Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander for the Middle East region, yesterday ordered a new investigation into a July 13, 2008, firefight in Afghanistan that killed nine soldiers, including 1st Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom of 'Aiea.

Family members of some of the dead soldiers believe Army negligence led to the losses — the worst in direct ground combat actions in the eight-year Afghanistan war — and that officers covered up facts of the incident.

Brostrom's platoon was attacked in eastern Kunar province by an estimated 200 enemy fighters in a withering assault of hundreds of rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun fire. Twenty-seven U.S troops were wounded in the attack.

Brostrom, 24, was a Damien Memorial School and University of Hawai'i graduate and had a 6-year-old son.

Petraeus appointed the commander of U.S. Marine Forces Command, Lt. Gen. Richard F. Natonski, "to investigate the facts and circumstances" surrounding the Army combat action that occurred in Wanat village in eastern Afghanistan.

U.S. Central Command, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, said the new investigation will address issues that have arisen since the Army completed its official investigation.

The command said the investigation also will look at circumstances beyond the firefight involving 2nd Platoon, Chosen Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne), 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. The brigade is out of Vicenza, Italy.

U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), a former Marine who served in combat in Vietnam and was a senior Department of Defense official, spearheaded an effort to seek a new investigation into Wanat.

Webb was asked to look into the matter by Brostrom's father, David, a retired Army helicopter pilot who spent 30 years in the Army. Brostrom said the Army never fully examined the decisions that led up to his son's relatively small and under-resourced unit being sent out into extremely hostile territory at a time when most of the command was focused on going home.

"You have nine soldiers dead, 27 wounded, an entire infantry platoon decimated," David Brostrom said. "The Army did almost nothing to say what went wrong here. How can we learn from this experience? They just said, 'Gee, it's over with. Let's move on.' "

Brostrom, who lives in 'Aiea, said he is glad an independent investigation will be conducted.

"It's been a year — I've been barking at them for a year and God bless Sen. Webb (for taking up the cause)."

PROBE REQUESTED

Kurt Zwilling of O'Fallon, Mo., who lost his son, Cpl. Gunnar Zwilling, 20, sent a letter in July to the Pentagon Inspector General's office requesting an investigation into the "possibility of dereliction of duty" by four officers: the commanders of the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry and 173rd Airborne Brigade; and the assistant commander and commander of Combined Joint Task Force-101, then the U.S. command in Afghanistan.

In his letter, Zwilling said the commanders failed to resource the soldiers with necessary equipment, they failed to heed intelligence estimates of the possibility of an attack, they failed to mitigate risks, and then they investigated themselves.

He said his son told him before going to Wanat that he thought it was a suicide mission and he knew "it was going to be a bloodbath."

On July 9, Webb called for an investigation into the battle that resulted in a 75 percent casualty rate for the Chosen Company soldiers.

"Allegations of negligence at senior levels in the chain of command were brought to my attention," Webb said yesterday in a release. "It is important that they be addressed."

Webb added that "a more thorough and independent investigation is necessary to establish the facts, resolve any question of command accountability, and determine if there are lessons for future operations in Afghanistan. We owe the families of those killed and wounded nothing less."

SUPPORT FROM D.C.

U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Akaka and U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, both Hawai'i Democrats, also support a new investigation into the facts surrounding the Battle of Wanat.

The Army's official investigation into the attack placed no blame on military commanders. Instead, it said U.S. forces "should not become risk averse due to this attack."

"The actions by leaders at all levels were based upon sound military analysis, proper risk mitigation, and for the right reasons. I can find no need for any type of adverse action related to this investigation," the investigating officer said in the Army report.

However, an analysis of the battle prepared by the Army's Combat Studies Institute, its premier intellectual center, is highly critical of senior command decisions leading up to the attack.

The 173rd Airborne Brigade had spent 14 months in Afghanistan conducting highly "kinetic," or aggressive, operations, creating animosity with the populace, according to a draft version of the report obtained by The Advertiser.

The report notes the deteriorating relationship between Chosen Company of the 173rd and Afghan people and a series of decisions that left Brostrom and other U.S. forces vulnerable at Wanat.

ALMOST HOME

There were 40 Chosen Company soldiers, six engineers, three Marines, three interpreters and 24 Afghan National Army soldiers at Wanat. The soldiers, scheduled to rotate back home in less than two weeks, had arrived in the village just five days before the deadly battle with the goal of setting up a combat outpost.

"A single platoon was insufficient combat power to establish a (combat outpost) through the construction of numerous fighting positions, establish and maintain local security, and establish and maintain a security relationship presence within the community of Wanat," the Combat Studies Institute report states.

Choosing to negotiate with local Afghans over the Wanat land many months before the base was occupied "openly violated well-established security procedures" by offering enemy fighters advance warning of U.S. intentions, according to the report.

Insufficient resources — water, heavy construction equipment and engineering materials — were dedicated to the mission, it said.

The Combat Studies Institute said the wisdom of creating such an outpost at the end of a 14-month deployment was "questionable" while a "relief in place" transition with a new unit was under way.

The Wanat attack was "directly caused" by inadequate counterinsurgency methods as dictated by the higher Combined Joint Task Force-101 command and practiced by the 173rd Airborne, the report states.

The outpost at Wanat was being created after the 173rd pulled out of more remote bases at Ranch House and Bella in the Waigal Valley. Before the attack, most women, children and older males left Wanat, and fighting-age males were noted watching the Americans.

DEADLY ATTACK

The highly organized attack began at dawn with a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire targeting a TOW-missile Humvee and mortar pits.

"Probably for the first 10 or 15 minutes, it seemed like it started raining on us with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and small-arms fire," Luis Repreza, a Hawai'i Marine who was in the battle, said last September. "They were trying to take down the vehicles and trying to shoot our fighting positions."

Brostrom was shot in the head and killed with several other soldiers trying to prevent an observation post uphill from the main encampment from being overrun. U.S. attack helicopters arrived an hour after the attack began.

Wanat was abandoned after the attack and the Waigal Valley now is considered a no-go zone for U.S. forces, the Combat Studies Institute said.

The Battle of Wanat remains the deadliest attack in Afghanistan from direct combat. In 2005, five Pearl Harbor Navy SEALs and 14 other soldiers were killed in an ill-fated commando mission and subsequent crash of a rescue helicopter in Kunar province that was shot down.