The Armor Issue Revisited Posted by: Jon Henke
on Wednesday, March 09, 2005
"In the rush to war, this administration failed to adequately outfit military personnel shipping off to Iraq."—John Kerry
As it turns out, that was not the case. The failure was widespread, but it was predominantly an institutional failure resulting from military bureaucracy....and Congressional oversight. The New York Times reports...
...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.
The problems cited...
POOR ARMY COMMUNICATION—"[In April 2003, General Richard Cody was] told by supply chiefs that the combat troops already had all the armor they needed..."
CONTRACTOR FAILURES—"[A body armor contractor] struggled for a year, then gave up entirely."
ARMY BUREAUCRATIC SNAFUS—"in shipping plates from other companies, the Army's equipment manager effectively reduced the armor's priority to the status of socks..."
RED TAPE/REGULATIONS— "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."
SCARCITY—"material shortages and contractor bottlenecks"
EVOLVING TACTICAL ENVIRONMENT— "Pentagon officials ... consistently misjudged the strength and ingenuity of the insurgency in Iraq, which has grown more sophisticated in its tactics [so] the Army's procurement machine could never catch up, no matter how hard it tried."
ASYMMETRICAL LOGISTICAL REQUIREMENTS—"an enemy that adapts faster than we do ... Al Qaeda doesn't have to go to the Board of Accountability in order to develop a new roadside bomb or triggering device."
RED TAPE—"it took the Army 47 days from when General Cody issued his order for bulletproof vests to allocate the necessary funds so that contracts could be awarded"
CONTRACTOR LIMITATIONS—"the handful of tiny companies making the vests and plates for the Army were snowed under by the soaring demand."
RED TAPE—"delays in awarding contracts for more plates forced [a contractor] to lay off workers and shut down his assembly line for two months"
ARMY BUREAUCRATIC SNAFUS—"The Army agency responsible for equipping soldiers got swamped by other materials being rushed to Iraq ... everything got treated as high priority, which meant that in fact nothing was."
CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT—"Given the level of Congressional scrutiny about all contracting procedures ... clearly there was a concern that [pushing manufacturers to produce more] be done in a graduated fashion so as to avoid another scandal."
ARMY BUREAUCRACY—"...as the rush of war wore off, the Army's traditional supply corps began reasserting lengthy contracting and testing regimens..."
Ultimately, these were neither Partisan, nor Administration, problems. In fact, for the most part they are the intrinsic problems of complex governmental bureaucracies, exacerbated by time-consuming Congressional oversight.
There were failures, and the troops were often inadequately armored. But those failures should be laid at the feet of a calcified Congressional/Military process...not an administration.
As I work for a DOD contractor I cannot tell you how hard it is to get simple things done. Once you do get them done it’s just as hard to get something shipped to it’s destination and the sad thing is that it doesn’t seem to matter how bad the guys in the field need the product.
What’s the solution supposed to be, according to the Kerrys of the world? More regulations? Additional oversight in the form of more desks for all the paper to travel across? I hope not.
Yes, increase oversight. Write up more regulations, create more hoops to jump through. Every layer of oversight created, every additional requirement will add further to the delay... but this will give the APPEARANCE of doing something about the problem. And for some, APPEARANCE is more important than the ACTUALITY.
There were failures, and the troops were often inadequately armored. But those failures should be laid at the feet of a calcified Congressional/Military process...not an administration.
Nothing is ever Bush’s fault - ever.
Now, a responsible president would have fixed these problems before going to war, EVEN IF THEY WEREN’T HIS FAULT ORIGINALLY. You see, he is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. And if there is some problem with the military, then as the Commander in Chief of that military, he should fix them.
We went to war on our time table. If Bush failed to become aware of these problems, it is his fault. If he was aware and did nothing, it is his fault. Where is Harry Truman when we need them - the buck stops here, er, no, wait. The buck stops at the "feet of a calcified Congressional/Military process."
It’s kind of like Bush and the deficit. His claim is that without his tax cuts, it would be worse. I DON"T CARE - I CARE ABOUT RESULTS. I don’t care how you get to a balanced budget, just get there. And if you can’t, get the hell out of the way. Likewise, if someone else has created a problem that might impede our efforts during the war, FIX THE DAMM PROBLEM or get out of the way.
Why do ’wingers have such a difficult time getting their arms around this concept? If there is a problem, fix it. If you can’t, let someone else try.
There were failures, and the troops were often inadequately armored. But those failures should be laid at the feet of a calcified Congressional/Military process...not an administration.
That buck just whizzes right past that Oval Office, again, and again, and again...
You’re raising a very interesting question here though. Under what circumstances (other than those you’ve outlined) would the administration be responsible for the failures? Would Bush have to be out on an airfield directing shipments of armor away from Baghdad-bound cargo planes?
a responsible president would have fixed these problems before going to war,
The problem, MK, is that some of these problems are inescapable...inherent in the nature of a large, government bureaucracy. I recall what happened when shortcuts were taken in the extension of the LOGCAP contract. Now, you want the President to step in and demand less Congressional oversight? And you want him to prevent—with his Executive Magic Wand, I suppose—desk jockeys from making mistakes and misrouting products?
That buck just whizzes right past that Oval Office, again, and again, and again...
Ok, Edward, you read the report and tell me what problems were related to the Executive branch, and not to the "calcified Congressional/Military process"?
Note, please, that I didn’t lay the blame at the feet of politicians from either party. This is a process problem, not a partisan one.
He has no "how." He has only hate. Whether or not you love or hate Bush has absolutely no bearing on these supply chain snafus. But it seems that if you hate Bush your brain drains right out on the floor and you are stuck with snarling ’an effective President would drive this over in his amphibious SUV.
As long as this mindset predominates, the opposition will never, ever achieve meaningful power again in this country.
Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see how this demonstrates that Kerry’s claim was untrue.
Keep in mind that I think the "no body armor because of the rush to war" argument is overly simplistic, BUT...a war critic could read the Times article and not have his opinion changed in the slightest. A Kerry supporter would say that if the administration had planned ahead and wasn’t in such a "rush to war," all of these institutional failures wouldn’t have hindered the war effort. He’d argue that you order the vests you need so that they get there well before you actually need to do the fighting, and you don’t start fighting a war of choice until they get there (I disagree with this position, but that was the argument Kerry was making, and I think a normal person would see it as reasonable).
I don’t agree with the initial premises of the critics, but this Times’ article does nothing to answer them.
There were failures, and the troops were often inadequately armored. But those failures should be laid at the feet of a calcified Congressional/Military process...not an administration.
That buck just whizzes right past that Oval Office, again, and again, and again...
You’re raising a very interesting question here though. Under what circumstances (other than those you’ve outlined) would the administration be responsible for the failures? Would Bush have to be out on an airfield directing shipments of armor away from Baghdad-bound cargo planes?
Given the problems of the procurement process, the Administration decision to quickly let several big no-bid contracts (incl. Halliburton) makes a lot more sense!
Ok, Edward, you read the report and tell me what problems were related to the Executive branch, and not to the "calcified Congressional/Military process"?
I think this takes us into a philosophical question about the responsibility of the president, at least in the context of Kerry’s quote.
My question is the path to answering your question here: what actions on Bush’s part would make Kerry’s assertion correct?
I can look at the report and imagine that Bush, himself, had no direct influence over this equipment manager or that inspector general, but he did make the call that the military was ready to invade Iraq. He’s not a detail guy, but detail guys were offering him the assessments he used to make the call, and, well, where does that buck stop?
When we went in to Afghanistan, everyone who needed armor had it. Shortly after we began the liberation of Iraq, the decision was made to equip all troops in theater with the same, hitech armor. So the eight or nine guys supporting the combat trooper also had to get the new armor, increasing demand 800% or so. We fought Kosovo, Bosnia, Gulf War I, etc., not only with the old armor (which ALL the troops had) but with mostly unarmored vehicles.
It is only this war where the left seems to have decided to armor every single vehicle in the fleet, from golf carts on up. How you armor a fuel truck, for example, to ensure crew safety, I DO NOT KNOW. And, frankly, we’ve already seen the use of bigger bombs. They can make a bomb that will take out a tank. No amount of armor on a Hummer can fix that.
Second point: Making ballistic ceramic armor isn’t liking making a toilet. A whole new level of QA/QC is required. The Stryker had a bunch of its armor replaced because the German company who made it did not meet standards.
I will say that I suspect that loads of folks hanging around CentCom in Qatar probably had the ceramic armor. REMF is a WWII term, and it exists for a reason.
Under what circumstances (other than those you’ve outlined) would the administration be responsible for the failures? Would Bush have to be out on an airfield directing shipments of armor away from Baghdad-bound cargo planes?
Well, considering that the appropriations, contracting, and procurement process is entirely the responsibility of the Congress, and is something over which the President, absent Congressional approval, has any voice in whatsoever...yeah.
The president cannot, after all, order even military officers to disobey the laws set by Congress, an interesting fact about our system of government which may have escaped you.
If it makes you happier, however, I’ll throw you a bone: Since the repiublicans have run the Congress for the last decade, they share a large portion of the blame for failing to streamline the processes they mandate for procurement.
Not the issue. The issue is, if the President is ultimately responsible for making the call that the war should begin, then he’s utimately responsible for judging that the equipment our troops need is ready.
Look at what really happened here. They weren’t expecting an insurgency. Had they predicted that correctly, then the 50,000 other American soldiers, who were not on the front lines of battle (and who they expected would only be building roads and schools and such), should have had the armor before the invasion began.
So it’s an error in prediction, not office management. And who’s responsible for the game plan? Blame Franks if you want to, but blaming Congress is wishful thinking.
Yes, Bush is the Commander in Chief and is ultimately responsible and Trumans’s quote is accurate, but... No one blames Truman for destruction of Task Force Smith or Task Force Faith in the first year of the Korean War or for the state of his armed forces in August 1950.
I have no problem with blaming the adminstration, but it would not produce any positive results for the troops, just political advantage for the minority party.
I tend to go along with the Secretary of Defense. You go to war with what you have, not what you need. That is the way it has always been. Our troops deserve our best, but they are never going to get it. Look at WWI, WWI, Korea, and the Civil War.
In wartime there will always be shortfall that the political opposition can exploit.
Ultimately the military does answer throught the executive branch, i.e., the president, so it isn’t fair to say that President Bush has no responsibility. At the same time though, the Congress appropriates the funds and through the use and abuse of its oversight function can make things much, much harder than they need to be. And as you have noted, any bureaucracy has built in inefficiencies that make quick solutions rather difficult. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater, that same bureaucracy manages to accomplish some rather amazing logistical feats. Things can always get worse and the law of unintended consequences has yet to be repealed.
It is well to keep in mind in such matters that the perfect remains the enemy of the good. In large institutions these days, e.g., the United States Armed Forces, process improvement is all the rage—and rightly so. But process improvement is about getting better, not getting perfect. Any criticism based on utopian populism should be ignored as it is bound to usually only make matters worse. Frankly, any criticism of our military logistics that starts with "George Bush" or "John Kerry" is just silly.
Bureacracies exist primarily to spread around blame for mistakes and inefficiency, not to perform any specific task. So in this case it’s working exactly as expected.
The President and his administration have tried, repeatedly, to bypass the worst aspects of military beauracracy. Such as by using well-established private contractors long trusted by previous administrations, and by relaxing controls on spending by millitary commanders on the ground. What do they get for their trouble? Irrational conspiracy theories and rants by self-righteous fools in Congress about Haliburton and cronyism and poor filing techniques. What do they get when they allow the system to function as those same self-appointed Congressional critics demand? Irrational conspiracy theories and accusations that they’re evil incompentents who "don’t care" about the troops.
March 19, 2003 Memo to the oppressed people of Iraq:
Sorry. Can’t invade just yet. First I have to solve every logistical obstacle that could become a point of criticism in the bitter minds of people who hate me.
Once I have obtained bureaucratic perfection, then we will come to your aid and deliver you from the tyrant, Saddam Hussein. In the meantime, "courage."
-GWB
P.S. Please extend my heart felt condolences to freedom-lovers throughout the Arab world and tell them not to worry because "Help is on the way!" Eventually.
but now lend your poetic talents to drafting a letter from GWB to the parents of US troops who landed in the desert without armor, remembering that this was a war of choice that even Bush said he would begin at a time of his choosing.
Truman didn’t start the Korean War, but he took responsibility. Bush started the Iraq War, but fails to take responsibility.
March 19, 2003 Memo to the oppressed people of Iraq:
Sorry. Can’t invade just yet. First I have to solve every logistical obstacle that could become a point of criticism in the bitter minds of people who hate me.
Once I have obtained bureaucratic perfection, then we will come to your aid and deliver you from the tyrant, Saddam Hussein. In the meantime, "courage."
March 19 2003 Memo to the Troops From George
I don’t know diddly about Iraq. But what I do know is that you will be welcomed with open arms by the people there. By December 2003, we will draw down to 30,000 troops. Because you will be welcomed as liberators, I really don’t have to worry about providing you with the kind of equipment that you might need if your presence was met with hostility. Canvas sided Hummers should be enough.
There may be others out there who might disagree with me, but I wouldn’t know since I don’t listen to anyone who tells me what I don’t want to hear.
And you know what, MK? They have been for almost 20 years. And that’s in a fucking armor battalion where you know damned well that you’ll end up in somebody’s line-of-sight/line-of-fire at some time.
Ultimately, these were neither Partisan, nor Administration, problems. In fact, for the most part they are the intrinsic problems of complex governmental bureaucracies, exacerbated by time-consuming Congressional oversight.
Absolutely.
As it is under Bush, so it was under Clinton, Bush before him, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, and Eisenhower. Probably even farther back than that. And if Kerry were president today, it would be just the same.
This is also why coffee makers end up costing $3500.
By the way, pertaining to the referenced Kerry quote, can we all just drop the stupidity about "the rush to war" ? Because I’ve see Galapagos tortises rush faster than we did in the runup to war...
Edward: All combat troops at the start of the Liberation of Iraq had armor. A majority had hi-tech ceramic armor. The sgt. scratching his ass at the PX in Kuwait City did not. The body armor that everyone wants uses thin, light weight, hi-tech ceramic plates where as the older armor uses heavier plates.
Bill Clinton sent troops into Bosnia and Kosovo without hi-tech ceramic armor. Gulf War I, Panama, and Grenada were all fought without hi-tech ceramic body armor. World War II, Korea and Vietnam were fought that way, too.
Edward, You are overlooking the fact that all the combat troops that went to war in Iraq DID have combat armor. Where the armor was lacking was in the rear echelon units—which only became a problem after the initial military thrust (the major combat mission) was completed and IED’s started becoming more prominent. No one, and I mean NO ONE, predicted the rise of the IED’s because it was assumed by all parties that the Iraqi forces would stand and fight and thus be killed or captured. Congress has never appropriated money on a possibility; only on probabilities. Is the procurement process all screwed up? You betcha—but primarily because Congress tends to spend 100K to combat 10K worth of fraud. Doesn’t make sense, but Congress has the need to "do something" whenever fraud surfaces. The bottom line is that the administration, of whatever party, can only do so much to streamline the procurement process, and the rest is up to Congress to change the procurement laws.
The answer is known as ’boot to ass’. You’d be surprised how big the SECDEFs sheers are when it comes to cutting red tape. But the political will has to be there. Rummy should have picked up the phone, called the CEO of the contractor and told him to deliver the stuff when and where and work out the BS later.
Coffee makers never cost $3,500. The price was actually around $600, but it wasn’t really a coffee-maker. It was a heating unit for meals aboard military transport aircraft that had to be able to heat the meal, including coffee, from cold to serving temperature in 60 seconds. Okay, try taking an off the shelf microwave and make it suitable for use on aircraft and tell me how much it should cost! Not to say that some of the costs are not ridiculous, but I get tired of the same old canards being brought up again and again as if there were any truth to them. The $200 toilet seat was another one—it was a seat & lid that was a one-time only replacement (i.e., no volume discounts available) for an aircraft toilet that had to function to keep the contents of the toilet contained even if the aircraft lost pressure at 30,000 feet. On the other hand, ordering a hammer cost my unit $20 when the same hammer was available in the local hardware store for $10—a cost differential directly tied to inventory costs and fraud prevention. We in the military knew whose fault it was—Congress’s.
Having served with both the active and reserve components of the Army during the 1990’s I find these debates tragically amusing. I understand that the liberals think that blaming Bush will help their cause but it only hilights their ignorance with everything military.
I was at Benning when the Ranger Bat returned from Somolia in October 1993. The Army re-learned the lesson that un-armored vehicles did not work in urban war-fare. Kerry was a congressmen. What did he do? What did Bill Clinton do? After the mog we went to Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, blah blah blah. So we "rushed to war" at least three times after 1993 without the right armor under a Democratic administration.
Where was the liberal press, politicians and the people pointing fingers on this blog then?
Using soldiers as pawns to support a political agenda is disgusting.
Edward: All combat troops at the start of the Liberation of Iraq had armor.
How is "combat" troops being defined and how many were there? If you mean those who stormed in and secured the country, that’s one thing. If you mean those who were flown in later, that’s another thing. The report in question suggests 50,000 who were flown in later were not equipped.
You are overlooking the fact that all the combat troops that went to war in Iraq DID have combat armor. Where the armor was lacking was in the rear echelon units—which only became a problem after the initial military thrust (the major combat mission) was completed and IED’s started becoming more prominent.
But I’m not overlooking it. I think it’s the crux of why is appropriate to blame Bush.
No one, and I mean NO ONE, predicted the rise of the IED’s because it was assumed by all parties that the Iraqi forces would stand and fight and thus be killed or captured.
I wasn’t a fly on the wall during the war planning meetings, but I do recall a pundit analyst or two predicting an insurgency (I’ll google to see if I can find them).
Still even if Bush, Rummy, etc, dismissed an insurgency as unlikely, that was clearly an error on their part. They own that, IMO.
Let’s dial the way-way-back machine a bit for this one.
FDR pushed for war, with Hitler’s Germany. He pushed US forces into the line of fire (see USS Reuben James and USS Kearny), he stripped US forces of equipment to aid the Brits.
He ordered US forces to deploy to Pearl Harbor, in order to warn off the Japanese in the western Pacific.
How did US equipment compare, given a "rush to war" that extended at least to 1940?
US Army troops were mostly equipped, on December 6, 1941, with Springfield rifles. The much better M-1 Garand was still a rarity. US Marines and Army troops were still equipped with the old pie-plate helmets, despite the introduction of the superior M-1 ’brain buckets.’
Meanwhile, the Army was equipped with M2 light tanks, despite having watched better German vehicles conquer all of Western Europe. The M3 Grant (w/a gun in a limited traverse side sponson) was being rushed into service. The M4 Sherman (undergunned and armored by the time it finally equipped most forces) was still nearly a year away.
The Army Air Force’s B-17s had no chin turrets (leading cause of losses in future air battles). The fighters were mostly P-40s, which had a good dive rate but were inferior to both Zeroes and Me-109s in maneuverability.
The Navy’s torpedoes didn’t work. Radar was still a rarity, and training and understanding of its strengths and weaknesses were even spottier. This, despite its use in the Royal Navy since at least 1939.
Clearly, FDR was irresponsible in pushing for war, and the fact that he didn’t have all of these glaring and known issues resolved by December 6th arguably is grounds for impeachment.
After the mog we went to Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, blah blah blah. So we "rushed to war" at least three times after 1993 without the right armor under a Democratic administration.
How many US troops died in those coflicts due to not enough armor?
After the mog we went to Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, blah blah blah. So we "rushed to war" at least three times after 1993 without the right armor under a Democratic administration.
"How many US troops died in those coflicts due to not enough armor?"
Thanks for proving my point Edward. More than one died. To those of us who served that is one too many. To you it is all about numbers and political games. That is why you and your party will continue to be irrelevant during a time of war.
Here’s what the President had to say to retired members of the military (including the head of the department of veteran’s affairs) who were visiting the White House on March 28, 2003:
You’re here at a time when our—the coalition, the United States and our partners, are acting together in a noble purpose. We’re out to keep the peace, to make the world more peaceful, to make our nation and other nations more secure, and we’re going to free the people of Iraq from the clutches of Saddam Hussein and his murderous allies.
We are sending a clear signal to the world that we will not submit to a future in which dictators and terrorists can arm and threaten the peace without consequence. We are enforcing the demands of the United Nations, and we refuse to leave the Iraqi people in slavery under Saddam Hussein. When the war in Iraq is won, all of who have joined this cause will be able to say to the Iraqi people, we were proud to fight for your freedom.
The regime that once terrorized all of Iraq now controls a small portion of that country. Coalition troops continue their steady advance and are drawing nearer to Baghdad. We’re inflicting severe damage on enemy forces. We are now fighting the most desperate units of the dictator’s army. The fierce fighting currently underway will demand further courage and further sacrifice. Yet we know the outcome of this battle: The Iraqi regime will be disarmed. The Iraqi regime will be removed from power. Iraq will be free.
Thus, the central stated objective of the invasion of Iraq was to set the Iraqi people free from the tyrant Hussein and his murderous allies. I note also that the President anticipated—one week after the invasion was launched—that the ripple-effect of the regime change in Iraq would send a signal to the rest of the world that the future does not belong to dictators and terrorists. I think it’s still too early to tell for sure, but the early indications are that the intended signal has been heard, and we are now seeing the emergence of Pan-Arab democracy as a direct result of the invasion of Iraq and the elections that were held in Iraq as scheduled.
Thanks for proving my point Edward. More than one died. To those of us who served that is one too many. To you it is all about numbers and political games. That is why you and your party will continue to be irrelevant during a time of war.
You really are pathetic.
Yikes. Got an axe to grind?
I asked a sincere question. Remember it’s the troops on the ground in Iraq making the most noise about the lack of armor. If the troops in Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, blah, blah, blah, had been making similar noise then, I would have criticized whoever was in power as well.
And, My party won WWII, for you information. And Haiti, and Bosnia, and Serbia. Yours pulled us out of Vietnam and Korea...just for the record. ;ppp
The issue is, if the President is ultimately responsible for making the call that the war should begin, then he’s utimately responsible for judging that the equipment our troops need is ready.
I think the problem here is that you’re defining "ready" as "as good as it can possibly be". Equipment will never, ever be as good as it can possibly be. Not in this war, not in the next. Not even if we planned for a decade. There’s always something else that can be done, and there’s always something better being developed. A friend of mine designs bullet-proof materials for the military for a living, and he’s been telling me of new designs and products in the pipeline. Should we wait for them?
There’s no such thing as Ready. There is only Good Enough. The winner, as they say, is the one that gets there the Fastest with the Mostest.
If we’d waited another few months, we may well have incurred additional problems. In fact, one of the problems is that the insurgency is dynamic....they are extremely flexible. That is, they are capable of reacting to any plan we put in place. Prior to the war, there was a range of expected outcomes. As the article indicates, we—that is, the military commanders wargaming it—misjudged the nature, degree and adaptability of the insurgency. That’s too bad, but that makes this war exactly like every other war ever fought. No plan survives contact with the enemy. They adapt, and so do we. Unfortunately, they were evolving so rapidly that—as the article clearly indicates—our procurement process was incapable of keeping up with our evolving needs.
All that to say: yes, mistakes were made. So long as humans are involved on either side, that’s just something that happens in war.
So it’s an error in prediction, not office management. And who’s responsible for the game plan? Blame Franks if you want to, but blaming Congress is wishful thinking.
It was both an error of prediction and an error of management. The article made that pretty clear. But my point is that it is ultimately not within the power of the military—and certainly not the Executive Branch—to circumvent the kind of process problems that cropped up here. It is within the power of Congress to solve these problems, but their any solution would involve less oversight and control....and that would simply create more problems. There’s not really a good solution here. These kinds of problems are inherent.
Jon, why do I keep double posting? How should I refresh to see new comments?
You have to close the window, then reopen it. Refreshing will double-post.
And, My party won WWII, for you information. And Haiti, and Bosnia, and Serbia. Yours pulled us out of Vietnam and Korea...just for the record. ;ppp
This is so sad. And so typical of bitter, Democrat partisans. WWII was not—I repeat NOT— won by the Democratic Party. Anyone who believes that tripe has made ignorance a virtue. Wars are won and lost by entire nations. People of all kinds of political allegiances fight, and die, side by side.
This reminds me of a startling observation that I made during the months prior to President Bush’s re-election. Long before the election was decided, and especially when Kerry appeared to be surging ahead a bit, I would remind my staunch Democrat friends and family members that we should remember that whoever won the election would be the President of ALL of us. Fascinatingly, none of them ever acknowledged that fact. To this day.
Such refusal to accept the democratic process and live with the results reveals people who view themselves more like a Fifth Column than a minority party.
Unless that date is wrong, this is hindsight rationalizing, not pre-invasion objection stating.
Oh please. The invasion had just begun one week earlier. Baghdad was still an objective. To call this "hindsight" is ridiculous. These were contemporaneous remarks that demonstrate the kinds of things that Bush actually said to military personnel to justify the decision he had made to invade Iraq.
It’s what you asked for, Edward. But it’s not what you want to hear.
Well, considering the attitude at the time, epitomized by I.F. "Izzy" Stone and company, that the Korean War was the "wrong war," that it was fought on behalf of an imperial presidency, and that the results (military dictators in Seoul) were no better than what was going on up north, I keep wondering when the Left concluded that the Korean War was, in fact, worth fighting?
I think I’m hallucinating. I think I just saw a Democrat suggest that pulling out of Vietnam was a bad thing.
I thought the same thing, Sinbad. But I’m old enough to remember the 1972 Presidential campaign. McGovern kept saying he was going to end the war quicker than Nixon would. So, it wasn’t a question of who was going to pull out of Vietnam, only how. I guess it’s okay to end a war only when a Democrat is President.
Edward, do you also blame the Pentagon for making sure that every soldier in the theater was prepared for a chemical weapons attack, or for having equipment and contractors on hand to fight oil-well fires?
So Democrats start wars and Republicans end them? Is that it? And no, I don’t believe that, but it does help illustrate how topsy-turvy things get when he jump down the rabbit hole.
lurking observer..you’re correct that there were a lot of equipment problems at the beginning of WWII, and some of the weapons deployed during the war left a lot to be desired, also. However, incredible feats of design & production were achieved in very short time frames...the proximity fuse for antiaircraft shells, the pioneering of assembly-line methods for ship production, and many, many more. I do worry that as a society we have become so bureaucratized and concerned about doing things "correctly" that we have lost something of our ability to do things rapidly.
I think that, if you take a look at the history of the GBU-28, frex, you’ll be heartened that Dubya hasn’t completely destroyed the ability of the US military to go and kill civilians indiscriminately.
Hmmm.
That didn’t sound right, did it?
Seriously, while there is reason to wonder about whether the normal channels for O&M/R&D work well, when we put a mind to things, that seems to change. The development of the GBU-28 bunker busters, using a stockpile of old 8" cannon barrels, produced working weapons in, iirc, about 30 days for Operation Desert Storm.
Similarly, when the friendly fire incidents in that war started spiraling, ID panels that worked with the thermal night-vision devices were fielded in short-order.
And it’s heartening to see that anti-GPS-jamming systems were incorporated into the JDAMs long before OIF, suggesting that somebody was thinking ahead.
As Rummy said, you fight the war w/ the army (and the equipment) you’ve got on hand. If you wait until everything is working perfectly, you’d might as well admit that you’re really intent on never going to war, because that blessed state of affairs will never occur.
lurk...I’m not in any way arguing that we should have delayed the Iraq operation until *everything* was working perfectly. I *am* arguing that there have been problems in execution, both in the war and in domestic antiterroism operations (such as, for example, the ridiculous delays in the arming of airline pilots.) These problems could be addressed to some extent through stronger leadership...but they also parallel larger trends in our increasingly lawyer-driven, procedure-driven, and credential-driven society.
I think we’re in moderately violent agreement, here.
The problems in execution, however, I think are inevitable. I can’t think of a single war that went perfectly, for any side. (Not saying you believe in such things, either.) That being said, the best you can hope for is to make fewer mistakes than the other side.
As for societal ossification, I’m with ya. The recent story out of Boston that one of the airport security people thought that Atta fit the profile of a terrorist, only to squelch those gut feelings because they weren’t PC fits exactly that sort of lawyer/procedure/credential mentality you rightly fear.
"I asked a sincere question. Remember it’s the troops on the ground in Iraq making the most noise about the lack of armor. If the troops in Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, blah, blah, blah, had been making similar noise then, I would have criticized whoever was in power as well."
Re-read what you wrote..... Now make pretend you have some common sense. Do you really think that no troops complained that they were using vietnam era flack vests? Do you think troops driving through ambushes in any engagement including Mogadishu thought they should be driving 5 ton trucks and humvees which were not up armored? The after action reports from Somolia specifically cited the lack of up armored vehicles. If you really cared you would have complained then. I know I did.
The fact of the matter is that the troops complain about many things. They complain about 5.56 ammunition, bad mags in thier 9mm side arms, boring MRE’s, lack of beer and a million other problems they face. The fact of the matter is that the media and your ilk want to complain about a problem that was ignored by congress and previous administrations for political purposes.
"And, My party won WWII, for you information. And Haiti, and Bosnia, and Serbia. Yours pulled us out of Vietnam and Korea...just for the record. ;ppp"
"Just for the record" the old Democratic party (of which I was a member) has little in common with contemporary party values. Specifically in the realm of national security. If your party had been serious about the troops they would have up armored the vehicles and provided proper body armor after what happened in Somolia in 1993.
World War II was a war of choice, too, in that regard. We chose to put up a fight with inadequate planes, crappy tanks, questionable tactics, and rudimentary training. We had plenty of excuses to back away if we had wanted to. You never have everything you need in the quantity you’d like, especially at the beginning. We (read: ordinary grunts) paid the price at Wake Island and the Philippines for that.
As others pointed out above, if your standard is to wait for the moment when everything is perfect you’ll never make a stand over anything. I’m not saying I want to write that letter to the parents mentioned above but I am saying that that’s only part of the story and has a context. Basing a decision as big as the Iraq decision solely on armor supplies is to not acknowledge the real world and how it works. The armor situation was just one factor in a huge, complex whirl of competing and pressing issues (political, diplomatic and military), that went into the decision mix.
I’m reminded of the scene from somewhere in the "Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" series with a passenger rocket full of passengers in suspended animation. They’ve been that way for years (hundreds of years, IIRC) because the rocket’s departure has been delayed by the fact that they don’t have all the necessary supplies on board. What are they missing? They are missing the moist towelettes intended for distribution to the passengers during the flight. The computer won’t let the flight take off until its checklist is complete. The bad news is that in the intervening time the entire civilization has collapsed. Until civilization re-emerges and moist towelettes are again being produced the passengers are essentially prisoners on the rocket, kept in perpetual suspended animation by the computers running the ship.
Now of course I’m not equating the importance of moist towelettes with the importance of armor. My point is that the story from "Hitchhiker’s Guide" illustrates the absurdity of trying to reduce something as complex as the decision on whether to go to war or not to a simple ’yes’ or ’no’ answer based on the current status of one particular resource. If it were that simple we could just have a computer run everything. But it’s not that simple, and there’s no absolutely right answer.
By going when we did we paid a price in some areas to gain an advantage in others. If we had waited we might have gained some advantage in armor while paying a different (and perhaps much greater) price somewhere else. The decision wasn’t made in a vaccuum. You can argue whichever way you want whether it was right or wrong but I submit that in no sense can you claim that the decision was obvious. Even not going at all would have exacted a price, notwithstanding the wishes of the anti-war protesters to pretend it were not so. Every day that Saddam Hussein stayed in power was a day the world, and especially the people of Iraq, paid a price. That’s part of the equation, too.
Fault-finding and blaming are ALWAYS possible, always! The object of one’s scorn may have liberated millions, alleviated suffering, spread responsible freedom and cured halitosis BUT! it cost the lives of 625 noncombatants!
But fault-finding and blaming NEVER help. Mature criticism and analysis have a MUCH HIGHER potential for helping.
*** Remarkable how the terrorists adapt, but we are inside their OODA loop and we adapt quicker. Doesn’t mean we get ALL the materiel desired, on time and in sufficient quantity, but American troops HAVE demonstrated an ability to coordinate air-ground-attack-logistics FAR SUPERIOR to the terrorists.
And, we WERE greeted with open arms. Then, when those brave enough to greet us were HUNG FROM PHONE POLES, the greetings abruptly slowed down, became covert, indoors... WE are NOT THE BAD GUYS, HERE!
Now of course I’m not equating the importance of moist towelettes with the importance of armor. My point is that the story from "Hitchhiker’s Guide" illustrates the absurdity of trying to reduce something as complex as the decision on whether to go to war or not to a simple ’yes’ or ’no’ answer based on the current status of one particular resource.
That’s what we need for our Democratic friends - the Total Perspective Vortex. Now, if only we can find a good Brownian motion generator, we can finally do something about the mania that always grips the Party out of power.
It has emerged lately that the insurgency in Iraq was well planned and was put in place by Saddam’s people in the 24 months or so before the war. During this time the fedayeen were trained and caches of weapons and money were put aside for later use. Had the US launched OIF 18 months earlier as some (like Mark Steyn) recommended, there would have been fewer JDAMs to use, but the insurgency would have been a lot less effective. Had it been launched 6 or 12 months later, there might have been more of the Interceptor Armour Vests with the good plates - but the insurgency might have been far better organized, and the additional casulties might have far outweighed the lives saved by wider issuance of the better armour. Or not; it’s impossible to say.
That said, I still think that the critics are a little bit right in blaming the administration - sure the procurement system is a f**ked-up Rube Goldberg Machine and sure Congressional oversight only adds sand to the gears, but Rumsfeld or his top acqisition guy should still be ready to kick a little ass on important matters. If the Congresscritters squeal, hold a news conference, explain yourself and let the chips fall where they may. I don’t think that this is an oval-office level issue - yes the buck stops there, but if ALL the bucks stop there, then the Pres will be buried in them and paralyzed - but maybe there is a high-level undersecratary who should get the axe over this - a little pour encourager les autrex is OK.
Let’s also recall that it’s not like there was NO body armour - there was a shortage of the ultra-modern Interceptor vests with the new, higher-tech lightweight ceramic plates, and some troops had to make do with the older second generation kevlar with the lower-tech, heavier, plates (Gulf War I era). These are not as good as the Interceptor, but they are still damned effective and lightyears ahead of what was used in Vietnam. They also have better shoulder and lower back/abdominal coverage than the Interceptor, which look a little skimpy to me - though the Interceptor has better freedom of movement - another trade-off.
There is also the problem of REMFs issuing the best stuff to themselves - this problem seems to be endemic in ANY army - and if Bush could solve it then he’d deserve a place on Mt. Rushmore. Sure the guy driving a truck into Iraq needs the good stuff - but does the guy running the supply depot in Kuwait or Germany need it? But I will guaranty you that he has it, since he’s the guy who issues it.
As apparently the only person posting around here on active duty, a combat arms soldier, and having spent 15 months in OIF in a battalion that won the Presidential Unit Citation for actions in Sadr City and Najaf, I should weigh in with some facts.
I was the Battalion S4 (Logistics officer) for our armor battalion. We deployed (May 03) with IBA/SAPI for our scout PL, mortar PL, and Medics only. I managed to scrounge enough before before deploying to outfit about 150 sets for a 600 soldier task force. We hot seated the body armor in Baghdad until September, when we finally managed to get up to about the 90% mark. We got the rest by December. This was an active duty armor battalion, patrolling sectors of Baghdad with over 500,000 citizens.
As for vehicle armor, we received our first up armored HMMWV’s (3) in November. Over the next six months we acquired 15 more, for a total of 18 armored HMMWV’s (M1114) upon redeployment in July 04. Our two light cav troops fought in standard 1025 "hardshell" HMMWV’s. I personally rode in a doorless, armorless, M998, including during two ambushes and one major op. I had a local national fabricate a mount for my M240 MG so I could shoot back.
During our first months, the CJTF-7 Sergeant Major sent a memo out actually telling soldiers to remove "unprofessional" armor because it made us look like the "Beverly Hillbillies". A TACOM rep brought us a message in September directing that all non-TACOM approved armor and mods be removed because they were not tested and approved. Both directives were ignored.
Logistics was an outright disaster for the first year in Iraq. Our BN would not have survived if not for the nearly $2 million (cash) I spent in FOO money to buy everything from radios to toilet paper on the local economy. It also paid for the limited armor and gun mounts I equipped on our HMMWV’s.
That said, I was satisified for patrolling in my unarmored HMMWV (I logged over 6000 miles in Iraq) but if I was doing MSR (big highway) work I would definitely want armor.
Do I think that it was some grand plot by the highest levels to deprive the soldiers? No. Do I think they have a responisibility, as I do now as a company commander, for everything that their organization does or fails to do? Yes. Ineptitude and bureaucracy are only an execuse. That which the right people want to be done can be done.
Kudos to Jon for the post that set off this dialog. Kudos to all for an informative and civil debate. I mean that.
Besides agreeing with Jon, I find myself struck most with Mike who wrote, "a war critic could read the Times article and not have his opinion changed in the slightest. A Kerry supporter would say that if the administration had planned ahead and wasn’t in such a "rush to war," all of these institutional failures wouldn’t have hindered the war effort. He’d argue that you order the vests you need so that they get there well before you actually need to do the fighting, and you don’t start fighting a war of choice until they get there (I disagree with this position, but that was the argument Kerry was making, and I think a normal person would see it as reasonable)."
The best way to sharpen your argument is to put yourself in the shoes of those with the opposite argument. So what is the rejoinder to Mike’s hypothetical Kerry supporter?
In scanning the comments I didn’t see this: Mike’s hypothetical Kerry supporter is engaging in backwards induction. Let’s back up one more step and note: On this logic the democrats in Congress should have taken the lead in improving the battlefield readiness processes. In fact, they had just they opposite incentive in order to either (1) manipulate the administration’s calculus about going to war at all, and/or (2) make the administration look bad when it did.
Edward, How many soldiers died in "your party’s" WWII, Korea and Vietnam in Jeeps? Far more have died in ’unarmored’ jeeps than in ’unarmored’ humvees. I would like to see your denunciations of FDR, Truman, Kennedy and LBJ now.
The whole conception of ’everything should be armored’ is a cheap political point. Can and should we provide what the military determines it needs? Yes. But in my experience soldiers spend a lot more time and effort trying to get their flak jackets off than in trying to get new ones.
This administration failed to correctly predict the insurgency, and failed to correctly predict the future! They failed to predict exactly what tactics and strategy the enemy might adapt to.
I blame that evil Shrub for failing .... and for failing to give me the dang winning lotto numbers, too!
In determining where to lay the blame for the problems listed in the original post above, it seems that an examination of the Constitutional relationships between the President, the Congress, and the Armed Forces is in order. Under the Constitution, the President is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces but the Congress regulates those Armed Forces. An extreme example of this relationship could be something like this: the President says "I am sending the Armed Forces into Iraq to remove that evil bastard, Saddam Hussein" and the Congress blinks and says "What Armed Forces do you mean? We just disbanded them 5 minutes ago." [As I said, this is an extreme example!] Due to this Constitutional relationship, it is clear that any rules or regulations concerning acquisition or disposition of weapons, weapons systems, or any other materiel that the DOD makes actually either come from, or must be approved by, the Congress - not the President (this is why Congress, over the DOD’s and President’s objection, can force the Military to buy weapons and weapons systems it does not want or need and why the President can’t just order based to be shut down). Thus, it can be seen that nearly ALL the problems described in the original post above can and should be laid at the feet of the (Republican dominated) Congress, not the President.
