So we turned ’em loose, and they got out of there.</p>

<p>Q. Why do you think Lt. “Mikey” Murphy decided to put it to a vote, rather than soliciting his subordinates’ input then making a decision?</p>

<p>A. Well, Mikey was the officer in charge. He’s overall responsible for the team. I was the team leader. See, most people don’t understand how the SEAL teams are made up. It’s not straight-up “You will do this my way.” I guess it could be if you had some guy like that. But the teams are designed differently. That’s why the officers go through the same training as we do, and we’re together the whole time. Two heads are better than one, three are better than two. So if you’re stuck in a situation like that, would you want to make the decision that killed all of us? That’s why we talked about it. … Whatever he wanted to do would have been done. He asked for my opinion because I wasn’t the most senior guy rankwise, but overall [I had the most] experience. … So we just kind of talked about it, and when he said, “What are we going to do?” he and I both kind of came to the same conclusion. When he said [it was] my decision, I passed it to the guys — “Here’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to cut ’em loose.” “Roger that.”</p>

<p>A good officer listens to his men.</p>

<p>Q. But don’t you think there’s a difference between an officer listening to his men, and leaving it up to his men to make the decision?</p>

<p>A. Well, that’s up for interpretation. That’s not how I stated it in the book.</p>

<p>Q. Well, in the book you said he turned to you and said it was your call.</p>

<p>A. Well, as being the senior man after we’d all talked about it. I was just like, “OK, turn them loose.”</p>

<p>Q. So at no point during or after the incident, did you consider that an abdication of his command responsibility to make the decisions?</p>

<p>A. Not at all. He had total control. He was in total command out there the whole time. He was a consummate professional. That’s my job out there as the fire team leader — I consult with him, he consults with me, and we made the best decision for the team, which inevitably got us all killed.</p>

<p>Q. Do you regret making that decision?</p>

<p>A. What do you think? What kind of question is that?</p>

<p>Q. Well, there are some folks who’d say, “Yeah, I do regret it,” and there are others who’d say, “No, I made the moral, legal choice and if I was in the same situation again I’d make the same decision again.”</p>

<p>A. I was a soldier following the rules of engagement. We made the judgment call to turn them loose because they weren’t armed combatants. And because of that, 19 of my comrades are dead.</p>

<p>If you put me back in the same situation, I’d probably do the same thing again, if I didn’t know the outcome. Knowing what I know now, knowing what we went through and what I go through every day, hell yeah, I would have killed them.</p>

<p>Q. At the time, if somebody had assured you, “Hey, if you kill these guys, nobody’s going to find out,” or “you’re not going to get in any trouble,” would you have killed them?</p>

<p>A. Yeah.</p>

<p>Q. You make a lot of references in the book, particularly with regard to the rules of engagement that you were following during the incident, to “liberal media,” “American liberals,” etc. It’s easy for the reader to come away with the impression that you hold “liberals” responsible for the deaths of your colleagues. Would that be an accurate summation of your view?</p>

<p>A. That’s their own opinion of what they draw from the book. What I said in the book was it’s kind of hard for me to understand how someone can implement rules of engagement when they’re thousands of miles away sitting behind a desk, not out there on the battlefield, not watching the enemy. How are you going to put a rule of engagement on me, when my enemy’s not even following the same rule? So basically you tie one hand behind my back, and I’m sitting there trying to use the other hand to untie it.</p>

<p>And they know that. The enemy knows our ROEs. They laugh at us. We’re a mockery to them. The United States is a joke [to them]. They’re not scared of us. They know that we can’t touch ’em and even if we did touch ’em, all they’d have to do is complain and say we did, and we would come under investigation by our own JAGs, and they will shut us down. And guess what happens when we get shut down — the enemy starts moving. So everything which we worked for and tried to accomplish is for nothing.</p>

<p>Q. In the book, you write about ROE being set by congressmen in Washington, but aren’t ROE set by the uniformed chain of command?</p>

<p>A. Well, there’s somebody above them.</p>

<p>Q. What was your reaction to the comments by Murphy’s father this week, accusing you of dishonoring his son’s memory?</p>

<p>A. I can’t pretend to understand what Mr. Murphy’s going through with the loss of his son. I’m sorry for his death. Mikey was my best friend and I’m sorry that he feels that I’ve dishonored him in some way. If he thinks that I did, then I apologize for whatever I said. That’s not my intention. My intention is to honor his son in every way I can and I’m not going to stop doing that.</p>

<p>Q. Who were the Army guys who rescued you?</p>

<p>A. There were 20 to 21 total, split between the Rangers and an ODA [Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha] team. I just remember thinking when I saw them, they were beat down. … It was kind of a running joke, I was like, “Hey guys, I know that you’ve been cussing my name,” because it was raining on them, freezing on them. I know if that was me on that patrol, I’d be like, “this m____<strong><em>f</em></strong>___. I’m out here sucking it up trying to find this guy.” I said, “I just want to apologize to you guys,” and he was like, “Well, now that we found you, it’s OK.” Now I just got to live with the fact that I got rescued by some Army guys instead of some [SEAL] team guys.</p>

<p>Q. In much of the rest of the military, and even the other elements of U.S. special operations forces, the SEALs have something of a reputation of believing a little too much in their own hype. Throughout the book, you refer to the SEALs using terms like “the gods of the U.S. military.” Are you at all concerned that by doing so, you might be adding to that negative reputation?</p>

<p>A. It’s not that we’re the best, it’s just that everybody else sucks. I mean, come on, you’re asking a frogman that question.</p>

<p>Q. You got permission from the SEAL hierarchy to write the book. Were any conditions attached to that?</p>

<p>A. Yes — not to divulge any classified information — obviously I wouldn’t do that — and just to tell the story.</p>

<p>I wasn’t even out of the hospital when the story started flying out, the wrong stories — “hey, this is how this happened, this that and the other,” and that’s not how it happened. And the more the stories came out, I mean I’m the only one that made it out, so obviously most people in the American public, where do they think they’re getting their information from — from me, [they think] I’m the one telling these reporters this. And I’m not. I wasn’t telling anybody. I was still an active-duty frogman, you wouldn’t see my face in the papers, I didn’t talk to reporters or anything like that. …</p>

<p>I just wanted the truth to get out there, so that there wasn’t any question of how hard these guys fought and what they did for their country. It was unbelievable. Even the guys who came in after the helicopter had got shot down, the Army Rangers, the Green Berets. There were out there for days with minimal food. Hell, the ODA team and the Ranger team that found me were out of food and water for a day and a half. There were guys collapsing out there. These guys were run ragged. Some guys couldn’t even walk, their feet were so torn up, and no one would leave. They were like, “We’re not leaving ’til we find him, period.” Guys were losing 20 and 30 pounds. It was like, “These guys are out here winging it, we’re not frickin’ leaving.” That’s a true testament to the brotherhood of a warrior. [In] this war on terrorism, there’s no Army, Marine, Navy — we can’t be like that. It’s one force. It’s the United States military against terrorists. I can’t tell you how many times in Iraq the Army saved my butt. We wouldn’t be alive without them, that’s just the bottom line. There’s a camaraderie on the battlefield. And of course, when we come back home, when we’re in the States, then it’s back to our old ways … but out there in the trenches, yeah.

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