Col. Hackworth American Hero Dies

[bobhilo]

A good guy passed away recently...highly decorated...respected man...he spoke out for average soldiers(his site exposed the Abu garib prison scandal)

He died of bladder cancer(possibly from agent orange)

if you want to read about a remarkable man visit the link below

http://www.sftt.org/main.cfm?actionId=globalShowStaticContent&screenKey=cmpDefense&htmlCategoryID=28&htmlId=2638

[Secretariat]

Yes, a very remarkable and courageous man. My sympathies go out to his family.

[kenwoodallpromos]

I second that.

[Suff]

Interesting guy.

An Orphan who doctored His Birth Certificate to get into the Merchant Marine's at 14 years old. Used his merchant marine paperwork to Join the United States Army at 15 years old.

He's on C-Span2, Book TV today. Repeated three times. Check your local listings and catch this guy.

In Vietnam he had the highest average Kill to Kill ratio. His Battalion Killed a 100 enemy for every one of them.

He wrote a book... the Odyssey of an American Warrior.

[lsbets]

He wrote a couple of books. We read his auto-biography in ROTC. If I remember correctly, he had more awards than any other living soldier. He was a BN commander in Vietnam, but in Korea he was a rifleman and did some awesome stuff. The thing I remember most about him was where he talked about the need to maintain good discipline on guard duty to defeat enemy attacks, and he used an example from Vietnam where he caught a couple of guys smoking while out at an OP. At night, cigarettes give away your position like you wouldn't believe. I probably took that to heart a little too much, because one time I caught one of my guys sleeping in his hole on a field excercise when he was supposed to be on guard, so I called over my Platoon Sergeant and had him watch when I kicked the guy in the side of the head to wake him up. Proved my point though, and that is a lesson I learned from Hackworth - taking care of your soldiers means first and foremost bringing them home alive. After you train them to fight as a discplined team, then you can consider being a nice guy, but never compromise good field discipline.

[cj]

He was a regular on Fox News as well, I always liked him, even without knowing his whole story. Pretty amazing stuff.

[Suff]

He was a regular on Fox News as well, I always liked him, even without knowing his whole story. Pretty amazing stuff.

he's on cspan2 right now. Throw it on if you have it

[cj]

We don't get that here...I get CNN and MSNBC on the Belgian cable, and a mixture of networks on AFN News, but never CSPAN.

[Equineer]

Colonel Hackworth wrote a noteworthy article for Military.Com (http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Hackworth_100404,00.html) in late 2004... he expresses my sentiments about the military draft and the civic virtue of revitalizing our citizen-soldier tradition, so pay attention! :)

Bush failed to adequately mobilize for Iraq because of sniveling political cowardice.

Hackworth notes that Rumsfeld and his "Pentagon suits" endorse Bush's political cowardice because.....

Volunteers tend to go with the flow and seldom blow the whistle on military stupidity, flawed tactics and self-serving leadership. And draftees don't hesitate to make waves and tell the truth. Not to mention influential citizens with draft-age kids who'll soon be demanding an answer to the same type of hard question their moms and dads shouted during the Vietnam War: "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

Rumsfeld, in fact, has already kicked off the anti-draft campaign by denigrating the draftees who fought in Vietnam. The SecDef, who prefers sycophants who don't ask questions, recently stated that Vietnam-era draftees added "No value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services ... because ... it took an enormous amount of effort in terms of training, and then they were gone."

Wrong once again. I led draftees for almost four years in Vietnam and for several years during the Korean War. If well-led, there are no finer soldiers. Ask the Nazis, the Japanese and the Reds in Korea and in Vietnam, where "no value" draftees cleaned their clocks in fight after fight.

Israel, a country that has lived under the barrel of the Islamic terrorist gun for decades, has the most combat-experienced counterinsurgent force in the world - and boy and girl draftees are its major resource.

[JustRalph]

Going from Merchant Marine at 14 to Colonel and 8 purple hearts ain't no small feat. (wow, that is bad grammar...what the hell) Reminds me of Chuck Yeager. From the Hollows of West Virginia to General and all those records.

I liked listening to the Colonel on Fox too. He was on the local radio show out of Cincy sometimes too. He told it like it was........and how it should be. Great Guy.

http://www.hackworth.com/index2.html

[Secretariat]

Interesting perspective on Iraq by Col. Hackworth before he died.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0805-09.htm

"The War According to David Hackworth
The Retired Colonel calls Donald Rumsfeld an "Asshole" Whose Bad Planning Mired U.S. troops in an Ugly Guerrilla Conflict in Iraq. His Sources? Defiant Soldiers Sending Dispatches from the Front.

by Jonathan Franklin

Retired U.S. Army Col. David Hackworth is a cocky American military commander who for half a century was at the front lines of the Army's most important battles. Most recently, though, Hackworth has been at the front lines of a domestic war: the debate over U.S. military strategy in Iraq, and whether the Bush administration planned well enough to achieve a decisive military victory and keep the postwar peace. "

[kingfin66]

When I was attending college, a friend of mine recommended his autobiography to me right before finals week. I think it was called About Face - one heck of a big book. Well, I opened that book and read it, and read it, and read it. Oops finals. I have always blamed Hackworth for hurting my college GPA.

One thing Hackworth believed in, besides getting his men home in one piece, was keeping their morale high. The chapter about the Steam and Cream was over the top.

[CapperLou]

David Hackworth, Col---a true warrior and American Hero. A very special guy in my book.

Pres Bush needs to finally award the medal he deserves. My deepest condolences to his family. Hack--you will be sorely missed. RIP.

CapperLou

[kingfin66]

A rumor that circulated for years was that Col. Hackworth was the inspiration for Marlon Brando's Apocalypse Now character, Col. Kurtz. Obviously, Hackworth wasn't a psycho. Indeed, we are all unanimous in praise of the man. He was, however, labeled a loose cannon by the army after comments he made during the Vietnam War. His book details a lot of this as well as the demise of his military career. I was just wondering if anybody else had heard of this old rumor and/or has any more knowledge about it.

[chickenhead]

read this thread last night, amazed that I never heard of the guy, but decided to go buy his autobiography as it sounded like a good read, and he sounded like a great guy.

Went offline and started reading my book. Lsbets started a thread about Timothy McVeigh last week, I found the book I was talking about in that thread, it's called Others Unknown, and I'm rereading it. Anyway, read a few pages, and bam, Colonel Hackworth shows up in the book! He was working for Newsweek, and he was the first and only person that McVeigh let interview him in the early days, Hackworth said he sent Tim a "soldier to soldier" letter, and Tim obviously responded to it.

Just thought that was interesting.