Eighteen months after Bush declared that "major combat operations" in Iraq were over—and another war began—the most powerful military machine on the planet, replenished by America's unmatched industrial power, is still sending its soldiers, reservists and National Guardsmen down dangerous roads in soft-skinned trucks and Humvees.
Humvee factories, meanwhile, have not been operating at full capacity. And U.S. commercial steel-plate companies have been largely ignored by the Pentagon, which remains intent on supplying itself from a select number of Army depots. Perhaps inadvertently, the Pentagon late last week provided proof that it had not been doing its utmost. Two days after Rumsfeld's embarrassing exchange with Wilson, the Defense Department announced it was ordering 100 more up-armored Humvees a month from their main supplier, O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt in West Chester, Ohio. The Humvee armoring company had told reporters only a few days before that it was operating at 22 percent under capacity, but that there were no more orders from the Pentagon. Then suddenly there were more, for reasons the Army did not make clear.
MSNBC articleHumvee factories, meanwhile, have not been operating at full capacity. And U.S. commercial steel-plate companies have been largely ignored by the Pentagon, which remains intent on supplying itself from a select number of Army depots. Perhaps inadvertently, the Pentagon late last week provided proof that it had not been doing its utmost. Two days after Rumsfeld's embarrassing exchange with Wilson, the Defense Department announced it was ordering 100 more up-armored Humvees a month from their main supplier, O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt in West Chester, Ohio. The Humvee armoring company had told reporters only a few days before that it was operating at 22 percent under capacity, but that there were no more orders from the Pentagon. Then suddenly there were more, for reasons the Army did not make clear.
Hmmmm....imagine that.
There are no firm figures on how many soldiers have died or suffered grievous wounds because of lack of armor. But even during the recent Fallujah offensive, several Marine infantry units rolled into battle with soft-skinned and open-backed Humvees. Many of the Marines grumbled that all the armor was being sent over to the Army. But some Army troops wouldn't agree: in October, members of one unarmored unit, the 343rd Quartermaster Company, refused to carry out a convoy mission because their vehicles were not adequately protected. Several members were later disciplined and demoted, though the Army declined to court-martial them. In a recent letter to the Army Times, Sgt. Scott Montgomery, who was part of a different unit that eventually did carry out the mission, said his convey was hit by an IED and that he was wounded by shrapnel. "Had we not had armor on our vehicle, my entire crew would have been killed," he said.
But those other fodder are still demoted.
I'm going to have to take issue with this next bit....
Rumsfeld arrived at the Pentagon determined to overhaul an antiquated Army, making it smaller, faster, lighter, but every bit as lethal. He succeeded, at least in the early going. Following the "shock and awe" bombing campaign, Rumsfeld's faster, lighter forces stunned the enemy by rushing to Baghdad in just three weeks.
That is purely an assumption. Looking at the situation as it is in real life, it would appear that "the enemy" pulled the troops into something of a trap. The spider and the flies. Hussein may be getting the last laugh.
defense insiders say that better armor has not been a high enough priority, at least until recently. After 9/11, Boeing ramped up production of JDAMs, its precise, GPS-guided bombs, from 900 a year to 3, 000 a month for use in Afghanistan. (This past week, in the middle of the armor furor, Boeing announced that it had delivered its 100,000th JDAM kit to the Air Force.) "If they could do it for bombs, why couldn't they do it for armor to save lives ?" asks Defense analyst Bill Arkin.
Any answers?
And the reason that soldier asked a question "coached" by a reporter? Even the embedded reporters weren't permitted to question Rumsfeld at the event.
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