I'm going to bend the rules and hope I'm not breaking them... but the second half of this diary is just too important for me to let go. The number of errors that cost real lives - the magnitude of the errors... it's just too much for me to let go.
I was a Marine for 4 years. I know how real these kids are. I know their strengths (undying loyalty to each other, love of righteous causes, innocence of youth and vigor of spirit) and their weaknesses (their humanity is all too evident in the new movie Gunner Palace - go see it and you'll see what I mean).
The idea that these soldiers have been sold down the river by a bunch of intellectually lazy - nay - that let's them off too easy... Instead join me in speaking plainly: the neocon crew are criminally insane.
Remember, one definition of insanity is repeating the same actions while expecting different results. When the results are more dead kids, time and again, the insanity is criminal.
PART I:
Paula Zahn's show on CNN tonight
I know that nobody watches her, but Keith was off tonight and I just couldn't bear O'Liar. So I flipped to Zahn, and I have to say that I was glad I did.
I was just in time to catch the beginning of a 20 minute human interest story having to do with Alan Petty, a KBR truck driver in Iraq. Alan was a typical heartland American: in his thirties, with 6 kids, a wife and at least a little bit religious. He was working a truck driver making $1900 a month when he heard about a job opportunity with KBR in Iraq. KBR's recruiting materials claim that their drivers will make between $80K and $100K a year.
Trust me - as a person that once earned about $425/week, I know the attraction inherent to the opportunity of earning $1750-2000/week.
Now, throw in 6 kids, the possibility of purchasing a home that'd fit them and the idea that I'd be helping out my friends and neighbors called up to active duty in Iraq... Well, for Alan, it was a no brainer. He had to take care of his wife and kids.
So he signed on with KBR. He drove trucks. In dangerous areas? Remember Najaf? He drove right by it. How do we know? Because he kept a video diary and has it on tape. He has a lot on tape.
Like the time another driver from his group got his rig blown up by an IED. He's got footage in which you can hear the chilling rat-a-tat-tat sounds of machin gun fire as they put the pedal to the metal and drive quickly as they can through the "hot zone".
So how did Alan end up? Unfortunately, this will probably not surprise you. KBR paid Alan an average of $6,000 dollars a month. Not $8,000 - their minimum likely salary in their recruiting literature... and not $10,000 - the optimistic salary...
Why not?
The answer lies in the fine-print. Truckers get paid a hazard and foreign service premiums. Up to the first 40 hours. Then - even though the danger level doesn't decrease, even though they are still in a "foreign service" zone, they don't get any bonuses. And just to pour salt on the wound, since the job isn't in the US, they don't have to follow US labor standards. So work above and beyond 40 hours gets paid as straight time.
The result: Alan sometimes worked over eighty hours a week. Anything past the first 40 hours he was paid $15.57 an hour for.
KBR - subsidiary of Halliburton.
It didn't come up, but guessing - and only guessing here - from the facts that Alan has six kids, had a southern accent and what appeared to be significant faith... well, let's just say I'd be willing to wager that Alan was a Bush voter...
Part II: What is wrong with us?
I read this article this morning. Every third paragraph had me lifting my jaw off my shoe-tops. I just could not believe the level of incompetence and criminal negligence. In the diary I posted on this, I left a comment saying that this would be on the networks tonight. If it wasn't, then we really had entered a parallel universe in which reality doesn't matter.
I'm stunned. Not only did the diary not get any play - on this, the most liberal of websites, it only got six comments - but yes, my worst fears were realized. I saw no coverage of it at Atrios, TPM, NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX...
Armando (thankfully) did a diary on it, but I thought it should have been covered better... especially here. I don't want to let it go, so here it is again. Do the right thing and read it to the end. Then decide what must be done. We just can't let this story lie.
OUR TROOPS STILL ARE NOT GETTING WHAT THEY NEED!! STILL!! TWO YEARS LATER!!
The whole country has left our soldiers out in the cold. We should be ashamed.
I'm just going to take excerpts from the NYT article for now, I'll update later:
In all, with additional paperwork delays, the
Defense Department took 167 days just to start getting the bulletproof vests to soldiers in Iraq once General Cody placed the order. But for thousands of soldiers, it took weeks and even months more, records show, at a time when the Iraqi insurgency was intensifying and American casualties were mounting.
By contrast, when the United States' allies in Iraq also realized they needed more bulletproof vests, they bypassed the Pentagon and ordered directly from a manufacturer in Michigan. They began getting armor in just 12 days.
But an examination of the issues involving the protective shielding and other critical equipment shows how a supply problem seen as an emergency on the ground in Iraq was treated as a routine procurement matter back in Washington.
While all soldiers eventually received plates for their vests, the Army is still scrambling to find new materials to better protect the 10,000 Humvees in Iraq that were not built for combat conditions.
Army generals say a more effective answer to the threat of explosives may lie in electronic instruments that have proven successful in blocking the detonation of homemade bombs, called improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.'s. They have caused about a quarter of the more than 1,500 American deaths in Iraq, including those of two National Guard members from New York City just last week.
Such an electronic countermeasure was used at the start of the war to shield Iraqi oil fields from possible sabotage. But some members of Congress and security experts say shortsighted planning and piecemeal buying on the part of the Army has resulted in too few of the devices being used to protect the troops.
Others say that the Pentagon's longstanding preference for billion-dollar weaponry has made it less prepared to deliver the basic tools needed by soldiers on the ground.
The insurgency had already taken root in Iraq when General Cody made his decision on April 17, 2003, that enough soldiers had bulletproof vests. As more casualty reports flowed in during the next month, he came to recognize that the advice he had gotten from staff members in Washington did not reflect the reality of the war.
They really don't live in the reality-based world... This stupid liberal media - out there protecting the troops again...
The company, ArmorWorks of Tempe, Ariz., and its supplier of ceramics, the beer-making Coors family of Colorado, had ramped up their operations to meet the demands of the war, but ArmorWorks' president, William J. Perciballi, says Defense Department delays in awarding contracts for more plates forced him to lay off workers and shut down his assembly line for two months.
Hmmm... Who'da thought that a Bush crony would be responsible for making the ceramics... this is criminal folks...
High Performance Materials Group of Boothwyn, Pa., said it could make 20,000 plates for $4,960,000, a price 11 to 15 percent below even the next two successful bidders.
The Pentagon's Defense Supply Center, which handled the contracts, says an Army ballistics engineer determined that High Performance, a research and development company, could do the work, despite its lack of experience in mass production.
"We certainly demonstrated that we could make the plates," said the company's founder, Kenneth A. Gabriel, a former Army researcher who left the military in 1999. He said he had developed his own version of the ceramic plates that passed Army testing and prepared detailed plans for production that the supply center reviewed.
Time to start researching Kenneth Gabriel... A Bush nephew, maybe? I wonder how much he was paid before the contract was terminated.
Some soldiers waiting for the body armor say they felt punished for speaking out about the delays. Specialist Joseph F. Fabozzi of the New Jersey National Guard complained publicly during a visit home in late 2003.
Returning to Iraq a few weeks later, he said, he was handed a $912 bill for having rear-ended a truck the previous summer while on a convoy. His National Guard unit did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Fabozzi appealed the bill and won, records show, in part by explaining precisely how his gas pedal had jammed - because the trucks did not have armor plating, he and others had been told to place sandbags on the floors. "They would break and spill into the pedals," he said.
Who'da thought there'd be retaliation from an Army led by the guy that still hasn't been to a single soldier's funeral?
Soldiers are still jury-rigging protection for their trucks and Humvees because of another contracting problem with which the Pentagon continues to wrestle.
Going into the war, it had only one contractor, O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt of Fairfield, Ohio, re-enforcing new Humvees with armor, handling 50 a month.
The Pentagon decided against asking Detroit automakers like General Motors, which makes the Humvee's civilian version, the Hummer, to start making armored Humvees because they would need too much time to set up new assembly lines.
But the Pentagon only gradually pushed O'Gara-Hess to ramp up to 550 vehicles a month, a level the company expects to reach only this spring. The latest uptick in ordering came in December after Specialist Thomas Wilson, a member of the Tennessee National Guard, confronted Mr. Rumsfeld in Kuwait.
What say you, Bill O'Reilly?
At the same time as installing shielding in new Humvees, the Pentagon has had to deal with the 10,000 Humvees in Iraq that were never re-enforced for combat.
To help protect these vehicles, a Pentagon unit that was expediting purchases began pushing the Army to buy ceramic plates from private contractors.
The Army, though, opted for plain steel plates that it could make in its own depots. The plates are failing to withstand the insurgent's bigger bombs, which are also blowing up more heavily armored vehicles. As a result, the Army has been forced to look for additional materials to protect the Humvees, according to contractors involved in the effort.
Hey Little Green Footballs - this is your war - whaddya think?
A California military contractor developed a countermeasure during the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Known as the Shortstop Electronic Protection System, it evolved into a portable device that was heralded for its ability to jam the radio frequencies used by insurgents to detonate their bombs.
Col. Bruce D. Jette, a participant in the meetings of the Strategic Planning Board, the panel led by General Cody, used a jamming device to protect the oil fields in Iraq. Colonel Jette was heading up a new unit called the Rapid Equipping Force, which was given license to ignore the lumbering ways the Army traditionally fills orders from the field.
Protecting the oil was more important than protecting the troops... Hey, Powerline - what's this war about again?
The Defense Department had been producing various I.E.D. countermeasures. But the Pentagon did not start ordering large quantities of one of the most promising ones, known as the Warlock, until December 2003, nine months after the war began, according to GlobalSecurity.org, a research firm based in Alexandria, Va.
The firm said in a report that EDO Communications and Countermeasures of Simi Valley, Calif., has received three orders totaling $31 million for 1,899 Warlocks. EDO declined to comment, citing the secrecy constraints imposed by the Pentagon.
The Pentagon has declined to say publicly how many devices it still needs in Iraq to protect all of the troops. But after learning the Army had so few that it could not spare any for training exercises, the House Armed Services Committee in December pushed the Pentagon for a big increases in its spending on I.E.D. countermeasures, to $161 million, in the next few months, until next year's budget is approved.
Way to go Glenn Reynolds... Sure looks like you placed your faith in the right team... you fucking idiot...
"There is the technology to prevent the detonation of most improvised explosive devices that exist," Mr. Taylor said, speaking with frustration. "We've allocated money for it. And yet that number remains classified, Mr. Secretary, not because the insurgents don't know how few are protected, but because I'm of the opinion the American people would be appalled if they knew how few are protected."
Colonel Jette was also frustrated, and in October he resigned. In interviews, he said as the rush of war wore off, the Army's traditional supply corps began reasserting lengthy contracting and testing regimens, leaving him increasingly discouraged.
"That perfection in testing becomes the enemy of what is operationally good enough," he said. "And the soldiers in the field are looking for good enough."
The Rapid Equipping Force has a new leader, but still operates without a permanent charter. Gen. John M. Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff who helped establish the program, said he shares Colonel Jette's concern for its future. "The acquisition system would see it as a threat," said General Keane, who retired in 2003. "There is an implied indictment that they can't deliver in that rapid a period of time, which is essentially true."
Listen... I just want everyone to remember who the Commander-In-Chief is. The final responsibility lies with the White House. He ran as a War President... He bought it, he owns it. This is the most disgusting war-time leader the world has ever known. "Nonchalance" does not begin to define his hands-off approach. He's the CEO president alright - same CEO he was at Arbusto, Harkin, Spectrum 7 and all the other companies he ran into the ground. Only now he's wasting young men's lives instead of Saudi financier's money...
</snark (for now)>