The Humvee fiasco

Its all over the news now, but there are some interesting things about this issue that you may not have heard. First of all, if you recall, a number of weeks or months ago, a group of soldiers refused to run an unarmored convoy to the northern part of Iraq. The reason they gave was bad equipment, contanimated fuel and the fact that their convoy was not protected since their trucks and Humvee's had no armor. If you also recall, the Army's response was that they would look into the issue and make any needed changes. Here is a link to a 60 minutes story about that deal:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/31/60minutes/main652491.shtml

But as the question about armor and equipment shows, it does not appear that much has been done about it yet. After this uproar started the Pentagon tried to blame everyone but themselves. What is especially troubling is that the main contractor for upgrading Humvee's told the Army that they could prodcue more if they needed to do so, but that the army never asked and the contractor also said they would do whatever they needed to do to accomodate the army. But it takes Rumsfeld looking look an idiot on TV for something to happen apparently. I think the amazing thing is that after the question was asked to Rumsfeld, and he gave probably the worst answer he could, all of a sudden the Pentagon scrambled to play that good ol' Washington game of CYOA and scramble to save face. But this problem was known as far back as last year. Its just another example of the gov't not having a plan for this war. WIth the new Army focus on light infantry units, its hard to believe that such an upgrade kit didn't exist prior to the Iraq war and also that more Humvee's were not built with armor to begin with. Don't get me wrong,I support the war but the way its been run has not been good and to make it worse, our troops over there are paying the price for these mistakes. You see story after story about troops telling their parents or spouses that they need more ammo, body armor and armor for vehicles. In some cases, they were even buying body armor and sending it to them.

Here is a good link about the Humvee armor thing:

http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234%257E24410%257E2593213,00.html

I could undertand rushing to war if there really was an urgent danger, like if they had proof that Saddam had nukes or biological weapons or was close to having them, but as the evidence has shown, that was not the case. We knew he once had them, before the first Iraq War, but no real evidence that he had them since then. So one would think that we would wait until to we had enought troops, ammo, vehicles, etc. before going to war, but again, we did not and lives have been lost as a result. Can you believe, we actually rushed to war knowing many of the ground troops did not have the newer and much more effective body armor?

In a sign that its really getting serious, even Trent Lott is saying he does not have confidence in Rumsfeld. I also find it amusing that one of the few senior Republicans with actual combat experience, Sen. McCain, has been extremetly critical of Rumsfeld. Before anyone starts using this an excuse that we have to spend more on the military, consider that the Pentagon never asked for additional funds to uparmor more humvee's, apparently it was not a priority for them. Yikes!!

If you have thoughts on this let me know, but this is a shame that the very people that should care most about the troops seem to care the least.