Keeping the troops in the dark
As of this evening, I can reliably report to you that our soldiers in Iraq have still not been told of the extension of their tour of duty. To them it is “still a rumor.” They are finding out from their families. This by an administration that has continually treated our soldiers as expendable commodities. The armed forces are stretched to their limit. West Point graduates are leaving the Army at record levels after their five year commitment is completed. It amounts to a brain drain when 46% of the service academies’ graduates leave after a minimum of service. Compare that to the thirty year running average of 25%.
So the Army is being degraded to fight Bush’s personal war that our congressman with whom Mr. McHugh has not broken. After today’s bombing in the Green Zone, the President and those who fall in behind him attribute it to al Qaeda. It is called staying on message. They teach you that, and the most successful politicians are those that can continually bury their heads in the sand and “stay on message.” It is if keep telling the lie over and over again, it will eventually be accepted as the truth.
The continued violence in Iraq is the result of a power struggle between Shi’a who suffered oppression at the hand of Sunni minority under Saddam Hussein and the Sunni who want to regain the perquisites of their former position as oppressors. In a word, it is a civil war. The violence will not stop until a majority government is empowered to rid itself of insurgents. If al Qaeda is in Iraq – guaranteed it won’t be under a majority Shiite government.
It is now widely documented that training of our troops has been truncated. The usual course of an intensive four week training in Iraq combat, culture, first aid and weapons use is now cut down to 10 days. From the same TIME article referenced above:
For most Americans, the Iraq war is both distant and never-ending. For Private Matthew Zeimer, it was neither. Shortly after midnight on Feb. 2, Zeimer had his first taste of combat as he scrambled to the roof of the 3rd Infantry Division’s Combat Outpost Grant in central Ramadi. Under cover of darkness, Sunni insurgents were attacking his new post from nearby buildings. Amid the smoke, noise and confusion, a blast suddenly ripped through the 3-ft. concrete wall shielding Zeimer and a fellow soldier, killing them both. Zeimer had been in Iraq for a week. He had been at his first combat post for two hours.
If Zeimer’s combat career was brief, so was his training. He enlisted last June at age 17, three weeks after graduating from Dawson County High School in eastern Montana. After finishing nine weeks of basic training and additional preparation in infantry tactics in Oklahoma, he arrived at Fort Stewart, Ga., in early December. But Zeimer had missed the intense four-week pre-Iraq training — a taste of what troops will face in combat — that his 1st Brigade comrades got at their home post in October. Instead, Zeimer and about 140 other members of the 4,000-strong brigade got a cut-rate, 10-day course on weapon use, first aid and Iraqi culture. That’s the same length as the course that teaches soldiers assigned to generals’ household staffs the finer points of table service.
This change is in response to our congressman’s President’s “surge” – escalation – of the Iraq war. Let’s also be very clear that this cut rate training comes before any proposed decrease in the Iraq War funding. The supplemental appropriation that has passed congress and is promised a veto by the President fully funds the present combat troop commitment. The “message” that the President, Mr. McHugh and the other non veterans will continue to parrot will be that the congress is not supporting our troops. Just the opposite is true: they are being fully funded. The only stipulation is a redeployment of our combat forces outside of Iraq.
Yet our congressman and his President stubbornly refuse to change to a rational course. He’s already voted against the Supplemental. The next big vote will be to sustain the President’s veto. By voting to sustain it, it will be Mr. McHugh who will be abandoning the troops.
Publius on 20 Apr 2007 at 11:58 pm #
Lawrence Korb, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Reserve Affairs in the first Reagan administration, predicted more than two years ago that the Bush administration’s misadventure into Iraq will break the All-Volunteer Army. He urged a redeployment of our troops out of Iraq not only because he agreed with recently retired generals that the mission was bound for failure but to save the All-Volunteer Army. His thesis gained wide attention when his call for redeployment was articulated loud and clear by Congressman John Murtha, a decorated Vietnam Marine Corps veteran, who is widely respected within the military.
The Aprl 7 issue of the National Journal, the authoritative weekly publication for Washington insiders, that includes members of Congress, like John McHugh, supports Theophilus by presenting detailed information that shows that “the Army nears its breaking point.” That insight also underpinned the recommendations of the bi-partisan Baker-Hamilton Commission.
Rejecting its advice, the most incompetent and reckless President in American history, a veritable Oedipus Rex, insisted on escalating his failed course. His “surge” into the Iraqi slaughterhouse is breaking the Army beyond repair for the next decade.