As shown in the film Sir! No Sir!, there has been a deliberate and highly successful public relations campaign, lasting 30 years, to prove that GIs in Vietnam were not only stabbed in the back by antiwar activists and their liberal allies in Government, but they were also spat upon and harassed by these same activists when they returned to the United States from Vietnam.
Over the last few days, one of these issues has been brought into focus as a result of Barack Obama's comment, during the Democratic debate in Texas that he had heard from an Army Captain who told him he had been deployed to Afghanistan with incomplete training and a shortage of materials. This claim has been roundly condemned by neo-conservatives and chicken hawks, as well as by Republican senators desperate to avoid the impression that the Administration, in spite of its rhetoric, effectively forced US troops in Afghanistan "with one hand tied behind their back."
On the other hand, Afghan war veterans, through forums such as VetVoice have come to Senator Obama's defense, by illustrating how they had been forced to fight in Afghanistan with too few resources and shoddy equipment. These observations need to be disseminated as widely as possible, as they offer a crucial counter-weight to the bloviations of the neo-cons and their friekorps following. The following are taken from the Weekly Standard's response to Obama's claim and the VetVoice response to the claims made by the Weekly Standard and others.
The Weekly Standard
Captain Tells NBC Shortages Were in Training, Not Combat
In Thusday night's debate, Barack Obama said:
You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon--supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.
And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.
First ABC's Jake Tapper talked to the captain to verify his story. He found the captain credible and gave the all clear, despite the fact that the captain told him that there was no ammunition shortage in Afghanistan. NBC also spoke with the captain, but they weren't quite so quick to declare the case open and shut:
The captain told NBC News that he was talking about not having enough ammunition and no Humvees for training, but that his unit underwent a three-week crash course in Afghanistan before they saw combat.
The captain, who spoke on background because he's still active duty, said that his unit temporarily had to replace their .50-caliber turret-mounted machine gun with a weapon seized from the Taliban because they couldn't get a needed part fast enough.
Obama had claimed that U.S. forces didn't have ammunition for their fight against the Taliban as a consequence of the war in Iraq. There is no evidence that this is the case. Furthermore, U.S. troops weren't capturing Taliban weapons "because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief." They had a broken gun and they temporarily replaced it with a weapon that had already been captured. Big difference. And you know what...if Obama had misremembered this story because he'd spoken with the captain so long ago, it might not be such a big deal. But Obama had never spoken with the captain. His staff had. And so Obama mangled the story.
As an aside, the only other person who's weighed in to support Obama's claims is Phillip Carter. Talking Points Memo, Andrew Sullivan, and others link to Carter as though he's some kind of authority on the subject. He may be, but he's also "doing some work for the Obama campaign," a fact that Obama's supporters in the blogosphere seem all too happy to ignore.
Update: Carter is on Obama's Veterans Policy Committee. Shouldn't TPM note that when the quote Carter as saying Obama's story is "eminently believable"?
The Captain Tells a Different Story
The captain to whom Obama was referring presumably belongs to a battalion of the 10th Mountain Division, which is stationed at Ft. Drum, and as one of the Army's few truly light infantry units, has been deployed more than almost any other formation outside of Special Operations Command. As Jake Tapper reported earlier, the captain was in fact a lieutenant at the time, so he obviously could have been a platoon leader.
But his story isn't quite Obama's story. Obama gives the impression that these guys were about to go to Afghanistan, and then half of his platoon was detached and sent to Iraq instead. The actual story is more prosaic and typical of Army practice in most conflicts, including World War II. Over a period of some months, individuals in his platoon were transferred (not detached) to other units, probably based on immediate operational requirements; e.g., a unit about to deploy to Iraq was short of MOS-11B (Combat Infantryman), and the unit was fleshed out with drafts from other units. Happens all the time, has always happened. In World War II, it was not uncommon for units still in training, or newly arrived in a theater of operation, to be poached for troops to round out another unit about to go into battle.
On going into battle shorthanded--it's normal. If you aren't shorthanded when you hit the ground, you will be shorthanded almost immediately thereafter, as your unit takes casualties or has to detach men for other duties. All rifle squads, platoons and companies in a combat zone are generally short anywhere from 15-25 percent of their TO&E (Table of Organization and Equipment) strength, and will remain so as long as combat intensity remains high and the unit stays in the line. On being pulled out for rest and recuperation, a unit will be fleshed out with replacements, who will receive some hasty orientation and training to augment the training they received beforehand. Then it's back into the line, and the unit will be under strength again. That's why a unit's combat readiness is inversely proportional to its employment: units that never see combat always have their full complement of men and equipment, hence are (on paper) always more ready than units which have been in combat for any substantial period. Does this mean that the unit with the higher readiness is more "combat effective" than the other one? Not necessarily--a combat-proven unit at reduced strength may be much better than a rookie unit at full strength. There's a tipping point, but defining it is a very complex subject.
Regarding the HMMWVs, at the time there was a critical shortage throughout the Army in M1114 Up-Armored HMMWVs due to shortages of armor plate. This would have happened, no matter what the Bush administration had done, simply because there was no surplus capacity to produce armor in the industrial base (we have since been importing armor steel from a number of sources, including Russia and Ukraine). Only having two or three operational vehicles ought to be considered par for the course. So is complaining about it. Using other vehicles to make up the shortfall? Also par for the course. In World War II, our troops, the most lavishly equipped in history, often used captured German transport--along with captured German weapons (for instance, the 88mm Panzerschreck and the disposable Panzerfaust anti-tank rockets were considered much better than the 2.76-inch Bazooka, and were picked up wherever they could be found).
On shortages of weapons and ammunition for training at Ft. Drum, again, this is typical of any army during a surge period. It has happened to our troops in every war. Our troops were, until well into 1942, forced to train with plywood mockups of tanks and dummy rifles. Heavy weapons such as the Mk.19 Automatic Grenade Launcher and the M2 Browning .50-cal machine gun are considered support weapons, and while it is nice to be able to train with them, I wouldn't call the inability to do so a crippling disability for an infantry unit. After all, neither one is actually on the TO&E of a rifle platoon.
Mounting a 12.7mm DShK in place of an M2 Browning? Not a particularly smart move, since the Browning has much better ballistics and is more reliable, but hey, with that big muzzle brake on the end, the Dushka really looks cool.
Jake Tapper may think the captain “backs up Obama’s story.” Not really--if the “story” is the story as told by Obama. His version is misleading as a reporting of what the captain said. More fundamentally, it was intended as an indictment of our management of the war. But in this respect it’s silly. In fact, the “story” here merely shows the operation of "real war," as opposed to "war on paper." That a presidential candidate would make something of it either shows a cynical attempt to score political points, or an appalling ignorance of military realities.
Warner Questions Obama's Story
Senator John Warner sent a letter to Barack Obama this afternoon regarding his comments during last night's debate alleging ammunition and other equipment shortages in Afghanistan. Warner refers to Obama's comments as "a disturbing framework of factual allegations."
According to Jake Tapper's report earlier today, the unnamed captain to whom Obama attributed the account was deployed to Afghanistan in the summer of 2003. Warner was, at the time, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. As such, he explains that he has "a responsibility to establish where in the military chain of command rests the 'accountability' [for the shortfalls], depending of course, on the accuracy of the facts."
Warner informs Obama that he is working with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to determine the facts of the incident described in last nights debate, and that he intends to raise the issues next Tuesday when Secretary of the Army Pete Green and General Casey appear before the committee.
Further, he asks Obama to provide the "essential facts of when- the dates- the unit was deployed, to which brigade combat team, or other unit it was assigned, the name and current location of the captain, or other military personnel who shared the alleged facts with you, so that the committee staff can debrief them."
This comes just hours after Reuters reported doubts within the Pentagon as to the veracity of Obama's account.
AP Fact Check: Obama's Story Impossible to Verify
The AP reports:
The Obama campaign offered no details to support the captain's story, making it impossible to verify. A spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about who the captain was and when and how the candidate learned about the allegation.
ABC News said it talked to the unidentified captain, whose account of shortages in Afghanistan was for the most part accurately summarized by Obama, although not verified.
The captain said, however, that the unit did not go after the Taliban for the purpose of getting their weapons, but sometimes used those weapons when some were captured.
"For the most part" is a generous description. Aside from Tapper's faith in the captain as credible, the story remains unverified, and, in fact, "impossible to verify," since the Obama campaign has not released any detail that might corroborate the account. Even if one takes the captain's story at face value, there is a large discrepancy between the story he tells and the story Obama told in last night's debate (mainly that there was no ammunition shortage, and that the unit was equipped with a full compliment of weapons).
But at this point the captain's story cannot be taken at face value, and confirmation of his account cannot be left solely to Jake Tapper's assessment of the captain's credibility. Confirmation requires something beyond the word of an unnamed captain who found his way to a meeting with Barack Obama's staff at some unspecified date in the past. Obama has leveled a specific and unsubstantiated allegation that remains, by any objective analysis, "impossible to verify."
Pentagon Questions Obama's Claim
Reuters reports:
The Pentagon on Friday cast doubt on an account of military equipment shortages mentioned by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama during a debate with rival Hillary Clinton.
During the face-to-face encounter on Thursday evening, Obama said he had heard from an Army captain whose unit had served in Afghanistan without enough ammunition or vehicles.
Obama said it was easier for the troops to capture weapons from Taliban militants than it was "to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief," President George W. Bush.
"I find that account pretty hard to imagine," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters
It is pretty hard to imagine, because that particular element of the story wasn't supported by the captain in his interview with Tapper. And while Obama did leave the impression that U.S. forces were serving "without ammunition or vehicles," that wasn't true either.
Now that the Pentagon has weighed in, it may be possible to get a fuller accounting of what exactly did happen. No doubt that Tapper felt the captain's story was credible, but the Pentagon can verify the details, and it should do so. Did the Pentagon poach members of the unit for duty in Iraq? If so, when did their replacements arrive? And was the unit really using Toyota pickup trucks to ride into battle? Given the liberties Obama took in retelling the story, these are fair questions to ask.
Obama's Captain Talks
The Obama campaign put ABC reporter Jake Tapper in touch with the army captain Obama referred to in last night's debate. Go read Tapper's report of what the captain says. Unfortunately, his statements don’t justify the charges Obama made last night.
Once again, Obama said half the platoon had been "sent to Iraq,"
And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.
Nothing the captain said supports Obama's accusation that soldiers in Aghanistan faced a shortage of ammunition. Nothing the captain said supports the (ridiculous) claim that American soldiers were capturing Taliban weapons "because it was easier to get Taliban weapons" than American ones.
What the captain said was that it was sometimes difficult to get parts in theater, and on occasion his soldiers used captured weapons. If Obama were running to be quartermaster in chief, this story might have some relevance. But Obama hasn't unveiled his plan to streamline the Army's logistics in Afghanistan. And his basic narrative of the commander in chief neglecting equipment needs in Aghanistan isn’t supported by this one account. Moreover, does Obama think (a distortion of) one captain’s anecdote is an appropriate basis for making broad claims about military matters in a campaign to become commander in chief?
The captain's name is withheld in Tapper's piece, but we have submitted a request to the Obama campaign for an interview. More on Tapper's report at Hot Air and Ace.
VetVoice:
Brandon Friedman: More on Warner and Troop Equipment Shortages
Here is Senator John Warner in his letter to Senator Barack Obama yesterday:
"As you well know, we in Congress, under our Constitution, have explicit duties to provide for the welfare of the men and women in our armed forces and members of their families,' said Mr. Warner. "We have no higher calling."
That's right, Senator Warner. So, then, who could forget this exchange between Army Specialist Thomas Wilson and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld?
"Yes, Mr. Secretary. Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north."
To which Rumsfeld responded:
"As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
Senator Warner is right about there being no higher calling. Unfortunately, he's being completely disingenuous with his faux surprise over the fact that troops in the field aren't being resourced properly. And not only does he know about it, but the Republicans in the Senate--under his leadership--have blocked legislation time and again that would have better provided "for the welfare of the men and women in our armed forces."
So don't give me this "Oh-I-just-can't-believe-our-troops-don't-have-the-right-equipment" nonsense. The troops know the deal.
UPDATE: To highlight the Afghanistan issue, MajorMatthew, who served as the military's senior interrogator in Iraq in 2006, offers this comment in the Open Thread below:
I know that when I went through processing for deployment as an interrogator in 2006, the best interrogators were sent to Iraq and those deemed not having enough experience were sent to Afghanistan. How backwards is that?
IrritatedVet: It's a sham response from Warner
And as far as the Wilson/Rummy exchange, that was nine months after I rolled thru Baghdad (1st day in Iraq) in a humvee with canvas doors. Talk about feeling nekkid!
We have seen since the issues with fielding the MRAP, the M4 problems, shitty Kevlar helmets.
Our administration and Congress has done a piss-poor job of keeping the troops properly equipped overall, and God knows that the military's starting to come apart.
The GOP, in particular, must be held accountable. Their promises of "good government" and "accountability" have rung false for years.
But it's not their fault of course. It was the Democrats fault! (Get ready to hear that refrain for the next 8 months!).Brandon Friedman: Yeah, when I took part in the invasion...
of Iraq, I had vinyl doors on my humvee and only one plate in my vest. We only had enough plates to give our turret gunners front and back ones.
expat_vet: We had less than that...
... my unit had the old Vietnam era flak vests during the invasion. Things were cool as long as we were in our tanks. Too bad we had to switch to HMMWVs and foot patrols from May 2003 onwards....
Those vests couldn't even slow down a 9mm round at 30 meters (as confirmed by a "hasty" field test during some down time in Baghdad).Ernie1812: for the invasion in 2003....
tankers never got issued plates for our flaks. Only recently have i been thinking about the full impact of that. I mean I've always thought "oh well, we can do without them, the grunts are the one's that really need them" but sure enough once we reached downtown Baghdad and after "winning" the war my best friend takes an AK round through the heart. The plate part never really bothered me until recently. I just thought, yeah war sucks. I've never really asked the question, "why didn't we all have proper equipment?"
Brandon Friedman: Resourcing the Troops in Afghanistan has Always been an Issue
Hearing Senator John Warner and others bloviate about equipment shortages in Afghanistan (or the lack thereof) is absurd. There is no question that our troops have been under-resourced in both Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11.
In my own case, it started in March 2002 in Afghanistan's Shah-e-Kot Valley during Operation Anaconda. At that time, our force of around 2,000 soldiers fought 1,000 (give or take) al Qaeda and Taliban militants in a ground combat engagement without any field artillery. This has been written about extensively in books (including my own) and journals. In the time since, commanders who were there on the ground have covered for the mistakes of Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks (here and here), but there is no question that we fought perhaps the defining post-9/11 ground engagement without artillery--equipment that should have been available.
Anyone who wants to speak with a Field Artillery forward observer who was there, just let me know.Not just the Arty.
But we were sucking on resupply. That was not a lack of it being at the FOB's but it was a lack of planning on the higher ups.
On about the third or fourth day in Anaconda we were actually digging in the trash piles and making meals out of the iced tea and sugar packets. And to drink, well we melted snow.
Anaconda was supposed to last 72 hours from the day we hit ground, we planned for it to be longer as you always do while you are on the line, but the higher ups never saw fit to plan forward to make sure we were taken care of if the mission lasted longer than 72 hours, which it did.
And the Arty, some piss poor planning on the part of, well pretty much everyone.Brian McGough: I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with the soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments. Jim Morrison
It is instructive to remember...that one of the first tasks Secretary Rumsfeld took on as he took the helm as Secretary of Defense was to cancel the Crusader weapons system.
He complemented this folly by attempting to push through a radical restructuring of combat forces that called for the elimination of Armored Cavalry, Division and Corp Artillery, and the traditional structures of the Division of Corp themselves. His plans also called for the elimination of separate Armored and Cavalry Divisions, and a 'lightening' of heavy and medium Infantry Divisions in the reserve components by removing their heavy assets. He also called for the elimination of separate Aviation Brigades, and the reduction of Military Police forces.
It was going to be all about separate Brigades and Task Forces. Highly mobile, not so lethal forces, supplemented by more unconventional 'special forces.' Largely mop up forces to follow General Horner's 'shock and awe' bombardment campaigns.
Well, we've all seen how well that worked out. What kind of idiot would deploy infantry forces into the mountainous regions of Afghanistan without the artillery, airlift and close air support assets they needed to survive, let alone accomplish their mission? And the rear area protection assets required protect their advance? The air mobile assets required to jump ahead and cut off their escape routes? What fools...
Secretary Rumsfeld almost singlehandedly turned more than 200 years of protocol and experience on its head, helped along by the likes of General Franks, who knew better but had apparently forgotten what leadership actually is. They crippled the Army as a fighting force, as they pushed headlong into reinventing it, allowing it to become essentially combat ineffective in both the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters.
Brandon Friedman: Senator Warner Doesn't Know as Much about Afghanistan as He Thinks
It's somewhat ironic/sad that Senator John Warner has never heard of equipment issues or lack of men in Afghanistan, because we tried to make that abundantly clear to him on May 16, 2007, when we aired this ad in Virginia:
That's right. Last year--long before Senator Barack Obama brought it up during the debate the other night--we tried to bring these issues to Senator Warner's attention--actually made sure it got on his own television set for him to see--and now he's pleading ignorance.
Mike Breen, the Afghanistan veteran featured in the ad, is taking a year to chill out and travel the word, so he can't blog. But when we ran the ad, he sent us his account of his time in theater, which we're posting below, in full detail. It might be hard for the average mainstream journalist to understand--or even civilian. But we're posting it in full, so no one can say this is a made-up story with gaps in detail:This story revolves around a lack of helicopter support - again the result of the Army being totally overstretched. Because Afghanistan has no road system worthy of the name, our troops there are reliant on helicopters to re-supply them with ammunition and other critical supplies. There are never enough, and being stranded at an isolated firebase for a week or two waiting on a helicopter is a common experience in Afghanistan.
During one operation in late summer 2006, a Marine infantry company I was working with found itself outnumbered in a steep valley, flanked on three sides by insurgents on the high ground (again, not enough troops to secure their own flanks). My artillery platoon fired in support of the Marines, and were able to drive the insurgents back long enough for the lead element of the company to pull back to safety and recover their wounded. Doing so used up most of my ammunition, and I immediately requested an emergency re-supply. The supply chain came through, moving the ammo I needed from Uzbekistan all the way to the nearest airfield in a matter of hours - but there the ammo stopped, because there weren't enough helicopters in Afghanistan to fly the rounds the last leg of their journey to my platoon in the field. So the ammo sat on an airfield less than 100 km away from my cannons for three days. In combat, that's a lifetime to wait for ammo. It sat there while the Marines were ambushed again, still trying to get out of the same valley, and it sat there while we ran out of ammunition trying to hold the insurgents off of their lead platoon.I still remember their forward observer on the radio, screaming over the incoming fire that he needed every round I had, and he needed it now - and having to tell him I had no rounds left to fire. One of the Marines, a young Lance Corporal - 19 or 20 I think - bled to death waiting on medevac, because the area was too hot for the bird to land. If I'd had the ammunition, I could have easily suppressed the enemy positions and we could have pulled the kid out. When we got his body back to the camp, we had to wait for a helicopter again - there was nowhere to put the kid's remains except the one refrigerator on the camp, where we also kept the food. The day after he died, his buddies all lined up to get breakfast and had to look at their friend's bodybag sitting on the shelf next to their eggs.
A more mundane example is one that occurred on at least a weekly basis. Our small forward operating base would be attacked by insurgents with rockets and mortars. Following the attack, we would request air support, or a predator drone, so that we could find and interdict the insurgents before they reached their safe haven and re-armed for another attack. We would typically be denied, and when they did send us an airplane it was usually a B-52, which is strategic bomber that flies at 40,000 ft and has no chance whatsoever of finding people on the ground. On the one occasion we did receive a drone, we used it to such good effect that attacks against our FOB stopped cold for weeks.
Senator Warner, can you hear us now?
Brandon
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