Videos Contradict Medal of Honor Recipient’s Account Of Taliban Attack -- Jonathan S. Landay, Kansas City/McClatchy Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — In his memoir of the 2009 battle in Afghanistan that brought him the Medal of Honor, Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer describes how he reflexively switched from his machine gun to his rifle and back to his machine gun as he mowed down a swarm of charging Taliban from the vehicle’s turret.
“My mind was completely blank. I fired so many thousands of rounds I didn’t think what I was doing,” Meyer, then a corporal, wrote in his 2012 book, “Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War.”
But videos shot by Army medevac helicopter crewmen show no Taliban in that vicinity or anywhere else on the floor of the Ganjgal Valley at the time and location of the “swarm.” The videos also conflict with the version of the incident in Marine Corps and White House accounts of how Meyer, now 25, of Columbia, Ky., came to be awarded the nation’s highest military decoration for gallantry.
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My Comment: Tim King from Salem News provides a defense of Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer, and questions the above post by Jonathan S. Landay. As to what is my take .... it is unfortunate that these questions are being raised now on the eve of Army Capt. Will Swenson's Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House on Tuesday .... there is a time and place for such a discussion, and that time is definitely not now.
Update: Rift between Medal of Honor recipients exposed -- Military Times
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