U.S. military chief pays quiet visit to Iraq post where Marine died
Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, paid a visit on Friday to a tiny artillery outpost in Iraq, presenting Purple Hearts to four service members wounded in a recent rocket attack that also killed an American Marine. During a stop in Iraqi Kurdistan at the end of a three-day visit […]Missy Ryan writes for The Washington Post:
Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, paid a visit on Friday to a tiny artillery outpost in Iraq, presenting Purple Hearts to four service members wounded in a recent rocket attack that also killed an American Marine.
During a stop in Iraqi Kurdistan at the end of a three-day visit to Iraq, Dunford slipped away by helicopter to Fire Base Bell, a tiny post adjacent to a larger Iraqi base southeast of Mosul. Accompanied by only a handful of aides, Dunford spent about 90 minutes with the approximately 200 Marines at the isolated facility, close to the front lines with the Islamic State.
Speaking to reporters later in the day, Dunford said he distributed the awards at the very gun position where Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin, a member of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, was killed last month in a militant rocket attack.
