Posted on 01/02/2004 9:12:35 AM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
Started at 1207 Eastern
"Virgil," from Jefferson City, MO, industrial sheet metal company in town...someone he knows heard from a friend stationed in Baghdad who wanted to know whether there was any way they could get extra armor on their vehicles.
The civilian citizen(s?) volunteered labor and material to armor the Humvee's before they were to ship out days later.
(Virgil) re. Pentagon's response: ""from what I was told" they were told that they did not have the right to defend themselves and they'd have to leave the armor behind." News media picked it up...and they were allowed to take the armor...unsure whether they were allowed to "put it on."
Virgil was responsible for putting armor on between 50 and 70 vehicles (6 1/2 tons) in a little over a week.
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The DoD told Brian very little the day they came to his door with the news of his son's death. He relied on the internet, and even Al Jazeera ~ finding the newsmedia more informative and trustworthy than the government his son served: "I'm not surprised anymore, more disappointed than anything else."
Mike Barnacle ended the segment by saying that Brian's son died "for lack of efficiency from the bureaucracy called the Pentagon."
I think he gets bombarded enough.
Priority one should be victory.
I want our troops to have what they need to do the job we have stuck them with. The trick is to know what they need.
We managed without armored humvees for a long time.
There is no end to what the troops want. The richest country the world has ever seen cannot afford to give every soldier everything he or she wants.
The troops already have the vehicles they are supposed to have. Great care and effort has gone into Tables of Organization and Equipment for each unit, specifying in infinite detail what this artillery battery or that mess kit repair platoon shall have. Our tankers have tanks, our mechanized infantrymen have Bradleys, our combat engineers have M113 armored personnel carriers, our artillerymen have self propelled howitzers, and our military police have M114 armored HMMWVs; almost every unit in the Army has enough vehicles to mount the entire unit and move out. The military term for that is deployable with organic transportation, meaning they don't need outside help to move.
The "shortage" of M114 armored humvees is a result of the "shortage" of military police.
You have heard of LTC West, who was put out of the Army for roughing up a prisoner. LTC West was a Field Artillery battalion commander. His battalion was given tasks which have nothing whatsoever to do with fire support. They were acting as infantry, performing stability and support operations and trying to be MPs as best they could. Most of the Army in Iraq is caught up in trying to retain their original capabilities while accomplishing constabulary missions. Our field artilleryman may be kicking down doors and searching houses one night and bringing down rapid and accurate counter-mortar fire on Hadji's head the next.
Much was made a while back ago of some of our troops using AK-47s because they had no rifles, as if the Army was somehow derelict in not providing these soldiers with the proper arms. Turns out these AK - armed soldiers were tank commanders and tank gunners who by TOE are armed with pistols, not rifles, but they were tasked to act as infantry and had to scrounge.
There are a great many units acquiring M1114 Armored HMMWVs who were never previously authorized them. Progress is being made. I think greater use could be made of other vehicles that would serve the same purpose, including former Iraqi vehicles.
But whatever we mount our constabulary troopers in, we can't let protection degrade our lethality. Our best protection is dead enemies.
I was talking with Patti DeCorte the other day when, suddenly, I saw Iraq in a whole new light: This may be the first war America ever jumped into while asking the people doing the fighting to bring their own equipment if they wanted to come home alive. "My husband bought his own Kevlar vest and took it with him to Iraq because his unit didn't have them," DeCorte told me. "He'd had the vest since he served in Bosnia a year and half ago. We paid for it."
Her husband, Rodney DeCorte, is an Army sergeant. He's a reservist, called to active duty when the war firm of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz & Bush got a case of the hots over the prospect of quickly crushing the Iraqis and turning that country into a democracy with a Starbucks on every corner and a chapter of Common Cause in downtown Tikrit.
Look, Saddam Hussein is a murderous thug and it's great that he's been driven from office and captured. And there are probably a lot more success stories there than we know or read about in the papers.
But the idea that American soldiers are asked to patrol and pacify a nation filled with armed zealots willing to die for their beliefs, their country or even their hatred of us without getting the very best equipment we can offer is, in a word, nuts. Unfortunately, that happens to be the case.
"Not only have we not learned our lesson," Rep. Ellen Tauscher told me the other day, "but we have a bunch of people in the Pentagon who don't want to learn the lesson."
Tauscher is a Democrat and on the House Armed Services Committee. She is from the Bay area in California. She was in Iraq three months ago. She has listened to constituents who are crazy with worry that their son or daughter is being exposed to even more harm in a war zone because clerks in the Pentagon are too busy fighting their petty turf battles to get enough items like Interceptor vests and armored Humvees to units engaged daily in battle.
"Too many of the Humvees have plastic flaps instead of armored doors," Tauscher said. "We've passed two emergency appropriations for this war - one in April, the second in October - giving the President $166billion. We appropriated $900 million to find weapons of mass destruction but when we tried to take $300 million out of that $900 million and earmark it specifically for equipment for the National Guard and reservists in Iraq, the Republicans voted it down."
Maybe those Republicans who are so gung-ho for this war ought to sit down with Brian Hart. His son John was a paratrooper with the 173rd Infantry Brigade and he was killed in October when his Humvee was ambushed by Iraqis. The vehicle was nearly two decades old. Young Hart was 20 when he died. His family's automobile offers more protection from harm than did the vehicle private first-class Hart took to war.
"The Democrats want to politicize this," Brian Hart has said. "The Bush administration wants to pretend we're not in a guerrilla war and the Pentagon simply screwed up in their planning and doesn't seem to want to address the matter. I just want the armored Humvees produced and distributed in quantity as quickly as possible.
"As far as I'm concerned," Hart added, "the party politics stopped at the gates of Arlington when we buried John on 4 November."
The war goes on every day. And we are spending more to rebuild Iraqi police stations, firehouses, water systems and power grids than we are on making sure our own soldiers have the best equipment possible.
"The Pentagon says it's a procurement problem," Tauscher said. "Hey, if that's all it is, then why don't we just get someone from Amazon.com to do it? At least they're good at that stuff."
Originally published on December 28, 2003
Brian and Alma Hart of Bedford are the parents of Army Pfc. John Hart, 20, who died when his patrol was ambushed Oct. 18 in Iraq.
Hart was manning the machine gun in the third Humvee of a group of three when the vehicles came under attack. The first two Humvees escaped as Hart shot at their attackers, but Hart was shot several times and died, his parent's said. His lieutenant, in the same Humvee, also died after bleeding to death.
Before Hart's death, his parents heard hints of concern from their son about the lack of body and vehicle armor in Iraq. When John Hart died, his parents said it became obvious this was more than a small concern. And now, as more soldiers die and the Harts hear the stories of those who survived, they have vowed to do something about it.
"John called us the week before he died and said he was very concerned because they were not equipped for the missions they were being sent out on," Brian Hart said. "A lot of his friends had been shot, blown up in unarmored Humvees. John was issued second-hand body armor to wear."
Brian Hart's biggest problem with the safety of the soldiers is the lack of unarmored Humvees in Iraq. When the Harts went to Arlington National Cemetery to bury John, they met with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, about the problem. Hart said Kennedy agreed that something needs to be done.
"I asked him to check into two issues," Hart said. "The lack of armored vests and unarmored Humvees."
Hart said he asked two soldiers who were at the funeral what they needed in Iraq the most, and they said up-armored Humvees - Humvees with armor that protects soldiers from bullets and grenades.
"I promised that I would look into it and see what I could do to help," Hart said. "They were John's buddies; they were there when he died."
At a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee in mid-November, senators questioned Army officials regarding the soldiers' lack of protection, including the need for helicopters equipped with new missile alert systems.
After Kennedy called the Harts to tell them about the meeting, it became clear the battle would be an uphill one.
The Scripps Howard News Service reported an estimated 10,000 of the Army's 100,000 Humvees are in Iraq. No more than 2,000 of those are armored, according to defense industry analyst Michael Hoffman of Friedman Billings Ramsey in Arlington, Va. Therefore, four out of five Humvees in Iraq are not armored.
Hart said the Army has requested roughly 3,500 Humvees be made and sent to Iraq, up from a previous request of 1,700.
"The problem is that, based, on current production, that will take almost two years to produce," Hart said. "That's ridiculous."
Hart said that 50,000 commercial Humvees will be produced next year for use. General Motors, he said, produced 376 in October alone.
"So in the meantime, almost every day, we are experiencing casualties," Hart said. "Something is really wrong. We have a $100,000 tax deduction available to small businesses and self employed individuals to purchase SUVs over 6,000 pounds. So as a result, we have yellow Humvees being purchased by dentists at taxpayer expense and we have no adequate supply of armored Humvees."
On Nov. 21, Hart spoke to legislative representatives in Kennedy's office who told him there are issues of money, production levels, and bureaucracy that are making this a difficult process.
"Everyone wants the problem solved; now it is a question of how it will get done," Hart said. "It seems reasonable that 3,500 Humvees could be available within six months or less if the production were put on a wartime footing. Are we at war?"
A representative from Kennedy's office said the manufacturer of the up-armored Humvees is a company in Ohio called Ogara-Hess & Eisenhardt Their maximum production capacity is 220 Humvees a month. In fiscal 2003, Congress did not give the Army enough money to buy the maximum number of Humvees the manufacturer could produce. This May, however, the company will produce them at maximum capacity - yielding the requested number of Humvees by July of 2005.
Armored Humvees give soldiers armored crew compartments, two-inch thick bulletproof windows, a roof gun turret, gun shields, and upgraded suspensions. Scripps Howard said Armored Humvees are capable of withstanding a 12-pound bomb blast under the front section and a four-pound explosive under the rear. On Nov. 19, ABC News reported that Kennedy told the Armed Services Committee that the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid, had assured him in a recent letter that soldiers wouldn't be put in harm's way without proper equipment. ABC News quoted Kennedy, "It is inconceivable with our manufacturing capability that we cannot produce that kind of a vehicle more rapidly and replace it." Kennedy's representative said the Army is testing a product that could help the problem - Humvee kits which include armored plates that can be bolted to the Humvees. Soldiers can get more protection faster by using the kits, although the representative was not briefed on the outcome of the tests. Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, has also been active in pushing for more protection, as three Rhode Island National Guardsmen were killed in Iraq in September. Three were from Massachusetts. Reed and Kennedy have been working together since then to get more money for protection and a better time frame. "It's difficult to believe that planning for the war failed to anticipate the need for better protective vests and more effective armor on Humvees," Kennedy said. "No soldier or Marine should have to serve in Iraq without it." Kennedy's representative said the senator is not satisfied with the goal of July 2005. But it is hard to say if the production will be sped up. Kennedy has been talking with and visiting soldiers in New England and elsewhere to find out what they need.
According to the representative, the problem regarding the lack of body armor will be solved by the end of this month. Every American soldier, government employee and contractor in Iraq should have new metal armor plates by the end of December.
Hart said while troops wait for more armor, they are taping sandbags to the Humvees to protect themselves from grenade attacks and bullets. Kennedy's representative said soldiers can tape sandbags everywhere except under the accelerator. Because of this, drivers' legs are sometimes seriously injured.
"This is a real big problem because the military miscalculated," Hart said. "They didn't know we would have a guerilla war. Essentially, troops are being ambushed in unarmored vehicles. We are seeing casualties occur without real gain."
Hart argues that with all the manufacturing capacity of this country, the armored Humvees should be able to be made much faster.
"The country is not being told we have a problem," Hart said. "Hence, there is no national effort to get these troops what they need. We have local dentists buying Hummers to take their kids to soccer games, but our troops can't get armored Humvees for several years. Thirty of the last 100 casualties have been from unarmored Humvees." Kennedy's representative said the Army has its own internal bureaucracy battle, and it took them a while to figure out they had a problem. A lot of the time, she said, political pressure does help get things done.
In the meantime, Hart continues to uphold his promise to the soldiers and do all he can to help. He collects all the information he can about what is happening to be as knowledgeable as possible.
"I couldn't be happier with the efforts Kennedy has taken to address this issue," Hart said. "Civilian production needs to take a second importance to a military need in a time of war."
"So as a result, we have yellow Humvees being purchased by dentists at taxpayer expense and we have no adequate supply of armored Humvees."
And with all due respect, this is absolute Barbra Streisand. If I take a tax deduction, then I am forcing my fellow taxpayers to incur an expense? Kennedy might actually be attempting to do something worthwhile by seeking more body armor for our soldiers, but don't take talking points from him.
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