GIs deaths in Iraq due to criminal incompetence (Knight Ridder)

[tocqueville]

<snip>

It can be fairly stated that many of America's 1,800 dead and 14,000 wounded were killed because they were riding in unarmored or lightly armored vehicles that are totally inappropriate to the nature of the war and enemy we are fighting.

This while the heaviest and deadliest divisions in the world's best Army were being ordered to leave most of their best equipment - the M1A2 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles - parked at their home bases in orderly ranks.

This while the highly trained crews of those vehicles were ordered to dismount and become infantry to patrol the most dangerous streets and roads in the world in unarmored Humvees.

We are spending $5 billion a month on this war -much of it siphoned away and sucked up by private contractors - but somehow we can't send our soldiers and Marines to war with the best equipment in the world - the equipment we already own and know how to use to great effect.

Don't tell me we are going to stay the course. We are on the wrong course and it only leads deeper into the quicksand. Tell me how we are going to change course. Tell me how we are going to do everything we can, spend whatever it takes, to give our sons and daughters what they need to fight and survive and prevail even in a war that makes no sense.

Tell me we can at least do that. Tell me that you made some serious mistakes, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President and Mr. Secretary of Defense, and that you are willing to do everything to correct those mistakes.

Tell me this is not Wonderland, Alice.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." Readers may write to him at: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 700 12th St. N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005-3994. ---

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/krwashbureau/20050810/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_galloway_column_wa

[Sanity Claws]

1. Good -- the media is finally reporting this

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. The missing 9 billion would purchase at least a few pieces of

armor and ceramic plates for the men and women over there.

[cliss]

3. Yes - Cindy Sheehan may be more influential than she

realizes. Knight-Ridder is an amazing news reporting service. They've been much more open about this malevolent misadministration, and the war in Iraq.

By the say, Mr. Galloway wrote the best seller "we were Soldiers Once". Is this the story that was made into the movie with Mel Gibson? I watched it, and was shocked.