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Title: Army rules Fort Hood shooting victims eligible for Purple Heart
Source:
Dallas Morning News
URL Source: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/loca ... -eligible-for-purple-heart.ece
Published: Feb 9, 2015
Author: Aubree Abril
Post Date: 2015-02-09 14:51:44 by redleghunter
Keywords: None
Views: 40152
Comments: 101
WASHINGTON — The Army announced Friday that it will award the Purple Heart to victims of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, after years of resistance. Texas lawmakers welcomed news that the shooting spree, which left 13 people dead and more than 30 wounded, would no longer be classified as an act of “workplace violence,” given the shooter proclaimed himself a jihadi. “This has been a long, hard fight. The victims of this attack have struggled, suffered and been abandoned by this administration. No more,” said Rep. John Carter, the Round Rock Republican whose district includes Fort Hood, the nation’s largest military installation. “Today is a day of victory, and I am honored to have fought on their behalf.” The decision, Carter said, would “provide the victims their due benefits” and “finally give closure to the families.” Poster Comment: About time.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 88.
#3. To: redleghunter (#0)
Hasan, who was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan a few weeks later, shouted “Allahu akbar!” meaning “God is great,” before targeting soldiers with a high-powered, high-capacity handgun he had fitted with laser sights. He was apprehended by military police officers after firing more than 200 shots. www.washingtonpost.com/wo...6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html Some firearms would be more useful, but a Purple Heart is better than nothing. Maybe next time the bullets will bounce off of their Purple Hearts?
They'll get more benefits this way which had been denied to them and their families because it was declared "workplace violence". So it makes a big difference to the survivors and families, I think.
I'm sure it does,but military members that are murdered by a traitor in their own unit shouldn't be getting a Purple Heart. Next thing you know they will be handing them out to clerks and cooks that get hurt in a car accident while driving to work at the base/
Wow not a biased source at all. Only 2LTs whine on "deserving" awards and worry about who gets what.
"Can some ribbon racks be over the top, or is more always better?" https://www.rallypoint.com/answers/can-some- ribbon- racks-be-over-the-top-or-is-more-always-better.
Lets see Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medal, Commendation Medal, NO Purple Hearts and a whole lot of I was flying AROUND ribbons and personal achievement ribbons.
The display of awards and decorations has come a long way for this:
That was when Medals were given out for Valor not for just being IN or flying OVER the theatre, who knows how many miles behind the lines. Even when I was in and I retired 16 years ago if aircrew flew into a hazardous theatre (even if it was mega miles behind the lines) you got a Commendation Medal. (You made 10 trips you got 10 Commendation Medals). But.... if you were a passenger on one of those same flights you got......... (Wait for it, wait for it)...... NOTHING!!!!!!!!!! Woohooooo Hell I got shot at on 3 different TDYs by Muzzies and got nothing for it but the aircrew who dumped my ass off got medals for it, go figure. $5 says pete can relate to that. {chuckle} I looked at the new AF ribbons chart and there is so many new medals it isn't funny, and most of them are what you get for just showing up to work. One of them now is just for VOLUNTEERING!!!!!!!!! REALLY???????? (AND that CMSgt even has one of those). LOL. (I wonder if I could have gotten one of those for "being volunteered" to clean the schitter if I had stayed in longer)? :)
We probably have something in common with awards. I worked on a joint mission with the Corps TACP while in Iraq. I was surprised when called to the BIAP "Air Force House." The Corps ALO/EASOG commander pinned an AFAM on me.
For doing what if you don't mind me asking?
It was an impact award. I was the MNC-I lead on coordinating Joint assets lethal/non-lethal for a 'pinned down' SF advisory team and the downed Apache aircraft which went to support them. The rest is need to know:) But there was some press of the event: BACKGROUND: Millenarians in Najaf hoped to kill Sistani et al. to prepare return of the Mahdi It was late January 2007. The Corps ALO (EASOG commander) appreciated my efforts for recommending retasking of CFACC assets to support what we called "The Mother of all TICs" (troops in contact). His JOC ALO team was a little green around the gills to stomp on who needed to be stomped on:). I also drafted a position paper later that Spring arguing the need for USN CSG air support for the surge. The requirement needed to come from the Army and needed GEN Petreaus' signature. After the memo was signed I traveled with the ALO and my COL boss to the CAOC to deliver the memo to the CFACC commander. At least the above was alluded to in the citation write up. As you know the AFAM is a service/achievement award. No heroism/valor involved. Just doing my job and he recognized me for it. After almost 12 years of my service joined at the hip with ALOs and JTACs, it was nice to have something to remember my brothers in Blue.
I have a vague recollection of something that happened during the Grenada incursion/excursion when Reagan was president. Some of the US troops developed heat injuries during the action. They were eventually awarded purple hearts, if my memory is correct. Look it up.
Some of the US troops developed heat injuries during the action. They were eventually awarded purple hearts, if my memory is correct. I think that heatstroke victim you recall may have been in Panama. But Grenada earned 10,000 awards. Paratrooper With Heat Stroke Gets Top Medal August 26, 1990|By DAVID H. HACKWORTH At a bedside ceremony in Texas, the Army chief of staff awarded the Purple Heart medal to hospitalized Pfc. Grant Gipe, a casualty in Operation Just Cause in Panama last December. Paratrooper Gipe was not wounded as he bravely jumped into a night sky crisscrossed with enemy shot and shell. He was not hit while storming an objective. Nor was he felled by a bullet or ripped open by a bayonet in hand-to-hand combat with a Panamanian defender. Rather, Gipe was knocked out of the fight by the blistering sun on the Rio Hato drop zone. The good medics tagged him as a "heat stroke" casualty and sent the 82d Airborne Division trooper to Brooke Army Hospital in San Antonio, where he was awarded the Purple Heart for "heat exhaustion" by Gen. Carl Vuono. Soldiers had trouble with that "old devil sun" for thousands of years before Kipling's "Gunga Din" became a barracks refrain. Countless warriors and many a victory have been lost to heat exhaustion as soldiers bellied up from too much sun, an empty canteen and slack discipline. But in days past, no one got a medal for heat exhaustion, and some heat-struck casualties were even shot by angry commanders who felt they had failed their duty. To award the Purple Heart medal for heat exhaustion is an insult to every living and dead Purple Heart holder. In conflicts past, a soldier had to bleed to get it. Its wearer had had a bullet, fragment or missile rip through his tender body dispatched by an enemy who wanted him permanently out of the way. American warriors considered it and the Medal of Honor the nation's last respected and still sacred military decorations, the only medals that had not been exploited by the glory hunters or diminished by the bureaucrats. Now the Purple Heart too has been corrupted: It has been awarded for a reason other than wounds received as a result of enemy action. My quarrel is not with Gipe, who made a dangerous low-level combat jump into the darkness and later valiantly assisted two other soldiers to the aid station. It's with the bureaucrats in uniform who since the war in Vietnam have been responsible for the debasement of a once-proud and meaningful Army awards and decoration system. The charade has left our soldier's chests so bedecked with fruit salad that the practice is lampooned by professional soldiers around the globe. With Vuono's action, the Army's long-battered, bruised and grossly inflated awards system has sunk to a new low. This took some doing. In Vietnam, literally millions of awards were mechanically churned out. Line colonels and generals routinely got award packages for simply doing their job - normally a Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross or Bronze Star. A 1st Cavalry Division general was awarded a Silver Star while on R & R. Gen. Alexander Haig won a Distinguished Flying Cross by identifying a Viet Cong unit while flying in his helicopter. Grenada was just as bad: 7,000 American invaders faced a few hundred militia men in a few days of sputtering combat - and almost 10,000 awards were issued. Yet despite these disgraceful examples, the Purple Heart medal stood proud. It was a direct descendant of America's oldest military decoration, the Badge for Military Merit, established by George Washington in 1782. It remained unblemished and untainted by inflation, corruption or manipulation because the rule was that blood had to flow, and combat medics - one of the noblest and bravest bands of warriors - had to sign off on these awards. They could not be bought or compromised. Until Gipe got his medal, the Purple Heart was the ultimate badge of courage and honor, a badge worn proudly by 731,000 living Americans - many of whom gathered recently at the annual meeting of the Military Order of the Purple Heart meeting in Novi, Mich. The medal also served to identify the fakers. A chest full of medals without the Purple Heart gave cause to wonder if the hero who looked like a cross between a Russian general and a Christmas tree had ever been on or near a killing field or was simply a supply ace sporting his having-been-there trophies. Now the sun in Panama and a sham in Texas have changed all that. Not only did Gipe become a casualty of the invasion of Panama, but so did the U.S. Army's award program. * David H. Hackworth is a retired Army colonel who earned eight Purple Hearts in Korea and Vietnam.
You got that right. BTW Hackworth is one of 6 people who have 8 Purple Hearts.
Hack may be one of 1 who had 10 Silver Stars.
#98. To: nolu chan (#88)
That guy is "colorful" to say the least. :) We could use more like him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hackworth
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestHasan, an Army psychiatrist, was found guilty this month on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder after opening fire Nov. 5, 2009, at Fort Hood’s Soldier Readiness Processing Center, where troops were getting medical checkups before deploying to Afghanistan.
#5. To: hondo68 (#3)
Some firearms would be more useful, but a Purple Heart is better than nothing.
#8. To: TooConservative (#5)
So it makes a big difference to the survivors and families, I think.
#18. To: sneakypete (#8)
(Edited)
#20. To: Gatlin (#18)
How did I achieve least-decorated status in spite of being a West Point graduate, airborne, Ranger who volunteered for Vietnam? Easy. I did not suck up to my superiors.
#21. To: redleghunter, sneakypete (#20)
(Edited)
#27. To: Gatlin, redleghunter (#21)
#28. To: CZ82 (#27)
Through this:
To this:
#52. To: Gatlin, redleghunter, sneakypete (#28)
#56. To: CZ82 (#52)
#71. To: redleghunter (#56)
The Corps ALO/EASOG commander pinned an AFAM on me.
#72. To: CZ82, GarySpFc (#71)
For doing what if you don't mind me asking?
#74. To: redleghunter, CZ82, sneakypete (#72)
#82. To: Fred Mertz, redleghunter, CZ82, sneakypete (#74)
I have a vague recollection of something that happened during the Grenada incursion/excursion when Reagan was president.
Recent Award Insults Purple Heart Holders
#84. To: nolu chan (#82)
It's with the bureaucrats in uniform who since the war in Vietnam have been responsible for the debasement of a once-proud and meaningful Army awards and decoration system. The charade has left our soldier's chests so bedecked with fruit salad that the practice is lampooned by professional soldiers around the globe. With Vuono's action, the Army's long-battered, bruised and grossly inflated awards system has sunk to a new low.
#88. To: CZ82 (#84)
BTW Hackworth is one of 6 people who have 8 Purple Hearts.
Replies to Comment # 88. Hack may be one of 1 who had 10 Silver Stars.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 88.
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