Could the battle of Wanat, Afghanistan, which left nine young American soldiers dead, have been avoided?

That's the question that haunts the parents of soldiers killed in the July 13, 2008, firefight, the worst direct-combat loss for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Military actions by nature are full of uncertainty, but some believe senior command negligence also was to blame at Wanat.

A 248-page analysis by military historian Douglas Cubbison at the Army's Combat Studies Institute, the service's premier intellectual center, is highly critical of command decisions leading up to the Wanat battle.

Cubbison's report, still in draft form, concludes that the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team and its higher command in Afghanistan failed at their given counterinsurgency mission and failed the soldiers who were sent to Wanat.

The roughly 50 Americans and 24 allied Afghan soldiers were sent to Wanat just five days before they were attacked by up to 200 insurgents.

The American force was stuck in a valley with high ground on two sides from which enemy fighters could fire. They were a relatively small force. They were short on water and heavy equipment necessary to build defenses. The Americans at Wanat were due to leave Afghanistan in two weeks.

Women and children vanished from the village in the days before the battle, and only unsmiling men who watched the soldiers remained. When the onslaught did come, it took about an hour for Apache helicopters to come to the rescue.

Before the battle, Chosen Company of the 173rd Brigade had spent more than 14 months ratcheting up attacks on an enemy that was doing the same in return, adding to animosity on both sides, according to soldiers.

Army intelligence was aware that a Taliban fighter named Mullah Osman had gathered 200 to 300 militants to attack another American camp — Combat Outpost Bella — just a few miles to the north of Wanat.

Bella closed as the American soldiers began setting up in Wanat, and the Army expected the militants gathering near Bella would shift their focus to Wanat.

With all that background, senior leaders still discounted the possibility of a large-scale attack at Wanat, thinking the enemy would likely start with smaller probing attacks.

It was "logical" to think the attack on Wanat would be mounted by no more than 20 militants, the investigating officer into the battle said, and based on that expectation, the U.S. force of 50 men was sufficient.

Cubbison said the potential for the shift of several hundred fighters from Bella to Wanat was not "given due deliberation."

'FIND OUT THE TRUTH'

With so many concerns about the run-up to Wanat and the catastrophic outcome, Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in the Middle East and Central Asia, in late September ordered a new investigation into the attack. 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 in Wanat.

U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., sent a letter over the summer to the Pentagon's acting inspector general, seeking a new investigation after meeting with David Brostrom, father of 1st Lt. Jonathan Brostrom who was killed at Wanat, and reading the Combat Studies Institute report.

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai'i, said he also supported David Brostrom's "insistence on a full accounting" of the events at Wanat. The U.S. owes it to the Brostroms and members of the armed forces "to find out the truth," Abercrombie said.

A month after the attack, the Army issued a more-than 700-page investigation into Wanat, conducted by Col. Mark Johnstone, deputy commander of the 173rd Brigade, which concluded the risk of casualties "is inherent in counterinsurgency operations."

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

David Brostrom said the Army investigation "avoided the key issues" leading up to Wanat.

The investigation was done in a hurry as the brigade was busy redeploying to Italy, he said. But more importantly, higher command "didn't do the due diligence on the investigation because they were concerned for their own careers," Brostrom said.

In May, Brostrom, an 'Aiea resident, sent Abercrombie a letter saying that "senior leadership failure" at the battalion, brigade, assistant division commander and division commander levels "directly contributed" to the deaths of the nine U.S. soldiers.

Two of the key leaders involved, Col. Charles "Chip" Preysler, then the commander of the 173rd Brigade, and Lt. Col. William Ostlund, who oversaw Chosen Company as commander of the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, did not respond to e-mailed requests for comment.

By July 13, 2008, the day of the attack, there were plenty of militants gunning for Chosen Company in Afghanistan's Waigal Valley, and the men of 2nd Platoon who were setting up the new combat outpost in the village of Wanat knew it.

First Lt. Brostrom had told an Army buddy he had real concerns about going to Wanat. With less than two weeks left in Afghanistan, he wasn't sure what prompted the last-minute outpost-building job.

"He said he thought it was a bad idea," 1st Lt. Brandon Kennedy told Cubbison. "The last few times he had gone up there, he had been ambushed or (encountered a roadside bomb) every time."

Wanat, with 50 families, was one of nine villages in the 19-mile Waigal Valley, and had a mosque, hotel, district government center, police center and a market.

The Waigal Valley — split between Nuristan province to the north and Kunar province to the south — is in a region that challenged American forces culturally, geographically and militarily.

Both provinces are on the border with Pakistan, and because they serve as conduits for al-Qaida, the Taliban and other "anti-coalition militia," the U.S. increasingly took an interest in the region.

Afghans themselves can't decide whether Wanat is in Nuristan or Kunar. The national government recognizes Wanat as being part of Kunar province, but the people and local government consider it part of Nuristan.

The region is as remote as they come. The Afghan government has a limited presence there, the British never penetrated into Kunar or Nuristan, and only rarely did Soviet armored columns venture into the Pech River Valley, Cubbison said.

The mujahedeen "repelled them with relative ease," he said.

The Waigal Valley is dominated by Nuristanis to the north and Safi Pashtuns to the south, Cubbison said. Both have reputations as warriors, feuds are common, and the people are hostile to outside influence.

The region's steep and wooded valleys isolate it so effectively that Islam did not predominate until 1895. Until then, Nuristan was known as Kafiristan, or land of the pagans, and its people practiced a pre-Christian polytheistic religion.

Timber and gem mining are controlled by criminal cartels, according to Cubbison.

In 2006, the 10th Mountain Division set up three posts: Camp Blessing near Nangalam and the intersection of the Waigal and Pech rivers; Combat Outpost Bella nine miles up the Waigal Valley; and Ranch House about 2 1/2 miles from Bella near the village of Aranas, Cubbison said.

During a pre-deployment visit to the region in February 2007, 173rd Brigade officials felt that the U.S. had "gone too far, too fast" in the Waigal Valley, Cubbison said, and started talking about closing Ranch House and Bella and creating a single new combat outpost in Wanat, which was much closer to resupply from the main Camp Blessing.

Bella and Ranch House were accessible only by helicopter, adding to their vulnerability.

Although $1.4 million in economic development was planned for Wanat by the 173rd Brigade, Cubbison said the occupation did not include the distribution of any aid — as had been the case on a 2006 mission to Wanat by another unit that built two bridges.

No local workers were hired, and there was no associated show of U.S. force with the occupation — all of which could have mitigated an attack.

The Americans also gave the insurgents plenty of time to prepare for their attack on Wanat.

Through 10 months of negotiations with elders for the land at Wanat, the 173rd Brigade telegraphed to militants its intention to set up the base, Cubbison said.

Some of the Americans sent to Wanat said they didn't have the men or materiel needed to get the job done.

Sgt. Ryan Pitts, who at one point in the battle was firing rifle grenades almost straight up in the air to repel an enemy that had penetrated to within yards of U.S. positions, would later say more support was needed at Wanat.

"I almost feel as if we were left out to dry or a little neglected," Cubbison reported Pitts as saying. "It seemed as if nobody really expected anything to happen. They just wanted to get us out there and get it done."

MISSED DETAILS

David Brostrom said he suspects that the 173rd Brigade, overstretched in an extremely inhospitable part of Afghanistan, was exhausted after continuous fighting, and senior leaders did not pay attention to the detail that Wanat demanded.

Dirt-filled protective barriers used as defenses could not be filled to their full 7-foot height because the soldiers were using a small bulldozer known as a Bobcat to fill them and it could reach only 4 feet. A deal had been made for Afghans to deliver heavy equipment, but the supplies were delayed.

After nearly 15 months in Afghanistan, the American commanders "had grown complacent," Cubbison said. "In their hubris, they forgot that a new position is most vulnerable in the early days of its formation."

The leaders also were distracted by preparations to go home and a turnover in command to their replacement unit — the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, Cubbison said.

"I don't believe it was negligence I think the big key was arrogance," said Sgt. 1st Class David Dzwik, 32, a platoon sergeant at the Battle of Wanat. "It was, 'I know how the enemy is going to react, I know how my guys are going to react.' There was just too much on the plate and they (senior leaders) kept piling more, thinking they could handle it."

Cubbison said the Wanat basing plan — which was contemplated by the 173rd Brigade in 2007 and had been given serious consideration since March 2008, "was insufficiently planned and inadequately supported logistically."

The 173rd Brigade and its higher command, Combined Joint Task Force 101, said there was no complacency by senior leadership leading up to Wanat, nor did commanders overlook "risk mitigation."

"Seventy-five coalition forces troops (the number at Wanat, including 24 allied Afghan soldiers) was considered adequate to occupy and establish the new outpost," the commands said in a joint statement in response to David Brostom's questions.

Cubbison disagrees.

The single U.S. platoon was "insufficient combat power" to establish a combat outpost through the construction of numerous fighting positions, while also establishing and maintaining security, Cubbison said.

David Brostrom, who is a retired Army colonel, said a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle that could have detected the large enemy force was pulled from the mission the day before the attack.

Brostrom said the higher command in Afghanistan, Combined Joint Task Force 101, gave conflicting reasons about why the unmanned aerial vehicle was unavailable on July 13, 2008.

The initial report said the Predator was unavailable because of bad weather, Brostrom said. Another report indicated Predator support was unavailable because of other higher priority missions, he said.

APACHES' RESPONSE

Cubbison, in his report, questions why it took 17 minutes from the moment a report was broadcast that Wanat was under heavy attack, to Apache attack helicopters being alerted in Jalalabad.

"This appears to be an excessively long response time, which remains unexplained," Cubbison said. The helicopters were in the air in 17 minutes, and it took just less than 30 minutes to reach Wanat.

"If the (helicopters) had arrived even 15 minutes earlier, it could have saved lives," Brostrom said.

The Americans consider Wanat to be a victory since they held their posts and drove the insurgents away. But two days after the attack the post was abandoned.

Ostlund, the battalion commander, addressed the pullout in the investigation. "If it wasn't worth the lives of nine troopers, why did we occupy (Wanat) in the first place?" he was asked.

The population proved corrupted or intimidated, Ostlund said, and the land and human terrain were no longer "tenable."

"What is the calculus used to determine what is worth the lives of one or nine paratroopers? How is that determined?" Ostlund said. "I don't know if I can articulate or justify anything at the tactical level worth risking nine paratroopers' lives — yet to make progress, we have to do that every day, several times per day, and we do so based on all facts and information available at the time (and) then decide to take an action."