US Military Leadership Failure in Kuwait

U S. commanders left their troops to die in Kuwait.

A Washington Post investigation has exposed a catastrophic failure of U S.

military leadership at Port Shuaibah in Kuwait,

where a single Iranian Shahed drone killed six U S.

soldiers on the second day of the war.

According to 17 survivors who spoke to the Post, U S.

commanders were warned that Port Shuaibah was on Iran's target list.

They knew the base had no defenses against drones,

yet they moved troops there anyway,

and when the attack came, their generals ran for cover.

We moved closer to Iran, to a deeply

unsafe area that was a known target.

So what was the reason that you were told for why you needed to be there?

I don't think there was a good reason ever articulated. General Clint Barnes,

who was inside the operations center when the drone struck, fled to a bunker.

A soldier Barnes ordered to

follow him later said that they should have never run out of the building.

When he tried to go back to help the wounded, Barnes told him to stay put.

The investigation also reveals that U S.

commanders pressured troops to leave their bunkers just minutes before

the operation, insisting they get back to work.

Force protection assessments had warned against sending troops to the port,

and requests for a proper drone defense system were denied.

According to the Post, after the attack,

the wounded soldiers had to transport themselves to a hospital.

When they arrived, doctors had no record of them as medical evacuees.

They were treated as outpatients and sent to barracks.

With a piece of shrapnel lodged in the back of his head,

Ramasbottom says he began pulling his fellow soldiers from the rubble.

I wanted to see like a line of ambulances coming towards us or something,

and there wasn't that.

It was like, oh man, we're on our own.

Six soldiers died and dozens more were wounded.

We were told to don't worry about protection,

and we brought it up with our senior leadership. You feel let down?

Highly let down, and it's saddening, disheartening.

Carrier escorted her friends' remains back home. To investigate,

the Pentagon initially appointed an officer under the command of one of the

One soldier described the investigation as,

Why are you coming forward? This was a failure.

The only way you learn from your failures is you talk about it.

A single Iranian drone exposed a chain of command that ignored intelligence,

only to abandon its own troops and effectively leave them to die.

Which raises the question yet again,

whose war are these troops really fighting?