US sergeant branded a coward mounts furious fightback

[dudeness]

12 January 2004


If Jessica Lynch, the fresh-faced West Virginia teenager turned international media icon, could be described as the accidental hero of the Iraq war, then Georg-Andreas Pogany is the accidental coward.

Like Private Lynch, who became an international celebrity largely through the manipulation of the Pentagon's propaganda machine rather than anything she did or did not do on the battlefield, Staff Sergeant Pogany, hired as a translator and interrogator with US Special Forces, did nothing to seek out his poster-child status and almost certainly does not deserve the notoriety that has come his way.

Unlike Ms Lynch, though, he has no million-dollar book deals or exclusive television interviews lined up. Instead, he is back at his home base in Fort Carson, Colorado, treated as a pariah by his fellow soldiers and former colleagues in the Green Berets, his legal status in limbo and his reputation in tatters.

His story, on the surface, seems unremarkable. Last September, after just two days on active duty in Iraq, he caught sight of the mangled body of a dead Iraqi soldier inside a white body bag. The body was ripped almost in two, with a large hole and strips of ripped flesh where the man's chest should have been.

snip..http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=480351

[Ilsa]

1. You know, the Army can't have it both ways.

They can't expect soldiers who've witnessed (or participated in) the most brutal and inhumane aspect of war to come and play house real nicely with the wife and kids without expecting some fallout in the name of family violence.

I'd rather be married to this sgt than to the so-called brave senior officer that called him a coward. I'll take sensitivity in a spouse any day over bravado.

Thanks for the article.