COLONEL REMOVED

Sky News ^ | April 4, 2003

[STOCKHRSE]

A US commander who led a fierce push by Marines through southern Iraq towards Baghdad has been relieved of his post, a US military spokesman said.

The spokesman did not give any reasons for the move, AFP news agency reported.

The officer was named as Colonel Joe Dowdy, commander of >the Marines First Regimental Combat Team 1.

Dowdy was in command of 5,000 men and women and had led the regiment's advance through southern and central Iraq, including a bloody passage through the Euphrates River town of Nasiriyah.

He was described as a popular commander who kept casualties down in leading his troops to within 80 miles from Baghdad.

Military spokesman Steven Schweitzer said: "He was responsible for the regiment until three hours ago."

Officials at the US Central Command war headquarters in Qatar declined to comment.

"At this time we have no information about anyone being relieved of command," Centcom spokesman Lieutenant Commander Joshua Rushing said.

But another senior officer, who declined to be named, said a replacement for Dowdy had been announced and a helicopter crew had been given orders to ferry the colonel back to Kuwait.

[bybybill]

This officer was going to be a General, wonder what he did/said/forgot?

[STOCKHRSE]

" WTF!"

Yea...YOU RIGHT!

[Ramius]

hell... from this story it could be just about anything. It could be somebody being sent home on emergency leave for some reason. Not much in the way of detail, and if *anybody* would know about it, it would be CENTCOM.

[Clara Lou]

I wonder if this is related to all of the civilian casualties that supposedly came from Nasiriyah on this thread http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/885378/posts

[Lancey Howard]

This is a duplicate post from earlier today.
Here is the original:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/884933/posts

[STOCKHRSE]

Sorry...I searched News/Activism and nothing came up...

[deport]

This has been bantered around in the media for the past 10 or more hours with no reason given for the action.... It will be interesting to see but the Colonel lost someone's trust it would seem... Here are several links to different articles....

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=Colonel+Joe+Dowdy&btnG=Search+News

[Lancey Howard]

I searched News/Activism and nothing came up...

This story is interesting enough to be posted twice anyway, in my opinion. Besides, your posting has an additional update at the end. I will be interested to find out more about this, because it is big news when a commander is yanked right in the middle of an offensive as important as this one. The other thread has a lot of speculation, but nothing firm yet.
BUMP

[jackbob]

Thus far I have not seen it officially stated as an "emergency leave." But if it becomes reported as such, then I must disagree with you. My experience in the military says, that if they call it an Emergency Leave, then it is based on a personal family matter. The military has a number of other methods to reassign, while avoiding a lot of undesirable questions. But to misuse Emergency Leave for such purposes would be way to overtly political for the military mind set and tradition.

Either the day or day after I got home from Vietnam (4-6-71), my battalion commander was all over the national news for a couple of days. He was relieved of command for saying the Vietnamization program was not working to the news media covering the battle at firebase 6, Doc To. I'm sure the military since then has developed a number of methods for avoiding such bad publicity during a battle. But using Emergency Leave for such, would not be one of them.

It seems to me that it is way to early to even speculate why this officer was relieved.

[soozla]

I've heard that is EXACTLY what happened, evidently some/many under his command were armed with weapons not considered to be PC.......and I have no clue what that means other than that some higher up heard about it & decided to cover his a**!

[dalereed]

"evidently some/many under his command were armed with weapons not considered to be PC......."

Maybe like Korea where the guys spent the evenings chopping of the noses of the bullets to make them real deadly.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Not Colonel Angus.

[STOCKHRSE]

NO...Colonel Dowdy.

[Fred Mertz]

Before folks leap to conclusions, I would not be surprised if he was 'relieved without prejudice'. I'm not certain if that's the proper phraseology, but it means relief due to combat fatigue or mental duress, and that happens in wartime especially if you wear the lives of 5,000+ Marines under you on your shoulders.

I've met a fine retired Army person that this happened to during Gulf War I. He's doing fine today as far as I know.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

It could be somebody being sent home on emergency leave for some reason.

My thoughts exactly. What if (G-d forbid) his wife was raped and beaten. What if his son was struck by a car and was near death.

At this point, it could be anything.

[Travis McGee]

I know the staff ops officer. Maybe he will be moved up.

[Squantos]

I can understand that ........I stayed awake for almost 6 straight days during DS-1 and it turned my butt into a babbling buffoon. Small Cat Naps didn't do it for me that time. I'll wait for if any official reason from you FM .

Stay Safe !!