Precision of Base Attack Worries Military Experts

By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post - Wednesday, December 22, 2004

In April 2003, as the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was ending, the Pentagon projected in a formal planning effort that the U.S. military occupation of the country would end this month.

Instead, December 2004 brought one of the deadliest single incidents of the war for U.S. forces. More than 80 casualties were suffered yesterday by U.S. troops, civilian contractors and Iraqi soldiers when a U.S. base near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was blasted at lunchtime.

Defense officials said 15 of those killed in the attack on a mess tent at the city's airport were American soldiers -- more U.S. troops than have been lost in nearly any other major incident in the fighting, even during the spring 2003 invasion. Before yesterday, the worst incidents were the deaths of 17 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division in the November 2003 collision of two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, also in Mosul, and, two weeks before that, the loss of 15 soldiers when a CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter crashed west of Baghdad. All three occurred after President Bush's May 2003 declaration that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

The major difference between the latest attack and the earlier incidents is that it was an attack on a U.S. base, rather than on troops in transit in vulnerable aircraft. That difference appears to reflect both the persistence of the insurgency and its growing sophistication, as experts noted that it seemed to be based on precise intelligence. Most disturbingly, some officers who have served in Iraq worried that the Mosul attack could mark the beginning of a period of even more intense violence preceding the Iraqi elections scheduled for Jan. 30.

"On the strategic level, we were expecting an horrendous month leading up to the Iraqi elections, and that has begun," retired Army Col. Michael E. Hess said.

Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst of Middle Eastern military affairs, said he is especially worried that the insurgents' next move will be an actual penetration by fighters into a base. "The real danger here is that they will mount a sophisticated effort to penetrate or assault one of our camps or bases with a ground element," he said.

If anti-American violence does hit a new level, pressure is likely to increase on the Bush administration to either boost the U.S. military presence in Iraq or find a fast way to get out.
The adequacy of current troop numbers is one of the questions provoked by yesterday's action, said Charles McComas, a veteran Special Forces soldier who served in Afghanistan before retiring. "Do we have the right forces and enough of them to do the offensive patrolling to reduce the chances of this happening again?" he asked.

A private-sector security expert who recently left Baghdad after more than a year there agreed, noting that the United States originally put an entire division in the Mosul area, the 101st Airborne, but replaced it earlier this year with a force about half that size, only to see insurgent attacks increase. "We have replaced a division with a brigade and think we can offer the same amount of security," he said, insisting on anonymity because his opinions are so at odds with the official U.S. government view.

The attack also indicates that the insurgency is growing more sophisticated with the passage of time. One of the basic principles of waging a counterinsurgency is that it requires patience. "Twenty-one months" -- the length of the occupation so far -- "is not a long time to tame the tribal warfare expected there," said retired Marine Lt. Col. Rick Raftery, an intelligence specialist who operated in northern Iraq in 1991. "My guess is that this will take 10 years."

Another principle, less noted but painfully clear yesterday, is that insurgents also tend to sharpen their tactics as time goes by. Over the past 20 months, enemy fighters have learned a lot about how the U.S. military operates and where its vulnerabilities lie.

"The longer you are anywhere, the more difficult it becomes," said Hess, who served in northern Iraq in 1991 and in Bosnia in 1996. "They have changed their tactics a lot in the year-plus."

Several experts noted that insurgents appear to have acted on accurate intelligence. Kalev Sepp, a former Special Forces counterinsurgency expert who recently returned from Iraq, noted that the attack "was carried out in daylight against the largest facility on the base, at exactly the time when the largest number of soldiers would be present."

"This combination of evidence indicates a good probability that the attack was well-planned and professionally executed," Sepp said.

Suicide bomber believed behind Mosul attack... U.S. investigators say improvised device detonated inside mess tent

The Associated Press Updated: 8:23 p.m. ET Dec. 22, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military said Wednesday that a suicide bomber likely carried out the explosion at a U.S. base near Mosul, spraying a crowded mess tent with small pellets and killing 22 people, nearly all of them Americans.

The announcement raised questions about how the attacker infiltrated the base, which is surrounded by blast walls and barbed wire and guarded by U.S. troops. However, as in many other U.S. military facilities, Iraqis do a variety of jobs at the base, including cleaning, cooking, construction and office duties.

The apparent sophistication of Tuesday’s operation — the deadliest single attack on U.S. troops since the war began — indicated that the attacker probably had inside knowledge of the base’s layout and the soldiers’ schedule. The blast came at lunchtime.

“We have had a suicide bomber apparently strap something to his body ... and go into a dining hall,” Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday at the Pentagon. “We know how difficult this is to prevent people bent on suicide and stopping them.”

Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, commander of the multinational force in Iraq, ordered an investigation. Troops found “no physical evidence of a rocket, mortar, or other type of indirect fire weapon,” according to a statement issued Thursday morning by military authorities in Baghdad.

Read the rest of this story at MSNBC

GOP leaders join chorus of Rumsfeld detractors

By Stephen J. Hedges Washington Bureau Published December 18, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is accustomed to the barbs of public life. Any number of people, for the most part Democrats, have been complaining about him since 1969, when he joined the Nixon administration.

But a different roster of A-list critics is now finding fault with Rumsfeld's management of the military and the war in Iraq. And the sharpest jabs are coming from noteworthy Republicans, including Sens. John McCain of Arizona; Trent Lott, the former Senate majority leader from Mississippi, and Susan Collins, the Maine senator who just helped shepherd intelligence reform through Congress.

McCain said he has lost confidence in Rumsfeld, Lott said he should quit sometime in the next year and Collins wrote him a letter asking him about armor on vehicles in Iraq, or the lack of it.

Outside government, William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, called for Rumsfeld to resign, writing that the soldiers "deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have."

He was joined by Thomas Donnelly, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, who called Rumsfeld "an arrogant and isolated Beltway bigwig."

Taken together, Rumsfeld's critics are voicing pent-up frustrations over the conduct and cost of the war in Iraq, its effect on an overtaxed military, and a series of Pentagon scandals and investigations that include the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, the use of prewar intelligence and ties to an Iraqi opposition group, and federal convictions linked to a no-bid contract for Air Force tanker planes.

`Days are numbered'

"This is a trend," said analyst Loren Thompson, president of the Lexington Institute, a Washington-area defense think tank. "What's happening now is that, with the problems in Iraq appearing not to improve, all the reservations about Rumsfeld are becoming more acceptable to voice in public. It is so rare for senior senators from the secretary's own party to say they have no confidence in him. The fact of the matter is, his days are numbered now."

Not so, says the White House. President Bush's aides have been buffeted for more than a week with questions about Rumsfeld's comments and his future in the Cabinet, and at every turn they've offered assurances that Rumsfeld is staying.

"The president believes Secretary Rumsfeld is someone who is an important member of our team and someone who is helping us to move forward as we defeat the ideology of hatred that leads to terrorism," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday.

Rumsfeld spokesman Bryan Whitman said, "There are comments from [Capitol] Hill criticizing him and comments supporting him. The secretary has nothing new to say about this."

The impetus for the calls for Rumsfeld's resignation was the secretary's Dec. 8 meeting with troops in Kuwait, and his answer to a soldier's complaint about the lack of armored vehicles for duty in Iraq.

Rumsfeld bluntly replied: "You go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

The soldier's unit went safely into Iraq, the Army said later, with the final installation of armor on its vehicles completed within 24 hours of the complaint. Rumsfeld, on the other hand, returned to a free-fire zone in Washington, where his comments became a touchstone for the ill will that has been building in both parties.

Some of the frustration within the GOP is motivated by complaints that members of Congress hear from constituents whose sons and daughters are driving in unarmored Humvees, or whose spouses have been held over in Iraq or are returning there for a second tour. For National Guard members, that means leaving behind careers and families and household finances.

Few answers

Others are angry over lending support to the war based on the promising postconflict scenarios that Rumsfeld and his aides predicted. Now those same politicians need answers that will satisfy voters. And good answers are hard to find.

"While Bush doesn't have to run again, these guys have to in 2006," said Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "I think that Rumsfeld, and that infamous meeting [in Kuwait], became a metaphor for the American people about what's going wrong there."

If so, that would help explain the visceral reaction that Rumsfeld's performance drew from Senate GOP leaders. Rumsfeld, despite his years of Washington experience and his service in the House during the 1960s, has not fared well on the Hill during the last four years. The reason, staff members say, is simple: Rumsfeld, a natural glad-hander, hasn't worked hard enough to satisfy those who would be his allies, or to disarm those who were his known enemies.

With elections in Iraq scheduled for Jan. 30, few would expect a change at the top of the Pentagon before then. How those elections are conducted, and whether they push Iraq's nascent government forward and help reduce the daily cycle of violence, could influence Rumsfeld's prospects.

But odds that the vote will go well are not good. U.S. military commanders in Iraq have predicted increased violence as the election approaches.

"Right after the election Rumsfeld will probably resign," Korb predicted. "He'll say, `I've done my job, I've seen the election through, produced a new defense budget.' Whatever else people may think about Bush, he's a good politician. ... He knows that if he forces Rumsfeld out, it's an admission that the war was wrong."

Though a politician at heart, Rumsfeld was kept out of the 2004 presidential campaign, with Bush advisers recognizing how difficult the war issue might be on the campaign trail. During the next month, after time off for the holidays, the installation of a new Congress with bigger Republican majorities in both houses and Bush's second inauguration on Jan. 20, the boiling anger over Rumsfeld could be reduced to a simmer.

But calls for his resignation could just as easily pick up again in late January, as the new Congress takes up defense spending issues and the Senate Armed Services Committee convenes hearings to examine the Pentagon's prewar planning.

"There's no question that Rumsfeld is a man of courage and conviction," said analyst Thompson. "But the problem is he will stick with a position long after the rest of the world has concluded it's wrong. If you're going to be a man of conviction, you're going to have to live with the verdict of the marketplace."

Torture Begins at the Top

A recently disclosed FBI memo indicates that "marching orders" to abandon traditional interrogation methods came from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld himself.

By Joe Conason Salon.com Friday 17 December 2004

Renewed exposure of prisoner abuse, torture and even murder by American military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan is widening already deep divisions between the Pentagon and the intelligence community - and creating an untenable situation for Donald Rumsfeld, the beleaguered secretary of defense. A recently disclosed FBI memo indicates that "marching orders" to abandon traditional interrogation methods came from the defense secretary himself.

In recent days, a coalition of human rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights has brought new cases of abuse to public attention. Using the Freedom of Information Act, they have pried thousands of pages of previously secret documents from the Defense Department and other agencies.

Even after the shock of Abu Ghraib, these substantiated stories of cruelty, sadism and lawlessness are stunning. Files from the Navy's Criminal Investigative Service describe how U.S. Marines ordered four Iraqi teenagers to kneel while a gun was "discharged to conduct a mock execution"; how they inflicted severe burns on a detainee's hands with flaming alcohol; and how they tortured another detainee with an electric transformer, making him "dance." In June, a Navy investigator revealed in an e-mail that his caseload of "high visibility" cases of abuse was "exploding." As a result of such offenses, at least two Marines were convicted and sent to prison.

If justice has been done in a few cases, the ACLU documents show that abuses were more common - and more extreme - than the Bush administration had previously conceded. More important, however, the documents show that the impetus for abuse came from above, not below. The use of coercive and violent methods spread from Guantánamo Bay, where alleged Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners are incarcerated, to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The documents also show that officers from the CIA, the FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency lodged "heated" objections to the abusive methods of interrogation used by the military, denouncing them in previously secret memoranda as not only unethical but useless and destructive.

In the files released by the government, FBI officials with special expertise in counterterrorism and interrogation techniques recorded their ongoing debate with Army officers about the harsh, coercive techniques authorized by the Pentagon. They were as concerned about the efficacy of those methods - which they believe often produce poor intelligence - as with possible violations of law and regulations. But the commanders overseeing the military interrogations simply dismissed the sharp warnings of the law enforcement and intelligence officers.

The abuses continued, in some cases even after the initial furor over Abu Ghraib. What's more, an internal FBI memo indicates that the directive to discard traditional restraints came from the very highest civilian official in the Pentagon: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

That revealing memo is dated May 10, 2004, a time when the Abu Ghraib revelations were humiliating the United States before the entire world. An e-mail, it is addressed to FBI counterterrorism officer Thomas J. Harrington from an agent whose name is redacted (along with much else), and its subject is captioned "Instructions to GTMO [Guantánamo] Interrogators." The memo's obvious purpose is to set down, for the record, the FBI's opposition to the Pentagon's use of coercive and abusive methods when questioning the Guantánamo detainees. It describes the FBI's fundamental disagreement over interrogation tactics with Gen. Geoffrey Miller and Gen. Michael Dunlavey, then the military commanders at Guantánamo Bay.

"I will have to do some digging into old files," the unnamed author begins. "We did advise each supervisor that went to GTMO to stay in line with Bureau policy and not deviate from that ... I went to GTMO ... We had also met with Generals Dunlevy & Miller explaining our position (Law Enforcement Techniques) vs. DoD [Department of Defense]. Both agreed the Bureau has their way of doing business and DoD has their marching orders from the SecDef [Secretary of Defense]. Although the two techniques [of interrogation] differed drastically, both Generals believed they had a job to accomplish."

The e-mail goes on to recall how, during the questioning of one prisoner, the Pentagon interrogators wanted to "pursue expeditiously their methods" to "get more out of him ... We were given a so-called deadline to use our traditional methods."

Scott Horton, a New York lawyer and president of the International League for Human Rights, has spent months investigating the role Bush administration officials played in the torture scandal. He says there is mounting evidence - including the May 10 FBI e-mail - that strongly suggests that Rumsfeld and his top intelligence aides were directly responsible for the wholesale abandonment of legal and ethical norms as well as international treaty obligations. Now that Republican senators and neoconservative ideologues are publicly turning their backs on the defense secretary, perhaps even he may someday be held accountable for this disgraceful stain on the honor of the U.S. armed forces.

A Flood of Troubled Soldiers Is in the Offing, Experts Predict

By Scott Shane The New York Times Thursday 16 December 2004

WASHINGTON - The nation's hard-pressed health care system for veterans is facing a potential deluge of tens of thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq with serious mental health problems brought on by the stress and carnage of war, veterans' advocates and military doctors say.

An Army study shows that about one in six soldiers in Iraq report symptoms of major depression, serious anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, a proportion that some experts believe could eventually climb to one in three, the rate ultimately found in Vietnam veterans. Because about one million American troops have served so far in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Pentagon figures, some experts predict that the number eventually requiring mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.

"There's a train coming that's packed with people who are going to need help for the next 35 years," said Stephen L. Robinson, a 20-year Army veteran who is now the executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, an advocacy group. Mr. Robinson wrote a report in September on the psychological toll of the war for the Center for American Progress, a Washington research group.

"I have a very strong sense that the mental health consequences are going to be the medical story of this war," said Dr. Stephen C. Joseph, who served as the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs from 1994 to 1997.

What was planned as a short and decisive intervention in Iraq has become a grueling counterinsurgency that has put American troops into sustained close-quarters combat on a scale not seen since the Vietnam War. Psychiatrists say the kind of fighting seen in the recent retaking of Falluja - spooky urban settings with unlimited hiding places; the impossibility of telling Iraqi friend from Iraqi foe; the knowledge that every stretch of road may conceal an explosive device - is tailored to produce the adrenaline-gone-haywire reactions that leave lasting emotional scars.

And in no recent conflict have so many soldiers faced such uncertainty about how long they will be deployed. Veterans say the repeated extensions of duty in Iraq are emotionally battering, even for the most stoical of warriors.

Military and Department of Veterans Affairs officials say most military personnel will survive the war without serious mental issues and note that the one million troops include many who have not participated in ground combat, including sailors on ships. By comparison with troops in Vietnam, the officials said, soldiers in Iraq get far more mental health support and are likely to return to a more understanding public.

But the duration and intensity of the war have doctors at veterans hospitals across the country worried about the coming caseload.

"We're seeing an increasing number of guys with classic post-traumatic stress symptoms," said Dr. Evan Kanter, a psychiatrist at the Puget Sound veterans hospital in Seattle. "We're all anxiously waiting for a flood that we expect is coming. And I feel stretched right now."

A September report by the Government Accountability Office found that officials at six of seven Veterans Affairs medical facilities surveyed said they "may not be able to meet" increased demand for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Officers who served in Iraq say the unrelenting tension of the counterinsurgency will produce that demand.

Read the rest of this story by clicking here...

War funding request may hit $100 billion

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | December 15, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration plans to ask for between $80 billion and $100 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, rather than the $70 billion to $75 billion the White House privately told members of Congress before the election, according to Pentagon and White House officials.

Administration officials said yesterday they have not concluded how much money they will request in a "supplemental" spending package that is scheduled to go to Congress in January.

"There's work going on inside the department to understand what's needed, and there's work going on with the Office of Management and Budget," the Defense Department's chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, told reporters yesterday.

But some analysts and government officials said the request is expected to run as high as $100 billion, bringing the total cost of operations in Iraq alone to well over $200 billion since the March 2003 invasion.

Earlier this fall, members of Congress said the Defense Department told them in private briefings the supplemental package would be between $70 billion and $75 billion. The budget request will be higher, sources said, because of the greater number of soldiers -- temporarily boosted to 150,000 -- needed to provide security around the time of the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections, and the loss of equipment due to the vigorous insurgency there.

Read the rest of this story by clicking here...

`Scrounging' for Iraq war puts GIs in jail...

Reservists court-martialed for theft; they say they did what they had to do
By Aamer Madhani Tribune staff reporter Published December 12, 2004

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Six reservists, including two veteran officers who had received Bronze Stars, were court-martialed for what soldiers have been doing as long as there have been wars--scrounging to get what their outfit needed to do its job in Iraq.

Darrell Birt, one of those court-martialed for theft, destruction of Army property and conspiracy to cover up the crimes, had been decorated for his "initiative and courage" for leading his unit's delivery of fuel over the perilous roads of Iraq in the war's first months.

Now, Birt, 45, who was a chief warrant officer with 656th Transportation Company, based in Springfield, Ohio, and his commanding officer find themselves felons, dishonorably discharged and stripped of all military benefits.

The 656th played a crucial role in maintaining the gasoline supply that fueled everything from Black Hawk helicopters to Bradley Fighting Vehicles between Balad Airfield and Tikrit. The reservists in the company proudly boast that their fuel was in the vehicles driven by the 4th Infantry Division soldiers who found Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole last year.

But when Birt's unit was ordered to head into Iraq in the heat of battle in April 2003 from its base in Kuwait, Birt said the company didn't have enough vehicles to haul the equipment it would need to do the job.

So, Birt explained, he and other reservists grabbed two tractors and two trailers left in Kuwait by other U.S. units that had already moved into Iraq.

Several weeks later, Birt and other reservists scrounged a third vehicle, an abandoned 5-ton cargo truck, and stripped it for parts they needed for repair of their trucks.

"We could have gone with what we had, but we would not have been able to complete our mission," said Birt, who was released from the brig on Oct. 17 and is petitioning for clemency in hope that he can return to the reserves.

"I admit that what we did was technically against the rules, but it wasn't for our own personal gain. It was so we could do our jobs."

The thefts mirror countless stories of shifty appropriation that has been memorialized in books and films as a wartime skill. Birt and other reservists in the unit said that what the prosecutors called theft was simply resourcefulness, a quality they say is abundant among soldiers in Iraq.

Read the rest of this story at the Chicago Tribune by clicking here...

U.S. soldiers' grilling fields... `Backdoor draft' adding to worries for some troops

More talk heard of desertion, disgruntlement
Tim Harper / Washington Bureau / The Toronto Star /Dec. 11, 2004. 08:23 AM

WASHINGTON—David Qualls reluctantly returned to Iraq yesterday, but not before he made a louder statement about the state of U.S. troop morale than any of the pointed questions from soldiers to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld this week.

Qualls, an army specialist from Morrilton, Ark., and seven other soldiers who have remained nameless, have sued the Pentagon, claiming they are improperly being kept in Iraq beyond their agreed tour of duty.

It is a burgeoning problem for Rumsfeld and the Bush administration because more and more soldiers in Iraq are questioning the rationale for their mission, the way in which they have been equipped and how long they've been deployed.

In so doing, they are shining new light on the price being paid for what is widely seen as inadequate war planning and piecemeal responses as U.S. troops battle an insurgency better armed and more determined than any scenario drawn up.

As the U.S. death toll in Iraq tops 1,270 and the looming Christmas season only magnifies the frustration of families at home, stories of desertions and disgruntled troops began dominating the airwaves.

There was the now-famous grilling of Rumsfeld by troops stationed in Kuwait, who challenged him on a lack of armoured vehicles, lengthened deployments, antiquated equipment and unpaid benefits.

.... get the whole story by clicking here

The news for those who have come home is equally bleak.

The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans reported this week that Iraqi war veterans are beginning to show up at shelters in California, raising fears of a repeat of the generation of homeless Vietnam vets.

And another study released in the New England Journal of Medicine this week showed medical advances have saved the lives of many soldiers in Iraq who would have died in previous wars. However, many of the 10,300 soldiers wounded so far are attempting to re-integrate into their country with much more horrific and debilitating injuries than veterans of any other previous war.

Meanwhile, the death toll mounts. Death dropped in this reporter's in-box three times during the writing of this story.

'Hillbilly Armor'

Defense sees it's fallen short in securing the troops. The grunts already knew.
By Michael Hirsh, John Barry and Babak Dehghanpisheh
Newsweek International

Dec. 20 issue - Predators know to hunt the weakest animal in the herd. So do the Iraqi insurgents. It is an essential truth about the Iraq war that's ingrained in soldiers like Pvt. Daniel Rocco, a Humvee gunner with the Second Battalion of the 82nd Field Artillery Regiment. Rocco's unit is an artillery regiment trained for conventional warfare, not escorting convoys. But the "Steel Dragons" of the Second now spend most of their days protecting the weak: VIP visitors and 18-wheel trucks loaded with food or other supplies on the road to Baghdad. In the process Rocco's unit gets hit regularly with small-arms fire, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and even suicide car bombs. He displays reddish pockmarks and scar tissue up his right arm, the effects of an IED from last May. "I really can't close my right hand," he says. And Rocco's Humvee is, today, equipped—with "Gypsy racks"—steel-plated cages around the gunner—and other add-on, improvised hardware, known as "hillbilly armor." "It's Mel Gibson 'Road Warrior' stuff," says Capt. John Pinter, the battalion's maintenance officer. "We're not shooting for pretty over here."

This is the ugly reality that National Guard Spc. Thomas Wilson was apparently trying to convey to Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait last week. There is no front line in Iraq. Or, to be more precise, the front line is wherever the insurgents decide it is. And very often they decide it should be trucks and unarmored Humvees at the back of supply lines—what used to be known, in other wars, as the rear area. Because the insurgents present a 360-degree threat, the most vulnerable units are often the ones the Army pays the least attention to: poorly equipped National Guardsmen or reservists in supply and transport companies. During a Q&A while the Defense secretary was stopping off in Kuwait, Wilson asked Rumsfeld: "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?"

Rumsfeld's initial response was testy. "You go to war with the army you have," he barked. Wilson's question, it turned out, had been planted by a reporter embedded with Wilson's 278th Regimental Combat Team, which was about to head into Iraq in a long convoy of unarmored vehicles. But Wilson's brave words brought applause and shouts of approval from the other 2,300 soldiers in the hangar at a base in Kuwait.

His question is still resonating. Many critics on both sides of the political aisle are asking whether the Pentagon is adjusting well to the insurgents' tactics. Is Rumsfeld, in other words, fixing vulnerabilities as quickly as the Iraqi insurgents spot them? President Bush reassured Americans last week that "we're doing everything we possibly can to protect your loved ones in a mission which is vital and important." But as the death toll climbs to nearly 1,300, some soldiers and defense-industry officials insist that much more could be done. 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. (The Pentagon claims it did not know about the additional capacity until the head of O'Gara's holding company, Armor Holdings of Jacksonville, Fla., announced last week that it was possible.) The new Pentagon order boosts production from 450 to 550 up-armored Humvees a month, neatly filling in O'Gara's capacity gap.

Read the rest of this story by clicking here

Oregon Guard chaplain retires

SALEM (AP) — Col. Richard Meyers, a longtime chaplain of the Oregon National Guard, has retired after his two most difficult years of duty.

Meyers was supposed to retire when he turned 60, but after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and other issues facing the Guard, his mandated retirement was extended two years.

"It has been the difference between childhood and adulthood," he told the Statesman Journal newspaper. "We were putting out forest fires and responding to floods. Now, there is a level of seriousness that changed this place. Where there used to be humor there isn't anymore."

Constant deployments of soldiers, care for their family members back home and the usual business of the National Guard have transformed the job from "one weekend a month, two-weeks a year," to a round-the-clock vigil for Meyers.

His toughest duty, one he has performed several times in the past year, is to be there when National Guard families learn that their soldier won't be coming home. Nine Oregon National Guard soldiers have died while serving in Iraq.

"You get through the first one reluctantly," he said. "And then a certain level of depression goes along with it."

The home notifications are obviously difficult for everyone involved.

"Most know instantly when they see us, and their reactions are varied," he said. "They are very upset, and angry, but they respect their son's or daughter's choice to be where they were."

Read the rest of thisGazzette-Times story by clicking here...

Armor Scarce for Big Trucks Transporting Cargo in Iraq

December 10, 2004
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT

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.

Read the rest of this story by clicking here....

1 million U.S. troops have gone to war

By Mark Benjamin
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Washington, DC, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Nearly a million U.S. troops have been deployed for war in Iraq or Afghanistan since those conflicts began, according to Pentagon data.

The data also show that one out of every three of those service members has gone more than once.

The Pentagon confirmed to United Press International Wednesday that a cumulative total of 955,000 troops from all military services had been deployed for Operation Iraqi or Enduring Freedom by the end of September. More than 300,000 of those troops have been deployed more than once, the Pentagon said.

One government source said the total number of troops deployed has likely hit 1 million since then.

The Pentagon data shows that 708,000 of the troops who have served in war come from the active duty force. That means that roughly half of the United States' 1.4 million active duty troops have gone to war. Slightly more than 245,000 troops from reserve and National Guard units have also been deployed.

Military experts said the new data show the American military is being stretched to its limits -- or beyond. "It shows that we are short of troops. I don't think there is any question about that," retired Marine Corps three-star general Bernard E. Trainor told UPI. "Nobody, or almost nobody, anticipated specifically how this thing was going to turn out."

Trainor said he believed the military has not struggled with these kinds of numbers since Vietnam. "The military is stretched entirely too thin," Trainor said.

The war in Iraq is less than two years old. There are 140,000 troops in Iraq now and 16,000 in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon.

Speaking to troops in Kuwait this week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld got an earful of complaints about aging equipment, a lack of armored vehicles and soldiers who say they are being kept on active duty beyond what they were told.

Trainor told UPI that when soldiers take the unusual step of bucking their leadership in public it is a sign of trouble. "It is a danger signal that there is eroding support in the ranks for the civilian leadership," Trainor said.

One soldier in Kuwait asked Rumsfeld if the stress on the armed forces might weaken the country's ability to fight back against another terror attack. Rumsfeld responded that the country has "well over 2.5 million people we can call on at any given time. So you can be sure that we have the capability we need."

"There are elements of the force, however, that have been stressed and we read a lot about that and we hear a lot about that on television and it is a fact," Rumsfeld said. But he added that is "not because we have too few total forces, it's because we have not had the right balance between the active and reserve."

A Pentagon spokesman could not provide a breakdown of where the 955,000 troops have been deployed.

The data details the number of active duty and guard and reserve troops from the different services who have been deployed:

- Active duty Army: 280,000
- Army National Guard: 90,000
- Army reserve: 65,000
- Coast Guard: 1,500
- Coast Guard reserve: 200
- Air National Guard: 41,000
- Air Force 151,000
- Air reserve: 23,000
- Active duty Marines: 99,000
- Marine reserve 15,000
- Active duty Navy: 177,000
- Navy reserve: 11,000.

Iraq Without a Plan

By Michael E. O’Hanlon
Michael E. O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution specializing in military issues.

The post-invasion phase of the Iraq mission has been the least well-planned American military mission since Somalia in 1993, if not Lebanon in 1983, and its consequences for the nation have been far worse than any set of military mistakes since Vietnam. The U.S. armed forces simply were not prepared for the core task that the United States needed to perform when it destroyed Iraq’s existing government — to provide security, always the first responsibility of any sovereign government or occupier.

The standard explanation for this lack of preparedness among most defense and foreign policy specialists, and the U.S. military as well, is that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and much of the rest of the Bush administration insisted on fighting the war with too few troops and too Polyannaish a view of what would happen inside Iraq once Saddam was overthrown. This explanation is largely right. Taken to an extreme, however, it is dangerously wrong. It blames the mistakes of one civilian leader of the Department of Defense, and one particular administration, for a debacle that was foreseeable and indeed foreseen by most experts in the field. Under these circumstances, planners and high-ranking officers of the U.S. armed forces were not fulfilling their responsibilities to the Constitution or their own brave fighting men and women by quietly and subserviently deferring to the civilian leadership. Congress might have been expected to do more as well, but in fact it did a considerable amount of work to highlight the issue of post-invasion planning — and in any case, it was not well positioned to critique or improve or even know the intricacies of war plans. On this issue, the country’s primary hope for an effective system of checks and balances on the mistakes of executive branch officials was the U.S. armed forces.

The broad argument of this essay is that the tragedy of Iraq — that one of the most brilliant invasion successes in modern military history was followed almost immediately by one of the most incompetently planned occupations — holds a critical lesson for civil-military relations in the United States. The country’s Constitution makes the president commander in chief and requires military leaders to follow his orders. It does not, however, require them to remain mute when poor plans are being prepared. Nor does it require them to remain in uniform when they are asked to undertake actions they know to be unwise or ill-planned.

Click here for the rest of this essay...

Published on Wednesday, December 8, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
An Open Letter to George Bush
by Ralph Nader

December 8, 2004
President George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Bush:

On June 30, 2004, I wrote you an open letter urging that your Administration include, in the U.S. casualty toll, in Iraq: (1) injuries in non-combat situations; (2) personnel who have come down with disabling diseases; and (3) cases of mental trauma requiring evacuation from Iraq. You did not respond, nor did Senator John Kerry, who received a copy of the letter.

I should have added three additional categories which are also not part of the official casualty count - - (4) fatalities that occur after U.S. military personnel are brought stateside; (5) soldiers committing suicide in Iraq; and (6) injuries and fatalities incurred by corporate contractors operating in the Iraqi war theatre.

On November 21, 2004, CBS' 60 Minutes led its program with a segment on the subject of uncounted "non-combat" casualties. They interviewed badly injured soldiers who were upset by their being excluded from the official count, even though they were, in one soldier's words, "in hostile territory." The Pentagon declined to be interviewed, instead sending a letter that contained information not included in published casualty reports. "More than 15,000 troops with so-called 'non-battle' injuries and diseases have been evacuated from Iraq," wrote the Department of Defense. John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org told 60 Minutes that this uncounted casualty figure "would have to be somewhere in the ballpark of over 20, maybe 30,000".

What's your problem here? The American people need to know the full casualty toll of U.S. personnel in Iraq and know it regularly and in a timely fashion. Not to do so is disrespectful, especially of the military families, but none more so than of the soldiers themselves. As a severely wounded Chris Schneider told CBS: "Every one of us went over there with the knowledge that we could die. And then they tell you - - you're wounded - - or your sacrifice doesn't deserve to be recognized or we don't deserve to be on their list - - it's not right. It's almost disgraceful."

Soldiers like Chris Schneider, Joel Gomez and Graham Alstrom want to know whether you are going to continue to stonewall their desire for official respect. What shall we tell them and others who seek that simple, decent official recognition? Please do not think that because you are a chronic non-responder to critical questions, you will be able to delay this growing demand indefinitely. Your hit and run photo opportunities with the troops just doesn't cut the mustard. Stand up and face it. It is the right thing to do by them.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

Double Standard

Political Lunacy Carl Luna's observations on California politics

Just a passing thought. Back in 1993, following the infamous “Blackhawk Down “ disaster in Somalia, Clinton’s Secretary of Defense Les Aspin resigned amidst allegations that he had failed to provide the troops in Somalia with the armored support they needed to do their mission. House and Senate Republicans, including several who hold majority leadership positions today, were in the forefront calling for Aspin’s ouster.

Why then aren’t these same voices calling for the resignation of Donald “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” Rumsfeld? Aspin’s Somalian botch resulted in the deaths of 18 US servicemen and the wounding of 75. Rumsfeld’s apparent failure to insure proper armor protection for US troops has already, to date, resulted in more lives lost or maimed than happened in Somalia.

Meanwhile Rumsfeld’s off the cuff musings that, "If you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up,” has to rank as one of the great non-sequiturs of any modern Defense Secretary. Does this mean you might as well go into combat naked, painted blue with beards tarred like the Celtic warriors of old? I thought the goal was to produce tanks that blew up the other side before they blew up you and armored vehicles that kept soldiers from dying at the hands of low-grade homemade bombs?

Rumsfeld’s job is to make sure the troops go into combat with everything they need to minimize loses. That he should have done so and hasn’t is indicative of incompetence, if not outright criminal negligence. That he makes light of it by essentially telling the troops “Life’s not fair – tough cookies—borders on reckless endangerment.

For Republican members of Congress not to call for his head, they way they did with Democrat Les Aspin a decade ago, is partisan hypocrisy of the most brazen and dangerous kind.

Support the Troops-- Dump Rumsfeld!

Humvee Makers Dispute Rumsfeld

By GEORGE EDMONSON COX NEWS SERVICE Friday, December 10, 2004

More armored vehicles could readily be built, two companies say

WASHINGTON -- The manufacturer of Humvees for the U.S. military and the company that adds armor to the utility vehicles are not running near production capacity and are making all that the Pentagon has requested, spokesmen for both companies said.

"If they call and say, 'You know, we really want more,' we'll get it done," said Lee Woodward, a spokesman for AM General, the Indiana company that makes Humvees and the civilian Hummer versions.

At O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, the Ohio firm that turns specially designed Humvees into fully armored vehicles at a cost of about $70,000 each, spokesman Michael Fox said they, too, can provide more if the government wants them.

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., said yesterday that the companies could increase production of armored Humvees from 450 a month to 550 by February.

Blaming the shortage on a lack of production capacity, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did Wednesday, is "just not true," said Bayh. He said he had told the Pentagon as early as April that more armored Humvees could be built.

Read the rest of the story: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/203200_armor10.html

For the first time in a generation, there is a growing possibility for a draft - find out the facts...

Get the Straight Story about the Draft - Alliance for Security
Numerous myths and conjectures have been floating around over the internet and airwaves regarding the possibility of a draft. While there are plenty of reasons to be talking about a draft, let’s make sure the debate is based on credible information.

Read the rest of this at http://www.allianceforsecurity.org/draft

Will Bush Reinstate The Draft?

By Carl F. Worden

The president said, "There's no question we have a security issue in Iraq, and we've just got to deal with it person to person."

Let me see: There are more than 5,000,000, mostly hostile Iraqis living in Baghdad alone, and we've got what, 150,000 soldiers on the ground in the entire country? That's 33 heavily armed Iraqis to 1 American in Baghdad alone, so If "we" deal with it person to person, we're going to lose this war for sure!

No, Mr. President, "we" won't be dealing with any such thing. Our young kids in the military, who thought they could trust you, and who thought you knew what you were doing and that you were telling the truth about Iraq's imminent threat to the United States, are the ones having to deal with it person to person. There is no "we" Mr. President. They are dealing with it by getting killed on the average of one per day, and more than that will be coming home with horrifying wounds and life-long disabilities. I have often felt the lucky ones die.

http://www.sierratimes.com/03/07/14/carlworden.htm

Charges of Poor Planning in Iraq Revived

By PAULINE JELINEK Associated Press Writer December 10, 2004, 10:54 AM EST

WASHINGTON -- Critics of the war in Iraq seized on charges that U.S. troops there don't have enough armored vehicles as another example of poor planning by the Pentagon.President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld tried Thursday to tamp down the firestorm, which was ignited a day earlier when an Iraq-bound soldier publicly complained to Rumsfeld that the Army wasn't properly armoring vehicles for the campaign.

Traveling in India, Rumsfeld said he expects the Army to do its best to resolve the problem. In Washington, Bush said the soldier's concerns "are being addressed and that is -- we expect our troops to have the best possible equipment."Close to three-quarters of the Humvees in the Iraq war theater now have upgraded armor protection, but many larger trucks and tractor-trailer rigs do not, according to congressional figures.

Military officials said armoring Humvees has been the top priority because they are used to patrol areas where attacks are likely. The heavy haulers, meanwhile, usually travel convoy routes that are more frequently swept for guerillas and bombs.Critics questioned why the Pentagon has been unable to send enough armored equipment 21 months into the war.

They said war planners had too rosy a picture of how the campaign would unfold and so didn't think so many troops and so much armor would be needed for so long."

This is about faulty analysis and a failed strategy," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat who sits on the House Armed Services Committee. "We've never had enough troops on the ground since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government to deal with the insurgency because we didn't expect one."Loren Thompson, a defense industry analyst with the Lexington Institute think tank, agreed."We have pretty much miscalculated every step along the way -- why we went, how we should do it, what we needed, what support we would have, how long it would last -- we pretty much got it all wrong," he said.

The war was meant to be fought at rapid speed by a limited-size force with international help to disarm Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction.

Instead, no weapons were found, the international community largely refused to participate and officials have been forced to increase the size of the force there, now going up to 150,000 troops.

The rest of this story... read it online by clicking here.........

Stop Loss "Back Door Draft" Challenges

San Francisco Law Firm Sues Rumsfeld

The office represents two decorated combat veterans serving in the Army Reserve in the first challenges to the Army’s current “stop loss” program, under which the reservists have been barred from leaving the military at the end of their enlistment terms and ordered to serve on active duty in Iraq. The reservists are identified as “John Doe” for reasons of privacy.

Under the stop loss program, the Army has prevented tens of thousands of soldiers from retiring or leaving the military upon completing their enlistment terms so that they may be deployed to or kept in Iraq. The petitions assert that the program is arbitrary, unfair, unauthorized by law, and in breach of the soldiers' standard enlistment contract. The stop loss program has been widely criticized as a “backdoor draft.”

Doe v. Rumsfeld (E.D. Cal.) http://www.sorgen.net/id19.htm

Citizen Soldiers... National Guard in Iraq Overview

The National Guard has been much in the news lately, and not just because of the President's Vietnam Era service. On September 14, President Bush addressed the National Guard Conference in Las Vegas. During that address the President suggested that candidate Kerry was undercutting the Guard by arguing that the U.S. was spending too much money in Iraq. Senator Kerry addressed the same group two days later. Kerry has been arguing that it is President Bush who is ignoring the needs of Guard members by threatening to veto an amendment to the $87 billion emergency supplemental appropriations for security and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. The amendment would provide an additional $1.3 billion for improved medical benefits for members of the National Guard and Reserves and veterans or what is known as TRICARE funding. Election-year politics aside, what is certain is that the citizen soldiers of the National Guard are facing unprecedented challenges.
......
The Stop Loss Policy
National Guard and Army Reserve members are also affected by the ongoing Stop Loss Policy, which allows the Pentagon to keep soldiers whose enlistment is due to expire in order to maintain troop strength and unit integrity. The restrictions bar voluntary separations and retirements for soldiers in designated units beginning 90 days before deployment until 90 days after their units return to their home stations. Specifically, "the President may suspend any provision of law relating to promotion, retirement, or separation applicable to any member of the armed forces who the President determines is essential to the national security of the United States." A Stop Loss order for National Guard and Reserve units activated for the war against terrorism has been in effect since November 2002. Army officials announced June 1 the latest Active Army Stop Loss/Stop Movement Program for active Army units preparing for deployment overseas in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom remains in effect.

Read the whole article at http://www.pbs.org/now/society/natguard.html

US forces 'stretched' to breaking point

Thursday, July 8, 2004. 12:13pm (AEST)

US forces have been stretched to the breaking point as a result of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a top Pentagon official has testified before a congressional committee.

General Richard Cody told a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee that recent troop deployments have taken a toll on US readiness to deploy elsewhere, and even to replace troops currently deployed in combating US-led military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Are we stretched thin with our active and reserve component forces right now? Absolutely," General Cody told lawmakers at the hearing on US troop rotations.

"We just did the largest move of the Army since World War II, you can't move 8.5 divisions and 240,000 soldiers without stressing the force," he said adding the military officials "are concerned about it".

Read the rest at http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200407/s1149377.htm

Homeless Iraq vets showing up at shelters

By Mark Benjamin UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Washington, DC, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era.

"When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that."

"I drove off in my truck. I packed my stuff. I lived out of my truck for a while," Seabees Petty Officer Luis Arellano, 34, said in a telephone interview from a homeless shelter near March Air Force Base in California run by U.S.VETS, the largest organization in the country dedicated to helping homeless veterans.

Read the rest of this story http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041207-121848-6449r.htm

U.S. soldiers take complaints to new level

Critics of Iraq war see breakdown of troop morale
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:54 p.m. ET Dec. 10, 2004

WASHINGTON - Soldiers always gripe. But confronting the defense secretary, filing a lawsuit over extended tours and refusing to go on a mission because it’s too dangerous elevate complaining to a new level.

It also could mean a deeper problem for the Pentagon: a lessening of faith in the Iraq mission and in a volunteer army that soldiers can’t leave.

The hubbub over an exchange between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and soldiers in Kuwait has given fresh ammunition to critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.

It also highlighted growing morale and motivation problems in the 21-month-old war that even some administration supporters say must be addressed to get off a slippery slope that could eventually lead to breakdowns reminiscent of the Vietnam War.

Tip of the iceberg?For thousands of years, soldiers have grumbled about everything from their commanders to their equipment to shelter and food. But challenging a defense secretary to his face is rare. So is suing the military to keep from being sent back to a combat zone.

“We are seeing some unprecedented things. The real fear is that these could be tips of a larger iceberg,” said P.J. Crowley, a retired colonel who served as a Pentagon spokesman in both Republican and Democratic administrations and was a White House national security aide in the Clinton administration.

“The real issue is not any one of these things individually. It’s what the broader impact will be on our re-enlistment rates and our retention,” Crowley said.

Several Iraq-bound soldiers confronted Rumsfeld on Wednesday at a base in Kuwait about a lack of armor for their Humvees and other vehicles, about second-hand equipment and about a policy keeping many in Iraq far beyond enlistment contracts. Their pointed questions were cheered by others in the group.

The episode — the questions and Rumsfeld’s testy responses were captured by television cameras and widely reported — did not raise new issues. Complaints about inadequate protection against insurgents’ roadside bombs and forced duty extensions have been sounded for months. But not so vividly.

the rest of the story...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6694376/

U.S. to boost armored Humvee output...Pentagon ups order after soldier’s question causes stir

NBC News
Updated: 5:48 p.m. ET Dec. 10, 2004

The U.S. Army has asked the company that is producing fully armored Humvees to expand the Army’s order to 550 per month, an increase of 100 a month, NBC News learned Friday.

'The move comes on the heels of a highly publicized exchange between a U.S. soldier in Kuwait and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that put the spotlight on the U.S. shortage of armored vehicles in the war with Iraq. It also sparked heated debate about U.S. preparations for the conflict and about the safety and morale of U.S. troops in Iraq.

read more at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6694474/

Lack of armor sign of the times in Iraq

Why hasn’t the country mobilized like it did for WWII?
By Tom Costello, Correspondent, NBC News
Updated: 7:49 p.m. ET Dec. 9, 2004

Sixty years ago, America was engaged in a war of survival: facing enemies in Europe and Asia. With 16 million Americans under arms, the country came together — sacrificing for sons, brothers and fathers fighting half a world away.

'Store shelves were empty as families rationed butter, meat, even gasoline. Meanwhile, the nation's industrial complex churned out war machinery at a rate never seen before.

"Franklin Roosevelt declared America the arsenal of democracy, meaning that if you are going to go to war, in the Pacific and Europe, then you've got to keep your troops armed properly," says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley.

But the war in Iraq is not World War II. Instead of an Army of draftees, today it’s an Army of volunteers and reservists doing the fighting. And they're still showing the ingenuity so characteristic of the American GI — searching through desert junkyards for scraps of metal to bolt onto their Humvees for added protection.

More on this story -http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6689062/

Bush: Soldiers’ equipment gripes heard

To colleagues’ cheers, soldier complained about armor to Rumsfeld
NBC, MSNBC and news services
Updated: 8:15 p.m. ET Dec. 9, 2004

WASHINGTON - Saying U.S. soldiers in Iraq “deserve the best,” President Bush emphasized Thursday that the administration was addressing equipment concerns like the one about armored vehicles raised by a soldier who questioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

'“The concerns expressed are being addressed, and that is we expect our troops to have the best possible equipment,” the president said in response to a reporter’s question at the White House.

“If I were a soldier overseas wanting to defend my country, I’d want to ask the secretary of defense the same question, and that is, ‘Are we getting the best we can get us?’”

U.S. soldiers “deserve the best,” Bush said, adding: “I’ve told many family I’ve met with, ‘We’re doing everything we possibly can to protect your loved ones.’”

Read the rest of this story at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6676765/

Frantically, the Army tries to armor Humvees... Soft-skinned workhorses turning into death traps

By Michael Moran
Senior correspondent
MSNBC
Updated: 4:51 p.m. ET April 15, 2004

The week before he died, Army Pfc. John D. Hart called his parents in Bedford, Mass., from his base in northern Iraq. Amid the joy of hearing familiar voices, the 20-year-old paratrooper told his dad that he felt exposed in the soft-skinned Humvee he and his comrades rode into battle each day.

“The full consequences of what he was telling us was not obvious at the time,” Hart’s father, Brian, said a few weeks after his son’s death. “The concern was genuine and very real.”

When Hart died in a small-arms ambush in mid-October, the Army had no official plan to “retrofit” most of the 12,000-odd Humvees in Iraq. This in spite of continuing attacks on convoys and complaints from combat units that they were taking unnecessary casualties in the thin-skinned Humvees.

There is no official figure on how many of the 728 U.S. combat deaths might have been prevented by better armor. Yet as attacks on convoys escalate, an increasing number of the deaths and injuries are being sustained in vehicles. That, combined with public pressure from bereaved parents like the Harts and their representatives in Congress, pushed the Army into action. In late March, the Army told its commanders to make “hardening” of their Humvees a priority.

Read the rest of this story... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4731185/

Overextended...We have too few soldiers doing too many things.

By Andrew J. Bacevich Wall Street Journal December 10, 2004 Pg. 14

When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently told American troops that "You go to war with the Army you have... not the Army you might want or wish to have," he got it exactly wrong. When an administration chooses war, its primary obligation is to provide forces adequate to the task. This administration has failed to meet that obligation.

A fundamental contradiction lies at the heart of President Bush's approach to addressing the threat posed by violent radical Islam. The essential problem -- vividly on display in Iraq -- is the classic one of a mismatch between means and ends. Although the United States possesses easily the world's best-equipped and most competent armed forces, its existing military capabilities are insufficient to implement the strategy to which the president committed the nation after 9/11.

In response to that awful day, Mr. Bush embarked upon a "global war on terror." From the outset, both the president and his key aides made clear their expectation that this war was not likely to end any time soon. They depicted it as an immense enterprise, to be conducted over a period of many years, if not decades -- perhaps even generations.

The essence of the administration's existing plan to win that war is this: Through the application of overwhelming and irresistible armed might, to assert for the U.S. a position of unquestioned dominance, thereby enabling it over time to eliminate the conditions breeding violent Islamic radicalism in the first place. Hard power skillfully employed (or threatened), supplemented by patient exertions aimed at dragging the dysfunctional nations of the Greater Middle East into modernity, will transform the entire region. Once transformed, the region will be at peace and will no longer pose a danger to our own security.

From the outset, some critics (I include myself in this camp) viewed this strategy as fundamentally flawed, informed as much by ideological flights of fancy as by sober analysis. In Iraq, these critics see their worst fears becoming reality. There, the transformation project has stalled. What was intended to be a brief, decisive incursion -- a demonstration project revealing the shape of things to come -- has become a debilitating stalemate.

With the election of 2004 now history, the time is ripe for President Bush to reassess his initial strategy and to chart a new course. During the Civil War, President Lincoln did precisely this when events in the field dashed expectations that one quick victory might restore the Union. So too did President Truman during the Korean War when the Chinese intervention confronted him with a radically different conflict. In the midst of crisis, entertaining first-order questions demands courage, but great statesmen dare not flinch from the requirement.

But even if such a reassessment leaves the president convinced that his initial conception of an open-ended global war remains sound, he can ill-afford to ignore the mounting evidence that we currently lack the wherewithal to accomplish all that he (and his successors) will be obliged to do if they intend to "win."

If it is indeed a global war that Mr. Bush intends to wage, then that war is certain to require far more boots on the ground than existing U.S. forces can muster. Iraq has amply exposed the limits of "shock and awe." Even today, in what is surely still the preliminary stages of its contest to overcome the Islamist threat, the United States has too few soldiers doing too many things. The prospect of the armed services being called upon to take on even heavier burdens tomorrow is a real one.

To state the matter plainly: We are overextended.

The choice facing President Bush is a stark one. Either he must modify his strategy to conform to the resources at hand, a process that ought to begin with questioning whether waging "global war" promises a solution to the problems brought home by 9/11. This implies looking to something besides force to achieve our aims.

Or the president must use the mandate recently won at the polls to expand the U.S. military. No doubt increasing the size of the armed forces implies exacting sacrifices of the American people. But there is no waging a global war without first mobilizing the nation. Although attaching yellow-ribbon decals to the back end of our SUVs makes for a nice gesture, those actually fighting this war would benefit more from a multi-division increase in the size of the U.S. Army.

Reconciling strategic ends and means is today the paramount issue facing the United States. Prior to Nov. 2, political calculations might have suggested the desirability of postponing a decision. But those considerations no longer pertain. If in winning a second term the president accrued political capital, here is where he ought to expend it. Three years into Mr. Bush's global war on terror, the time for dithering is long past. It's time to choose.

Mr. Bacevich, a retired Army colonel, is a professor of international relations at Boston University and the author of "The New American Militarism," forthcoming from Oxford.

Truth be told, lies are part of Pentagon strategy

Joseph Galloway, Knight Ridder
8 December 2004

WASHINGTON - "The first casualty when war comes is truth." So said Sen. Hiram Johnson, a California Republican, in the year 1917.There is a struggle inside the Pentagon over where to draw the line in conducting so-called information operations or propaganda in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and who will be involved.

On one side are the information warfare activists, led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Assistant Secretary Douglas Feith. On the other are those who believe that telling lies to the media is wrong and military public affairs officers should never be involved in that. The wrangling has been going on since soon after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 when a Pentagon war planner, speaking anonymously, told a Washington Post reporter, "This is the most information-intensive war you can imagine. We're going to lie about things."Not long afterward the Pentagon opened its controversial Office of Strategic Influence amid reports that its mission included planting false news stories in the international media.

A public outcry led to the hasty shuttering of that office, but Rumsfeld served notice that while the office may have been closed, its mission would be continued by other entities. The defense secretary told reporters on Nov. 18, 2002: "Fine, you want to savage this thing, fine. I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm going to keep doing every single thing that needs to be done, and I have."This week the Los Angeles Times reported that CNN had been targeted in an information war operation three weeks before the start of the attack against Fallujah.

On Oct. 14 Marine 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert, a public affairs spokesman, went on camera to declare that "troops crossed the line of departure" - that the Fallujah operation was under way. It was not. The U.S. commanders obviously hoped that the false news broadcast by CNN would trigger certain moves by the insurgents and foreign terrorists holding the Sunni city - moves that then could be analyzed to gain information on how they would defend Fallujah.Marine sources in Iraq flatly deny that Lt. Gilbert's statement to CNN was a deception operation or part of a larger psy-war operation.

They say the distinction between public affairs and information operations is very clear and jealously guarded by the public affairs community.

Also this week the Washington Post brought new attention on the friendly-fire killing of Army Ranger Pat Tillman, a former NFL football star who gave up the spotlight to become a soldier. For days after the death of Tillman, military commanders and spokesmen both in Afghanistan and at Fort Bragg left out any mention of his having been killed by American bullets as they spun the story of a hero killed in battle.

That incident brought to mind the false stories about the rescue and heroism of Pvt. Jessica Lynch foisted on reporters during the opening days of the attack into Iraq. The official picture painted initially was of a young woman who fought to the last bullet before being wounded and captured. The truth was that Pvt. Lynch was injured when the vehicle in which she was riding crashed and she was knocked unconscious. She never fired a shot.

An investigation of the Tillman death and the information given to the media is presently under way, according to an Army spokesman. Defense Department spokesman Larry DiRita says he has asked his staff for "more information" on how the Oct. 14 Marine incident came to pass. Critics point to one troubling recent development: the decision by commanders in Iraq in mid-September to combine information operations, psychological operations and public affairs into a single strategic communications office run by an Air Force brigadier general who reports directly to Gen. George Casey, the American commander. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote a letter in late September warning American commanders of the problems of lumping military public affairs in with information operations. Myers warned that public affairs and information operations must remain separate.

But his warning seems to have fallen on deaf ears in Iraq because civilian leaders in the Pentagon and the National Security Council insisted on a blended effort of both public affairs and psy-ops to woo Iraqi and Arab support for America's efforts in Iraq.In the old days of the Cold War America's propaganda war was fought by the U.S. Information Agency, which was strictly forbidden from distributing any propaganda inside the United States. USIA was first gutted and then folded into the State Department during the mid-1990s. Everyone involved in this argument would do well to heed Gen. Myers' warning against mixing the liars and the truth-tellers in one pot. That distinction was blurred during the Vietnam War and the image the American public carried away was of the Five O'Clock Follies, the daily official news briefing in Saigon where lies and spin were dispensed along with the facts.Believe me, we do not want to go there again.

Citation: Joseph Galloway, "Truth be told, lies are part of Pentagon strategy," Knight Ridder, 8 December 2004;