Troops Don't Get Proper Armor--Again

[Doug]

WASHINGTON - After nearly four years of war in Iraq, the Pentagon's effort to protect its troops against roadside bombs is in disarray, with soldiers and Marines having to swap access to scarce armored vehicles and the military unsure whether it has the money or industrial capacity to produce the safe vehicles it says the troops need.

On Jan. 10, the Baltimore Sun reported that most of the 21,500 troops President Bush has ordered to Iraq as reinforcements will not have access to specialized blast-resistant armored vehicles because they are in such short supply.

But the problem runs deeper than that. In congressional testimony and interviews last week, senior Army and Marine Corps officers acknowledged that they are struggling just to meet the needs of service members already in Iraq.

Even if the Pentagon can find millions of dollars not currently budgeted, and even if it can find factories to produce the armored vehicles, most U.S. troops in Iraq will not have access to the best equipment available, as President Bush has often promised.

The Army acknowledged last week, for example, that it is still 22 percent short of the armored Humvees it needs in Iraq despite heated criticism in 2004 and 2005 over the lack of armored vehicles.

See here.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

That's one of the reasons we need to pull the troops home. If we do much more wasting of our own military, we will be leaving ourselves wide open for an actual military attack (not just random terrorist attacks) - you know, like the full navy task force of 6 or more flat-tops (and all their fighters and bombers) with the accompanying battlewagons, heavy and light cruisers, destroyers, etc that hit us at Pearl Harbor in 1941, maybe from a country that has a large population and doesn't like us telling them what to do about Taiwan. Not likely, I know, but possible.

In 1940 Winston Churchill - at the head of the only European nation still fighting the Nazis - said, "Our only hope is for Hitler to attack this island and break his air weapon." Even if it weren't just flat out wrong for us to have attacked and invaded Iraq, which it was, even if it weren't incredibly stupid to be sitting ducks between two factions of a civil war, which it is, even if it weren't downright evil to be killing civilians who have the misfortune to be where we think a terrorist might be, which it is - it would still be stupid to let people not particularly friendly to us watch us "break" our army in Iraq.

[Hogeye]

You gotta admit, that serves the assholes right (getting inferior equipment and being endangered) for joining a statist murder gang. Barbara, it is sheer paranoia to think China would attack the US. They have much more important things to worry about, like feeding their people.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

No it does NOT serve our military right to be dumped, without appropriate resources, in a foreign land for the ghoulish pleasure of a sociopath. People join up for two basic reasons - to serve their country (it's the only way our society recognizes service to country) or to get an education - or both. They have been betrayed by their commander-in-chief. Many of them still believe at least some of the propaganda lies about why they are in Iraq. Most of them are too young to think through revolt - which, if the officers didn't join, is not revolt but mutiny and can get you legally executed by your own officers "on the battlefield" - not even a "military tribual" hearing. They are stuck between two or more really bad options, so they just keep doing their "job" and hoping somebody will get them out of there. They are being used as a tool to break the Middle East so the neocons can get control of M.E. oil. Neocon tunnel vision keeps the "perps" from realizing the potential effects of breaking our military in the process.

No - I don't think China is going to attack us. (Although attacking another country - for "just cause" - is a time-honored way to make citizens "sacrifice" for the good of the homeland.) That was just the first country I could think of off the top of my head who is both capable of it and might not care if we nuked them. China's plan for surviving nuclear attack hasn't changed - retaliate and ride it out. They have enough missiles, a large enough country and a large enough population to do so, unlike the rest of the world. They also have a large enough populace to field an army large enough to overrun us, on paper at least. (In reality, China, like Russia, is great at defending the home turf and not so good when starting/carrying a war to somebody else's turf.)

What I am pointing out is "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" is 1) not a valid response to terrorist acts, 2) only works even in an actual war (as opposed to an invasion/occupation defined as a war by Der Decider) if you keep "over here" strongly defended. For all that Churchill had more GB/Empire troops in the field in every theater of WWII than we did until August 1944, he never left his beloved "island" without defense troops (including air/navel forces "to drown as many as possible on the way over" and a very mobile reserve to "hit the remainder over the head as they crawl ashore"). Our military is getting to be in the same condition as Hitler's on the Eastern Front. W is putting a whole lot of faith in Mexico and Canada, as well as the oceans, ability/willingness to protect us from potential results of his quasi-religious, neocon fanatacism.

[Hogeye]

People join up for two basic reasons - to serve their country (it's the only way our society recognizes service to country) or to get an education - or both.

Agreed. They are so stupid/immoral that 1) they can't tell a country from a State, 2) don't recognize the plethora of ways to help your country (as opposed to the State), 3) are so immoral they are willing to murder strangers to get an education. In short, they are ignorant immoral assholes. If they die while engaging or abetting murder, that is wonderful. They only reason you can't see this is your nationalist blinders; if we were talking about e.g. Hitler's concentration camp guards, no doubt you'd agree they deserve to die. If we were talking about Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan, you'd agree.

They have been betrayed by their commander-in-chief.

Agreed, but that of course does not absolve the immoral assholes of their culpability.

Most of them are too young to think through revolt - which, if the officers didn't join, is not revolt but mutiny and can get you legally executed by your own officers "on the battlefield" - not even a "military tribual" hearing.

I agree that, once the idiots have stupidly indentured themselves to the State, they are screwed.

What I am pointing out is "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" is not a valid response to terrorist acts...

Agreed. The 911 mass homicide was not even an act of war. It was homicide, and should have been handled as such. It was a job for CSI, not the military. But the State, in its lust for power, construed it as an military attack and act of war, in order to ramp up power and invade foreign countries (in accordance with plans already conceived in the Project for the New American Century by neo-cons, as we know.) Boobus Americanus was, as usual with its braindead statist mentality, ready and enthusiastic, a pushover for revenge, blood-lust, and the nationalist framing.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Hogeye, concentration camp guards are not the same as the regular GI - of whatever country - not that they'd be given a whole lot of choice, if they were assigned to that. Hitler created a special force (the SS) for doing things you have to be a sadist to do. The German Army, like any other army - including the Soviet Army in Afganistan - was made up of kids who were either drafted or bought "the statist propaganda" of their country - just like the American kids in Iraq. They don't "deserve to die" any more than the Iraqi civilians do. They deserve to be led by people who are true to their oath to support the Constitution and understand (and act accordingly) the difference between defending your country and attacking other countries in the name of defense for personal power & personal money reasons.

The only thing I agree with you on is the 9/11 attack was mass murder, not an act of war. I said so the day it happened, and watched - sick at my stomach - W, with full complicity from the MSM, started beating the war drums. I knew he would do it. True to type, those Bushes. It didn't make it any easier to watch. It should have been turned over to the police - a joint effort of local, state, national, and internation policing forces. We would have gotten all the cooperation in the world and bin Ladin would probably have been in jail (or executed) by the end of 2001.

[Hogeye]

The German Army, like any other army - including the Soviet Army in Afganistan - was made up of kids who were either drafted or bought "the statist propaganda" of their country - just like the American kids in Iraq. They don't "deserve to die" any more than the Iraqi civilians do.

We have some difference in our theories of moral culpability. I would say that innocent Iraqi civilians clearly do not deserve to die. Contrary to you, I would say that soldiers who volunteer for a murder gang (for whatever reason, even stupid ones motivated by statist propaganda) deserve to die a hell of a lot more than innocent civilians. Those who were drafted have somewhat less moral culpability than the volunteer thug, but still deserve to die more than civilians.

[Doug]

I would say that innocent Iraqi civilians clearly do not deserve to die.

DOUG
Only nuts like Ann Coulter would dispute that.

Contrary to you, I would say that soldiers who volunteer for a murder gang (for whatever reason, even stupid ones motivated by statist propaganda) deserve to die a hell of a lot more than innocent civilians. Those who were drafted have somewhat less moral culpability than the volunteer thug, but still deserve to die more than civilians.

DOUG
Our soldiers are not a "murder gang" even if they kill civilians. They are not supposed to kill noncombatants. That is not their job, those are not their orders. If they do so, they can be arrested, convicted, and punished, as some of them have been. This is proof that our government does not sanction the killing of innocent civilians.

Yes, civilians die in wartime. Yes, we should avoid that. No, we do not always avoid that. Yes, the Iraq war is immoral and should never have been fought. But the average soldier (perhaps, unlike a high-ranking general) is not in a position to second-guess the Monkey-in-Chief and decide to opt out of the war, although increasingly, even with the filter of propaganda the soldiers are getting, more and more of them are seeing what a farce it is.

[Hogeye]

Our soldiers are not a "murder gang" even if they kill civilians. They are not supposed to kill noncombatants. That is not their job, those are not their orders.

You've been eating too much propaganda. People are ordered to bomb civilian areas. People are ordered to shoot rocket bombs into neighborhoods. People are ordered to shoot anyone who runs a checkpoint, or anyone who opposes them in house-to-house searches. Usually their murders are not only unpunished, but approved, condoned, and rewarded. The government even has a name for innocent civilians it murders - collateral damage. Get real, Doug.

the average soldier (perhaps, unlike a high-ranking general) is not in a position to second-guess the Monkey-in-Chief and decide to opt out of the war...

There is no draft. Anyone who joins the murder gang did it voluntarily, and accrues moral culpability for that. Joining the US military is no different morally from becoming a hit-man for a mafia or an enforcer for an extortion gang. It is a shame that, due to nationalistic blinders, most USAmericans can't see this. Just as bible-thumpers see the Bible as infallable, Boobus Americanus sees the US State as above morality.