"You go to war with the army you have.":
Dec. 8th, 2004 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonI first caught this on NPR getting ready for work this morning.
"Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team that is comprised mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee Army National Guard, asked Rumsfeld in a question-and-answer session why vehicle armor is still in short supply, nearly two years after the start of the war that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
'Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?"'Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense. Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.
'We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north,' Wilson said after asking again."
Full story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=4&u=/ap/20041208/ap_on_re_mi_ea/rumsfeld
All right I realize that I tend to wear my bleeding heart on the left wing of my sleeve so i'm not going to debate if we should be there or not. But what I find truly disturbing is the fact that since the "Rocket-to-Reagan" 80's this country has alloted the majority of it's budget on military spending only to have troops 'digging through landfills' for armor plating and stories of mothers buying their children Flak Vests off Ebay because the army doesn't have the $$$ to fund such a luxury item.
Are you shitting me? Can someone tell me why?
I can venture a guess after my little stint in the Nav. I can remember the steep price of simple wingnuts and screws on the various invoices the division Yeoman poured over. I'm not going to qoute prices, but I can safely say that we're not talking about Home Depot or TruValue money here, we're talking Mark Up Fucking City here kids- turning dimes into dollars and while we pissed all that money away to fight the "Evil Empire", Drug wars and wars on terror we don't have much to show for it outside of "Shock & Awe" and befuddled shrugs as to why no one in the administration can figure out why things are going wrong.
So am I just another liberal schmuck mouthing off on subjects too wide and deep for him to understand? Yeah probably. But let me ask this.Where is the convservative rage here? Is it only that 'tax and spend' is an evil, horrible concept only when applied to domestic programs rather than military ones. We cannot stand the idea of our hard earned dollars wasted on a 'welfare state' but we offer only silence and complacemency when that same mismanagement risks the lives of our troops- some of which may be our friends, some of which may be our families. Aren't they worth the same vigilance we apply to slashing the 'welfare state' and ensuring that Gods America is Homo free?
"Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team that is comprised mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee Army National Guard, asked Rumsfeld in a question-and-answer session why vehicle armor is still in short supply, nearly two years after the start of the war that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
'Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?"'Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense. Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.
'We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north,' Wilson said after asking again."
Full story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=4&u=/ap/20041208/ap_on_re_mi_ea/rumsfeld
All right I realize that I tend to wear my bleeding heart on the left wing of my sleeve so i'm not going to debate if we should be there or not. But what I find truly disturbing is the fact that since the "Rocket-to-Reagan" 80's this country has alloted the majority of it's budget on military spending only to have troops 'digging through landfills' for armor plating and stories of mothers buying their children Flak Vests off Ebay because the army doesn't have the $$$ to fund such a luxury item.
Are you shitting me? Can someone tell me why?
I can venture a guess after my little stint in the Nav. I can remember the steep price of simple wingnuts and screws on the various invoices the division Yeoman poured over. I'm not going to qoute prices, but I can safely say that we're not talking about Home Depot or TruValue money here, we're talking Mark Up Fucking City here kids- turning dimes into dollars and while we pissed all that money away to fight the "Evil Empire", Drug wars and wars on terror we don't have much to show for it outside of "Shock & Awe" and befuddled shrugs as to why no one in the administration can figure out why things are going wrong.
So am I just another liberal schmuck mouthing off on subjects too wide and deep for him to understand? Yeah probably. But let me ask this.Where is the convservative rage here? Is it only that 'tax and spend' is an evil, horrible concept only when applied to domestic programs rather than military ones. We cannot stand the idea of our hard earned dollars wasted on a 'welfare state' but we offer only silence and complacemency when that same mismanagement risks the lives of our troops- some of which may be our friends, some of which may be our families. Aren't they worth the same vigilance we apply to slashing the 'welfare state' and ensuring that Gods America is Homo free?
