Troops in Iraq need more armor!

[Gimpy]

With the Bush White House refusing to fund shortfalls in armor and force protection until after the election, I wanted to pass on this excerpt from Newsweek:

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"A breakdown of the casualty figures suggests that many U.S. deaths and wounds in Iraq simply did not need to occur. According to an unofficial study by a defense consultant that is now circulating through the Army, of a total of 789 Coalition deaths as of April 15 (686 of them Americans), 142 were killed by land mines or improvised explosive devices, while 48 others died in rocket-propelled-grenade attacks.

Almost all those soldiers were killed while in unprotected vehicles, which means that perhaps one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them, the study suggested. Thousands more who were unprotected have suffered grievous wounds, such as the loss of limbs."

For the Bush administration it has been a mantra, one the president intones repeatedly: America's troops will get whatever they need to do the job. But as Iraq's liberation has turned into a daily grind of low-intensity combat-and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld grudgingly raises troop levels-many soldiers who are there say the Pentagon is failing to protect them with the best technology America has to offer. Especially tanks, Bradleys and other heavy vehicles, even in many cases body armor. That has been the tragic lesson of April, a month in which a record 115 U.S. soldiers have died so far and 879 others have been wounded, 560 of them fairly seriously.

Those numbers greatly exceed the tallies in the combat-heavy weeks of the invasion last spring. And the impact of those deaths was felt more fully last week when reporter Russ Kick, after filing a Freedom of Information Act request, won the release of photos showing coffins returningto Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Soldiers in Iraq complain that Washington has been too slow to acknowledge that the Iraqi insurgency consists of more than "dead-enders." And even at the Pentagon many officers say Rumsfeld and his brass have been too reluctant to modify their long-term plans for a lighter military. On the battlefield, that has translated into a lack of armor. Perhaps the most telling example: a year ago the Pentagon had more than 400 main battle tanks in Iraq; as of recently, a senior Defense official told NEWSWEEK, there was barely a brigade's worth of operational tanks still there. (A brigade usually has about 70 tanks.)

In continuing adherence to the Army's "light is better" doctrine (which in reality is Rumsfelds' and Wolfowitzs' pursuit ), even units recently rotated to Iraq have left most of their armor behind. These include the I Marine Expeditionary Force, which has paid dearly for that decision with an astonishing 30 percent-plus casualties (45 killed, more than 300 wounded) in Fallujah and Ar Ramadi. The Army's 1st Cavalry Division-which includes the unit in Sadr City-left five of every six of its tanks at home, and five of every six Bradleys.

The military is 1,800 armored Humvees short of its own stated requirement for Iraq. Despite desperate attempts to supply bolt-on armor, many soldiers still ride around in light-skinned Humvees. This is a latter-day jeep that, as Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, assistant division commander of the 1st Armored Division, conceded in an interview, "was never designed to do this...

According to internal Pentagon e-mails obtained by NEWSWEEK, the Humvee situation is so bad that the head of the U.S. Army Forces Command, Gen. Larry Ellis, has urged that more of the new Stryker combat vehicles be put into the field. Sources say that the Army brass back in Washington have not yet concurred with that. The problem: the rubber-tire Strykers are thin-skinned and don't maneuver through dangerous streets as well as the fast-pivoting, treaded Bradley. According to a well-placed Defense Department source, the Army is so worried about the Stryker's vulnerability that most of the 300-vehicle brigade currently in Iraq has been deployed up in the safer Kurdish region around Mosul. "Any further south, and the Army was afraid the Arabs would light them up," he said.

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NOW-YOU CAN GO BACK TO DISCUSSING JOHN KERRY'S PROTESTING THE VIETNAM WAR, THE RELEVANCE AND AUTHENTICITY OF HIS MEDALS, THE MISLEADING STATEMENTS OF HIS VOTING RECORD WITH REGARDS TO SUPPORTING THE TROOPS AND CONTINUE TO DENY THE F-A-C-T-S THAT GEORGE W. BUSH AND HIS CO-HORTS ARE NOT................REPEAT ARE NOT ADEQUATELY SUPPORTING AND/OR SUPPLING OUR YOUNG SOLDIERS WITH THE EQUIPMENT AND ARMOUR THEY NEED TO GET THE JOB DONE!