This is simply inexcusable. And with enough attention called to it, it should easily be fixable. According to KHOU-TV:
Despite the might of your own country, despite the power of your own military, for extended periods of time you and other soldiers simply can’t get enough drinking water. And even worse, some of you are paying for it with your health.
That’s the story some U.S. soldiers are telling the 11 News Defenders about their time in Iraq. While we’ve spent billions on bullets and bombs, soldiers in different parts of that arid country, during different phases of this desert war, claim they couldn’t get enough drinkable water.
This is the way we expect the Bush Administration to have treated our troops, and it is no doubt just one of millions of problems and disasters lost in the piles of rubble inherited by the Obama Administration. But it's one that needs to be dealt with. Like now.
Part of the problem: Many soldiers say they were rationed to just two 1.5 liter bottles a day or about half a gallon of water. Turns out, the Army’s own training manuals say in desert environments, the body can lose up to four gallons a day.
As a result, some soldiers claim they regularly saw dehydration causing sickness on the battlefield, things like fainting and vomiting.
In October, the Democratic Policy Committee wrote:
While contractors have raked in record profits, the American people and our troops have paid a heavy cost. KBR (the former Halliburton subsidiary) continues to work in Iraq today - nearly two years after Pentagon auditors uncovered $2.7 billion in undocumented spending by the company and despite ongoing investigations into its delivery of unsafe water to U.S. troops in Iraq and faulty electrical work that has led to troop deaths.
Clearly, serious problems continue. It's not complicated: figure out why our troops aren't getting enough safe water, and make sure that they do. And hold whomever is at fault accountable!