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| Armor Scarce for Big Trucks Transporting Cargo in | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 10 2004, 11:49 AM (195 Views) | |
| gvok | Dec 10 2004, 11:49 AM Post #1 |
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Armor Scarce for Big Trucks Transporting Cargo in Iraq By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT Published: December 10, 2004 Jason P. Howe/World Picture News, for The New York Times WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 - Congress released statistics Thursday documenting stark shortages in armor for the military transport trucks that ferry food, fuel and ammunition along dangerous routes in Iraq, while President Bush and his defense secretary both spoke out to defuse public criticism. Soldiers confronted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday with complaints that the Pentagon was sending them to war without enough armored equipment to protect them. One soldier who challenged Mr. Rumsfeld was apparently prompted by a reporter traveling with his unit. The commander of American ground forces in the Middle East responded Thursday to the complaints with a vow to provide armored transportation into Iraq for all troops headed there. "The concerns expressed are being addressed, and that is, we expect our troops to have the best possible equipment," Mr. Bush said. "And I have told many families I met with, we're doing everything we possibly can to protect your loved ones in a mission which is vital and important." The House Armed Services Committee released statistics on Thursday showing that while many Humvees are armored, most transport trucks that crisscross Iraq are not. The committee said more than three-quarters of the 19,854 Humvees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait carry protective armor, which can vary in quality. The most secure are factory-armored Humvees, and the Pentagon has received only 5,910 of the 8,105 that commanders say they need. But only 10 percent of the 4,814 medium-weight transport trucks have armor, and only 15 percent of the 4,314 heavy transport vehicles. The uproar has exposed some of the most crucial challenges facing the Pentagon: how to equip and train troops for a war whose very nature has changed. A resourceful insurgency has seized on an American vulnerability - the shortage of armored vehicles - and attacked supply lines with roadside bombs. These trucks are driven primarily by reservists, while a much greater percentage of active-duty soldiers are deployed in direct combat, and disparities between these troops have already prompted the Defense Department to begin sweeping changes in the way soldiers are trained and equipped. These issues gained new intensity and widespread attention because they were raised not in the safe confines of a Capitol Hill hearing or a Pentagon suite, but by a scout with the Tennessee National Guard who directly pressed the secretary of defense in the deserts of Kuwait just days before the soldier is to be sent into Iraq for a year. At Camp Buehring, a staging base for American troops entering and leaving Iraq, the scout, Specialist Thomas Wilson, said his unit had been forced to dig through local landfills to find scrap metal to bolt onto their trucks for protection against roadside bombs. The incident was startling in part because of the soldier's willingness to challenge a cabinet official, but it emerged Thursday that a newspaper reporter embedded with the troops had helped orchestrate the questioning. Mr. Rumsfeld, after leaving Kuwait for India, said it was valuable for senior officials to hear concerns directly from troops, but he offered no immediate changes in how the Army was reacting to the problems. "I think that it's good for people to raise questions," he said. "It gives senior military leadership that has the responsibility for these matters a chance to hear them, talk to them." Gone are the days when the American military could plan for fighting along dangerous front lines while relying on a relatively safe rear area for logistics. "Last year, we began to see an increase in improvised explosive device attacks against our forces, primarily against convoys that were moving throughout Iraq," said Lt. Gen. R. Steven Whitcomb, commander of coalition ground forces in the Middle East. "And they began having an impact on our soldiers, a deadly impact, as we all know." In a hastily arranged video news conference from Kuwait, General Whitcomb said the Army had since rushed armored vehicles to take troops into Iraq, and had hastened to add armor to others. "I've got enough metal, I've got enough folks, and I've got enough time to meet our schedule that ensures that no combat unit in a wheeled vehicle goes into Iraq now that is not in an armored vehicle," he added. "So we're continuing to work feverishly to ensure that they meet our requirement, and that's that nobody goes north without it." Continuing shortages have prompted soldiers going to Iraq to scrounge for steel and ballistic glass, improvising shields that have come to be called hillbilly armor. At the transit camps in Kuwait, Army and Marine Corps drivers weld antishrapnel collars onto the hoods of their trucks, to deflect exploding debris while maintaining visibility. Sandbags are laid on the floors of Humvees, trimming the skimpy legroom from economy class to steerage. On the battlefield, there is an air of resigned acquiescence about the lack of armor, rather than bitter complaints. Among units that lack armored Humvees, the mood 20 months into the war tends more to black jokes than to recrimination. "If they i.e.d. you in this thing, there won't be enough of you left to package up and send home," a Marine sergeant said earlier this week, as he showed embedded reporters to one of three open-backed Humvees assigned to a raid on a suspected rebel stronghold raid south of Baghdad. Among troops in Iraq, i.e.d., for improvised explosive device, is shorthand for the roadside bombs that have killed about two-thirds of Americans who have died in combat. At briefings, commanders resort often to an old Marine adage, "Improvise, adjust, overcome," and are dismissive of complaints. Yet others remain angry. "This is a big problem that demands immediate attention, and what you saw yesterday from Rumsfeld shows that he fails to understand what goes on the ground," said Paul Rieckhoff, a former infantry platoon leader with the Florida National Guard in Iraq who now runs an organization called Operation Truth , an advocacy group for soldiers and veterans. "This is a life or death situation for guys over there. Complacency, incompetency, or negligence, I don't know what other excuse there could be. But when these guys screw up, we bleed." The kits to add extra protection to vehicles already in Iraq are being produced by the United States Army Matériel Command, where officials said they were scrambling to speed up the work and complete the most recent order from Iraq before the previous goal of March 2005. "We're trying to ramp up and accelerate the process, and there is a possibility we might meet the requirement prior to that time," said Tesia Williams, an Army spokeswoman. At the same time, she defended the Army's efforts to date in armoring the Humvees used in Iraq. According to figures supplied by Ms. Williams, the Matériel Command first received orders for 1,000 kits in November 2003, followed by orders for 2,870 in December; 800 in January 2004; 2,090 in February; and 1,516 in April 2004. More orders received last summer brought the total order to 13,872, of which about 75 percent has been filled, she said. Only some of the work has been contracted out, mainly to a plant in Ohio run by O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, a unit of Armor Holdings. The rest of the kits are being produced by civilian employees of the Army working at depots in New York and six other states, where they are using laser-cutting machines to cut steel purchased directly from two mills. Armor Holdings also produces armor for new Humvees, and the company said it told the Army last month that it had the capacity to increase its production to 550 vehicles a month, compared with the 450 vehicles is handling now. Military officers at the Pentagon expressed no surprise that it was a member of the National Guard who raised the issue with Mr. Rumsfeld. Already, the length and number of Guard tours and the number of their members killed and wounded have imposed unexpected stresses on the Guard and Reserves, whose members have not always been as well trained and equipped as active-duty members. The system for training, equipping, mobilizing and deploying reservists was not ready for the historic increase in call-ups since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials acknowledged. The Guard and Reserves clocked nearly 63 million duty days last year, more than five times the totals recorded annually in the late 1990's. As of Wednesday, the total National Guard and Reserve personnel on duty around the world and in the United States stood at 185,019. Democrats in Congress rushed into the debate on Thursday, saying one of Mr. Rumsfeld's chief duties was making sure that the troops would be safe. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of the harshest critics of the administration's Iraq policies, said troops lack some protective equipment, in part, because of the urgency with which the United States went to war. "This was a war of choice, not necessity, to be waged on our timetable, not Saddam's," Mr. Biden said in a statement. "And why is it that, 20 months after Saddam's statue fell, our troops still don't have the protection they need? Congress has given this administration virtually every dollar it has asked for in Iraq." Thom Shanker reported from Washington for this article and Eric Schmitt from New Delhi. Reporting was contributed by John F. Burns in Baghdad, Iraq; John Files in Washington; and Michael Moss and Leslie Wayne in New York. |
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| Admiralbill_gomec | Dec 10 2004, 12:18 PM Post #2 |
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UberAdmiral
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Not every vehicle in a war zone is armored, nor should it be. Move on... dot org. |
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| gvok | Dec 10 2004, 12:22 PM Post #3 |
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So you feel Congress doesn't know what they are talking about? |
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| Wichita | Dec 10 2004, 12:26 PM Post #4 |
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The Adminstrator wRench
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Personal Response End of Personal Response |
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| Admiralbill_gomec | Dec 10 2004, 12:28 PM Post #5 |
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UberAdmiral
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I think, you feel. Remember? I love how the media is still reporting on this planted story as real news. Worse, they're repeating the same lies in the original Pitts plant. |
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| Dandandat | Dec 10 2004, 12:29 PM Post #6 |
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Time to put something here
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you know the comment its self wasn’t that funny, until I saw you laughing at it, |
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| Dandandat | Dec 10 2004, 12:30 PM Post #7 |
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Time to put something here
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That’s what the media does, next week it will be an new issue and this one will have been forgotten by most. (disclaimer to speed things up a bit, I did not count Gvok as one of them when I said most) |
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| Wichita | Dec 10 2004, 12:32 PM Post #8 |
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The Adminstrator wRench
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BTW, I LOVE your avatar. Maybe we should do an Avatar Hall of Fame? |
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| gvok | Dec 10 2004, 12:35 PM Post #9 |
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I don't think it's so funny that American soldiers are dying needlessly because of a lack of armored vehicles due to the Administration's poor planning. Perhaps if Clinton was the President you'd treat this as a serious story. |
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| Admiralbill_gomec | Dec 10 2004, 12:42 PM Post #10 |
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I'm glad you mentioned that: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4088 Hillbilly armor and adaptabilityDecember 10th, 2004 Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts has criticized the military for not having full armor for all vehicles in Iraq and has admitted he convinced the soldier at Secretary Rumsfeld's press conference to ask his question for him on the subject. This has caused a feeding frenzy among the press who hate this war, and who are now trying to make the standard for going to war that every single vehicle in the Motor Pool must be refitted before it gets shipped out. The press writes as if troops can only be sent overseas in a textbook deployment. Like me, you may have trouble remembering that when Clinton sent the troops to Mogadishu without any armor at all, the press jumped on him for doing so. But I am certain that they must have, since they are so even-handed in their treatment of serious issues. This is exactly what's wrong with armchair generals and particularly citified ones. Journalists now want us to believe that soldiers using their mechanical skills in upgrading vehicles is a scandal and not ingenuity, a virtue. The press thinks that a platoon ordering a Humvee is just like an editor buying a Lexus in Chicago or Atlanta. If it doesn't have all the features you requested, either the shop won't ship it to you or you can send it back. After all, the editor wouldn't take an acetylene torch and create a sunroof on a car he bought, were it missing this feature he had requested. Why should soldiers in the field have to adapt to changing conditions? Doesn't the Army know about The Lemon Law? Couldn't they call the Dept. of Consumer Affairs? Perhaps the soldiers should have complained to John Kerry, the standard-bearer of the opposition party, but he and ten other Democrats voted against supplying additional body armor in the $87 Billion Iraq War supplemental funding bill. I haven't seen a word about that in the press articles today. I have seen an article saying that John Kerry is going to Iraq, apparently to complain about the lack of body armor that he also complained about during the debates - the same body armor he voted against funding. He was against body armor funding before he was for it. In World War II, the Navy retrofitted some regular ships and made them small aircraft carriers. They were second rate, but they fought in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Also, the Civil Air Patrol, flying along our coast looking for German U-Boats, actually had pilots who home-made bomb racks at the bottom of their plane. One was reported to have sunk a U-Boat. Many pilots risked their lives by returning with a bomb still in place, a potentially fatal risk in a hard belly landing. I am not old enough to have read the newspapers in those days, but my history books in public high school did not criticize Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the shortage of bombers to patrol the US coasts and the risks Civil Air Patrol pilots took. Gee, I wonder why my history teacher union brothers and sisters in the United Federation of Teachers never criticized Roosevelt for this "unnecessary risk." I'm not saying that we should accept the readiness standards of 1942 today. But we would be better served by the press accepting reality. Probably, a better job could, and now will be done in expediting the flow of safer vehicles to our forces in Iraq (and elsewhere), thanks to the question asked of the SecDef in Kuwait. The press should report on correctible shortcomings in our war effort, but it doesn't do the country any good for them to spin their articles as if they were writing for the Chicken Little Sky Is Falling Tribune. Things get confused in both the rapid deployment for war, as well as the fog of battle. The press thinks they are doing us a service with their attitude in these articles - they are not. And their agenda is very transparent. When military papers use the term "Hillbilly Armor," they do so with humor and respect for soldiers' adaptability. When some editor, sitting at a plush desk Stateside uses the term to describe a quick fix in the field, it is perceived as a smug "Gotcha" - because often that is what they is meant to be. Jack Kemp is a teacher, not the politician of the same name. Jack Kemp (Honestly, gvok, I don't think you give a damn about the troops as long as it makes Bush look bad.) |
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| gvok | Dec 10 2004, 12:49 PM Post #11 |
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This is not true. I would think that someone who professes to care so much about the military would want them to have the proper equipment and wouldn't keep apologizing for an inept Administration that needlessly placed them in harm's way. |
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| Admiralbill_gomec | Dec 10 2004, 12:52 PM Post #12 |
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You know absolutely nothing about what you are talking about. Speaking of Bill Clinton, where was your concern when he sent infantry to Somalia without armored Humvees? |
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| gvok | Dec 10 2004, 12:52 PM Post #13 |
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Based on your statement quoted above, neither do you. |
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| Wichita | Dec 10 2004, 01:21 PM Post #14 |
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The Adminstrator wRench
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Personal Response To readers of this thread: As is clear from this quote, my laughter is in response to the question: "So you feel that Congress doesn't know what they are talking about?" Any attempts to attribute my response to any other comment - and specifically to the deaths of American serviceman - is a lie. End of Personal Response |
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| gvok | Dec 10 2004, 01:22 PM Post #15 |
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Can you explain what you thought was funny? |
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3:18 AM Jul 11