So I read that Republicans defeated a Democratic measure calling for an investigation into waste and fraud in military contracts today as the Senate engaged in an emotional debate over the Iraq war.
Mr. Dorgan said that military spending is the worst it has ever been "right now -- right now! I think the American taxpayers are being fleeced."
No - American taxpayers may be fleeced, but our troops are being murdered by our own political leaders in a case of negligent homicide.
Cut and run? No -- demand accountability for the murder of US troops by corrupt American political leadership.
I say murder because it is nothing less than that for this Administration, the Republican majorities in Congress, and Secretary Rumsefeld and his top brass to have put in harm's way US troops knowing full well they were not properly equipped to survive, let alone get the job done for which they were sent.
The problem - a broken and corrupt procurement system - a/k/a the congressional-military-industrial complex isn't being fixed! That is why we should hold Rumsfeld and the Congress in such low regard. They are simply not fixing the problem. Body armor, ammo, tourniquets, retrofit armor and so on - those are the SYMPTOMS of a broken and corrupt system.
I think we should demand that Congress, this Administration, and the contractors who are making so terribly much profit be held accountable.
The current procurement system does what it was built over the cold war to do - make money for contractors, get jobs for congressmen and glory for generals. It had and has nothing to do with WINNING a real war.
We're spending what? to build nuclear subs or destroyers and aircraft carriers that will never see action when that same money could have put body and vehicular armor on all or most of the soldiers and marines in Iraq.
Until and unless we overturn the Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex, which uses the Defense Budget to drain our national resources into the pockets of corporate America, we will lose wars and fail to insure national security and homeland defense.
Some facts:
What equipment did US troops actually have when they were first deployed to Iraq and was equipment determined on the basis of best case or worst case scenario?
What should we have done - what could we have done based at least on what we learned in Vietnam?
According to Brian Hart, father of a boy killed in Iraq without adequate body armor, without a vehicle fit for combat and without even a $20 tourniquet in the unit's medical kit: Initially One-third or more were missing modern body armor.
At the initiation of hostilities, heavy armor was in place supported by unarmored humvees. There were lots of tanks and Bradleys. Once the "official" fighting stopped, those heavy pieces of armor were simply removed from Iraq - many desperately needed spare parts. One-third of the Bradleys didn't have working treads and were not running.
That left light unarmored humvees - pulling the armor out saved money, but ultimately cost lives. There were only 235 or so M1114 armored humvees in Iraq by the summer of 2003 and less than 450 by the end of December 2003. The rest had nothing. Now there are over 12,000 M1114 armored humvees and about 25,000 Level II (Factory armor but field installed on older chassis) where there were none in 2003.
When Fallujah flared up in the spring of 2004, there were only 125 Abrams tanks in Iraq and only 75 of them could roll. We didn't have the fuel or the ammo to mount an offensive in Fallujah, so we pulled back and re-attacked in Nov 04. The interim period allowed the insurgents to organize in Fallujah. It changed the insurgency forever.
Inexplicably the army left 700 or so M113 super Gavins in Kuwait and didn't field them in Iraq until the Spring 2005. Madness. People died because of this.
Last fall (05) Congress found out that around 800 brand spanking new M1114s were sitting for months in Kuwait waiting for the 4th ID to arrive in 2006 while the 3rd ID and the marines ran equipment short for six months. This again cost lives. The list goes on.
The military, the army and the marines specifically, simply didn't buy the equipment needed to fight this war. It bought stuff for the Cold War that never happened. Gradually they've come around but only slowly. IEDs, retrofit armor and SAPI plates aren't sexy so they don't get funded. Years of war have changed that, but thousands died to pay the price of this education.
One of them, 1st Lt. David Bernstein, died in the same engagement as Mr. Hart's son. Lt. Bernstein took a bullet thru the unarmored side of his Humvee, which lacked even doors. The bullet severed his femoral artery and the Lt. bled out for lack of a $20 tourniquet, missing from the unit's medical kit because the procurement system was still "evaluating" them.
Lt. Bernstein was 24, a West Point graduate, educated as a military leader at the taxpayers' cost of some $400,000 and he was sent into combat with inadequate equipment and died for lack of a $20 bandage.
What could we have done?
We should have gone right to the third generation gun trucks of Vietnam with double sided steel walls with sand in between and blast shields and multiple machine guns and lots of metal.
One wonders why we aren't flying helicopters and even Cessnas as spotters over the convoys to id ambush sites and IED triggermen.
How about the cost of this war in real terms?
Think about the number of artillery shells and mines that went unguarded and are now in enemy hands.
Hundreds of ammo dumps, 8-10 million land mines in Iraq just waiting to be used.
For $150 you can buy an IED in Iraq and take out a convoy truck full of Marines or fuel. We are putting up $225,000 M1114s or more expensive equipment against mines wired with trip wires or cellphone detonators. Guys with Radio Shack light beams can overwhelm our electronic jammers (because they are light activated). Even infrared TV remotes beat the electronic jammers and dead on accurate - the thing that dings when you walk into a retail store does just fine when connected to a mine(s).
We can't economically and materially sustain this disparate cost of combat.
Our vehicles that should normally have a 13 year life are wearing out in Iraq in about 2 years! The entire ground fleet for the Army and Marines is going to have to be replaced and that isn't in the budget!
Think about the implications of all this.
Next time someone says "cut and run", ask them when they last wore the uniform, what size boots did they ever have on the ground, and how do they justify their support of the outright murder of our troops through corruption and pure military, industrial incompetence.