TIGER FORCE- Michael Sallah Mitch Weiss

[BEAST]

I am just starting the book "Tiger Force" by Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss. Has anyone else read it? I read their series of articles in the Toledo Blade that won them the Pulitzer Prize and would like to know what else they could cover.

 

Let me know what you think of this work.

[hbtcoveralls]

[Hi,

I just finished the book. In fact I haven't taken it back to the library yet, so my thoughts are still fresh. I think it is very well researched and very well written. I found that what I expected wasn't what I got at all. I expected a real hatchet job on soldiers at war. Instead I found it to be a thoughtful exploration of the decent into madness of a unit whose leaders at best lost control and at worst encouraged the madness. Their explanations of the actions of the unit and the efforts by Army investigators to at first uncover and then bury the revelations are also quite good.

In the end, It left me with many questions espcially how would I have conducted myself in a similar situation? Would I have been one "collecting ears" or would I have been one of the soldiers who decried the inhumanity and tried to stop it? I've long harbored doubts about "war crimes" and prosecuting soldiers for battlefield crimes (this far apart from holocaust type genocides and the like) where people who weren't there pass judgement on soldiers who err in the heat of battle. But how should this be treated? It is a crime. But all war is a crime. It is a trajedy and nobody I think suffers more than the men who now have to live with what they've done.

Maybe when you finish you'll have the same questions.

T, Bowers

[BEAST]

Thank you for your response. I read their articles in the Toledo Blade and thought that those seemed fair, but with the book I wasn't sure. It would be very easy for them to break bad and do a hatchet job condeming all soldiers.

[Russell 1910]

I have not read the book yet, but did listen to the authors speak (online) at the Pritzker Military Library regarding Tiger Force and it sounded very interesting. They spoke about how they wen't about doing their research and locating and interviewing former members of Tiger Force. I am attaching the link to the site where the program can be viewed. I did get an error the first time I tried to open it, but upon a second try it played without issue. These "podcasts" are also available for freee download on Apple's iTunes and you listen to the audio only on an iPod.

 

Bio information (click on the "Real Player" link under the Archived Webcast title).

<http://www.pritzkermilitarylibrary.org/events/2006-05-18-michaelSallahMitchWeiss.jsp>

 

Direct link to the video

<http://www.pritzkermilitarylibrary.org/playPublicVideo.do?videoID=159&encodeType=rm>