astralis

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060925/...aq_democrats_2

Retired officers criticize Rumsfeld

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent Mon Sep 25, 6:54 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Retired military officers on Monday bluntly accused Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of bungling the war in
Iraq, saying U.S. troops were sent to fight without the best equipment and that critical facts were hidden from the public.

"I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq," retired Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said in remarks prepared for a hearing by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

A second witness, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, assessed Rumsfeld as "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically ...."

"Mr. Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making," he added in testimony prepared for the hearing, held six weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections in which the war is a central issue.

The conflict, now in its fourth year, has claimed the lives of more than 2,600 American troops and cost more than $300 billion.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record), D-N.D., the committee chairman, told reporters last week that he hoped the hearing would shed light on the planning and conduct of the war. He said majority Republicans had failed to conduct hearings on the issue, adding, "if they won't ... we will."

Since he spoke, a government-produced National Intelligence Estimate became public that concluded the war has helped create a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Several members of the Senate Democratic leadership were expected to participate in the hearing. Dorgan said Republican lawmakers had been invited.

It is unusual for retired military officers to criticize the
Pentagon while military operations are under way, particularly at a public event likely to draw widespread media attention.

But Batiste, Eaton and retired Col. Paul X. Hammes were unsparing in remarks that suggested deep anger at the way the military had been treated. All three served in Iraq, and Batiste also was senior military assistant to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Batiste, who commanded the Army's 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, also blamed Congress for failing to ask "the tough questions."

He said Rumsfeld at one point threatened to fire the next person who mentioned the need for a postwar plan in Iraq.

Batiste said if full consideration had been given to the requirements for war, it's likely the U.S. would have kept its focus on
Afghanistan, "not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents."

Hammes said in his prepared remarks that not providing the best equipment was a "serious moral failure on the part of our leadership."

The United States "did not ask our soldiers to invade France in 1944 with the same armor they trained on in 1941. Why are we asking our soldiers and Marines to use the same armor we found was insufficient in 2003," he asked.

Hammes was responsible for establishing bases for the Iraqi armed forces. He served in Iraq in 2004 and is now Marine Senior Military Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, National Defense University.

Eaton was responsible for training the Iraqi military and later for rebuilding the Iraqi police force.

He said planning for the postwar period was "amateurish at best, incompetent a better descriptor."

Public opinion polls show widespread dissatisfaction with the way the Bush administration has conducted the war in Iraq, but division about how quickly to withdraw U.S. troops. Democrats hope to tap into the anger in November, without being damaged by Republican charges they favor a policy of "cut and run."

By coincidence, the hearing came a day after public disclosure of the National Intelligence Estimate. The report was completed in April and represented a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government, according to an intelligence official.

Anon

I agree with 90% of the content of that article.

dalem

This guy is clearly a moron because this statement is patently false. We had Shermans and Stuarts in 1941 and Shermans and Stuarts in 1944. No personal armor in 1941 and no personal armor in 1944. Whatever larger point he is trying to make is defeated by such rank amateurishness. What a maroon.

-dale

Anon

That'd be the 10% i didnt agree with...though, we did have newer and more modern models of those tanks(and planes, ships, etc) in June 1944 than we did in 1941, and they were typically better armed/armrd.

What i mainly disagree with is that the US made a fundamental mistake by attacking Iraq to begin with.

Gun Grape

I think that his point was that in 1941 the M-3 Stuart and M-3 Grant tanks were the models that we had to go to war in.

But we improved from there. By 1944 all the Lees and M-3 Stuarts were gone. Replaced by M-5s and Shermans.

dalem

So even if that's his meaning, what's his point? Does he really think that a better tank/gun/helmet/flak vest needs to be developed?

A better analogy would be "lessons learned". Bocage assault techniques (for instance) were widely disseminated throughout division, corps, and army levels as they were developed, and taught right behind the lines as units rotated through. And that was over the course of a month or two. From what I've read it seems that we could be disseminating the COIN lessons we are learning and re-learning in Iraq a whole lot better and faster.

But mentioning, or criticizing technological development times seems ridiculous in the context of the issue raised.

-dale

Confed999

New equipment and training is being provided everyday...

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

leib10

Yeah that argument flopped. Other than that I can't say I disagree. I mean, in retrospect, I would say that the Iraq war was not worth the effort, especially if they had used the same strategies and agendas that they ended up using.

__________________
"The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes." G-Man

Canmoore

His point is that you need to learn from your mistakes and give your troops better equipment.

Look at Canada in Afghanistan. pre-afghanistan the army relied on the Iltis to fill the role that the Humvee fill for America. However in October 2003 an Iltis (which has no armour) carying two soldiers was vaporized by an anti-tank mine.

Soon afterwards the Iltis was replaced by the armoured Gelaendewagens (G-wagon) which is armoured and is more durable and reliable than the Iltis.

I have heard complaints about the lack of sufficient armour on the Humvees for a long time now. Had all humvees had sufficient armour some casualities would have been avoided. But not all Humvees have been upgraded.

This is what i think he means, 4 years into the war, the army is not learning from its mistakes and proceeds with inadequate equipment for its soldiers.


Here is little tidbid of information for you..

The Iltis costs $3,000-$5,000 each, However the cost to bring them back to Canada would cost about $250,000 per flight. The government is trying to sell them off to private collectors and buyers, if they are not all sold. They will just be left in Afghanistan to there own fate.

dalem

This is still an empty argument. Short of a set of personal powered armor for every soldier, sailor, and Marine under arms, what does a guy like this expect?

I just don't think that this line of "4 years into the war, the army is not learning from its mistakes and proceeds with inadequate equipment for its soldiers." is worth a damn.

-dale

Julie

I watched this on C-Span last nite.

They were very adamant, and seemed quite perturbed that Rumsfeld was running the war instead of the Generals which know better.

Stand behind your Generals men, Rumsfeld needs to go....stop defending him.

Canmoore

I watched a documentary on a certain news station which told of soldiers who in Iraq were told to operate equipment that they had never trained on, i have heard the same thing on various other news networks. But i guess thats an empty argument and not worth a dam also.

highsea

Major Shek could comment on this better than anyone, but as I understand things, the unarmored Humvees are restricted to safe areas, and have been for a long time.

It was around the end of 2003 to mid 2004 when this really became an issue. The insurgency had modified it's tactics to exploit the fact that the unarmored Humvees were vulnerable. Also vulnerable were the unarmored supply trucks that were coming in from Kuwait. The IED's became much more powerful around this time, and casualties increased.

Around the beginning of 2004, a crash program was instituted to get the upgraded armor in place, and the unarmored vehicles were restricted to places like inside the Green Zone. There were some Marines who preferred the unarmored vehicles for their mobility, and they were the only ones who operated them outside the so-called "safe" zones.

It might have been advisable to bring in M113's to take over the role of the Humvees in patrols, but this is a much larger logistical problem, and there would have been a lot more streets and bridges torn up, etc. Plus, the media would have had a field day with the "tanks" in downtown Baghdad.

Eventually I imagine that the insurgency would have adjusted their tactics accordingly. Nothing is invulnerable, even MBT's get blown up occasionally.

I was for the use of APC's back in 2004 when this started to become more of a problem. I am not qualified to speak on the logistical problems, but obviously bringing an M113 into theatre is more involved than bringing in a Humvee, and the decision was made not to use them.

Even so, I think the Humvee argument is blown way out of proportion. The decision was made to go in fast and light, and initially it worked beautifully. It was only later that it became a problem, and we were probably slower to respond than some people liked, but it was not something that was ignored completely.

__________________
My baby called me up. She said- Why don't you ever take me out? Pick me up in your brand new car....You shake the short change from the old fruit jar...

Shek

All soldiers in Iraq were wearing Interceptor Body Armor with the SAPI plates by JAN 04. The DAP armor began arriving in the summer of 04. Additional side armor began arriving last year, as well as enhanced SAPI plates.

HMMWV armor kits starting arriving in Iraq in NOV 03, and really started pouring in huge numbers in MAR 04. By MAY 04, there shouldn't have been any HMMWVs operating off of FOBs without armor except in very extreme cases. M1114s, also known as up-armored HMMWVs, began arriving during the summer of 04 - I don't know when all M1114 requirements were filled - the issue here was that commanders kept on adding requirements as time went on, which resulted in a slow build up of production capability instead of going full hilt from the start.

The bottomline is that the protection that has been afforded to American soldiers is unprecedented. That is not to say that the process in fielding this protective equipment to soldiers hasn't had missteps, as there most certainly has been. There are several factors - failure of ground commanders to properly forecast requirements, bureaucratic red tape based on Congressionally approved federal acquisition regulations, poor anticipation at the DoD level to prompt ground commanders to send in requests. It is way too much of a simplification to try and point blame in only a single direction.

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

Shek

What equipment? I'm not aware of the report you are referring to, so I can't comment specifically. However, there's a lot of equipment where the best thing to do is to leave it in country, which then necessitates in-country training. Thus, your statement is too vague and does currently qualify as an empty argument.