Shortchanging the troops
This Bush quote was delivered in July 2003, but one might have heard it anytime over the last couple of years.
“Anytime this nation puts one of our youngsters into harm’s way, we’d better — and we will — make sure they get the best training, the best equipment, the best possible support.”
Indeed, this was a campaign theme Bush embraced throughout 2004 — if you want what’s best for Americans in uniform, Bush is your man.
A must-read report in today’s New York Times explains how untrue these claims are — Bush’s Pentagon made repeated mistakes in getting the troops the armor and support they need, at a very high price to those serving in Iraq.
The war in Iraq was hardly a month old in April 2003 when an Army general in charge of equipping soldiers with protective gear threw the brakes on buying bulletproof vests.
The general, Richard A. Cody, who led a Pentagon group called the Army Strategic Planning Board, had been told by supply chiefs that the combat troops already had all the armor they needed, according to Army officials and records from the board’s meetings. Some 50,000 other American soldiers, who were not on the front lines of battle, could do without.
In the following weeks, as Iraqi snipers and suicide bombers stepped up deadly attacks, often directed at those very soldiers behind the front lines, General Cody realized the Army’s mistake and did an about-face. On May 15, 2003, he ordered the budget office to buy all the bulletproof vests it could, according to an Army report. He would give one to every soldier, “regardless of duty position.”
But the delays were only beginning. The initial misstep, as well as other previously undisclosed problems, show that the Pentagon’s difficulties in shielding troops and their vehicles with armor have been far more extensive and intractable than officials have acknowledged, according to government officials, contractors and Defense Department records.
In the case of body armor, the Pentagon gave a contract for thousands of the ceramic plate inserts that make the vests bulletproof to a former Army researcher who had never mass-produced anything. He struggled for a year, then gave up entirely. At the same time, in shipping plates from other companies, the Army’s equipment manager effectively reduced the armor’s priority to the status of socks, a confidential report by the Army’s inspector general shows. Some 10,000 plates were lost along the way, and the rest arrived late.
Disgraceful.
Cody’s order for vests was ultimately filled — 167 days later. As the Times reported, it took weeks and months more for thousands of other troops, many of whom were fighting a growing insurgency at the time.
Indeed, as Salon noted this morning, more than 200 U.S. soldiers were killed between the time the Pentagon shut down orders for body armor and the time that new vests finally started arriving in Iraq again. “If any of those soldiers died because they lacked the body armor,” Salon said, “the administration plainly bears at least some of the blame.”
The White House, for all its posturing and photo-ops, will exploit the troops for political advantage, but it won’t stand with them when they need support most.