Politics > Politics-USA > Guardsmen Say They're Facing Iraq Ill-Trained. "We are going to pay for this in blood"
| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
25 Nov 2004 08:24:58 AM |
| Object: |
Guardsmen Say They're Facing Iraq Ill-Trained. "We are going to pay for this in blood" |
Military analysts, however, questioned whether the soldiers' concerns
could be attributed entirely to the military's attempt to mirror
conditions in Iraq.
For example, the soldiers say that an ammunition shortage has meant
that they have often conducted operations firing blanks.
"The Bush administration had over a year of planning before going to
war in Iraq," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law
professor who has acted as a defense lawyer in military courts.
"An ammunition shortage is not an exercise in tough love."
Turley said that in every military since Alexander the Great's, there
have been "gripes from grunts" but that "the complaints raised by
these National Guardsmen raise some significant and troubling
concerns."
From The Los Angeles Times, 11/25/04:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guard25nov25,0,6896648,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Guardsmen Say They're Facing Iraq Ill-Trained
Troops from California describe a prison-like, demoralized camp in New
Mexico that's short on gear and setting them up for high casualties.
By Scott Gold
Times Staff Writer
DOŅA ANA RANGE, N.M. --
Members of a California Army National Guard battalion preparing for
deployment to Iraq said this week that they were under strict lockdown
and being treated like prisoners rather than soldiers by Army
commanders at the remote desert camp where they are training.
More troubling, a number of the soldiers said, is that the training
they have received is so poor and equipment shortages so prevalent
that they fear their casualty rate will be needlessly high when they
arrive in Iraq early next year.
"We are going to pay for this in blood," one soldier said.
They said they believed their treatment and training reflected an
institutional bias against National Guard troops by commanders in the
active-duty Army, an allegation that Army commanders denied.
The 680 soldiers of the 1st Battalion of the 184th Infantry Regiment
were activated in August and are preparing for deployment at Doņa Ana,
a former World War II prisoner-of-war camp 20 miles west of its large
parent base, Ft. Bliss, Texas.
Members of the battalion, headquartered in Modesto, said in two dozen
interviews that they were allowed no visitors or travel passes, had
scant contact with their families and that morale was terrible.
"I feel like an inmate with a weapon," said Cpl. Jajuane Smith, 31, a
six-year Guard veteran from Fresno who works for an armored transport
company when not on active duty.
Several soldiers have fled Doņa Ana by vaulting over rolls of barbed
wire that surround the small camp, the soldiers interviewed said.
Others, they said, are contemplating going AWOL, at least temporarily,
to reunite with their families for Thanksgiving.
Army commanders said the concerns were an inevitable result of the
decision to shore up the strained military by turning "citizen
soldiers" into fully integrated, front-line combat troops.
About 40% of the troops in Iraq are either reservists or National
Guard troops.
Lt. Col. Michael Hubbard of Ft. Bliss said the military must confine
the soldiers largely to Doņa Ana to ensure that their training is
complete before they are sent to Iraq.
"A lot of these individuals are used to doing this two days a month
and then going home," Hubbard said.
"Now the job is 24/7. And they experience culture shock."
But many of the soldiers interviewed said the problems they cited went
much deeper than culture shock.
And military analysts agree that tensions between active-duty Army
soldiers and National Guard troops have been exacerbated as the war in
Iraq has required dangerous and long-term deployments of both.
The concerns of the Guard troops at Doņa Ana represent the latest in a
series of incidents involving allegations that a two-tier system has
shortchanged reservist and National Guard units compared with their
active-duty counterparts.
In September, a National Guard battalion undergoing accelerated
training at Ft. Dix, N.J., was confined to barracks for two weeks
after 13 soldiers reportedly went AWOL to see family before shipping
out for Iraq.
Last month, an Army National Guard platoon at Camp Shelby, Miss.,
refused its orders after voicing concerns about training conditions
and poor leadership.
In the most highly publicized incident, in October, more than two
dozen Army reservists in Iraq refused to drive a fuel convoy to a town
north of Baghdad after arguing that the trucks they had been given
were not armored for combat duty.
At Doņa Ana, soldiers have questioned their commanders about
conditions at the camp, occasionally breaking the protocol of
formation drills to do so.
They said they had been told repeatedly that they could not be trusted
because they were not active-duty soldiers -- though many of them are
former active-duty soldiers.
"I'm a cop. I've got a career, a house, a family, a college degree,"
said one sergeant, who lives in Southern California and spoke, like
most of the soldiers, on condition of anonymity.
"I came back to the National Guard specifically to go to Baghdad,
because I believed in it, believed in the mission. But I have
regretted every day of it. This is demoralizing, demeaning, degrading.
And we're supposed to be ambassadors to another country? We're
supposed to go to war like this?"
Pentagon and Army commanders rejected the allegation that National
Guard or reserve troops were prepared for war differently than their
active-duty counterparts.
"There is no difference," said Lt. Col. Chris Rodney, an Army
spokesman in Washington.
"We are, more than ever, one Army. Some have to come from a little
farther back -- they have a little less training. But the goal is to
get everybody the same."
The Guard troops at Doņa Ana were scheduled to train for six months
before beginning a yearlong deployment.
They recently learned, however, that the Army planned to send them
overseas a month early -- in January, most likely -- as it speeds up
troop movement to compensate for a shortage of full-time, active-duty
troops.
Hubbard, the officer at Ft. Bliss, also said conditions at Doņa Ana
were designed to mirror the harsh and often thankless assignments the
soldiers would take on in Iraq.
That was an initiative launched by Brig. Gen. Joseph Chavez, commander
of the 29th Separate Infantry Brigade, which includes the 184th
Regiment.
The program has resulted in everything from an alcohol ban to armed
guards at the entrance to Doņa Ana, Hubbard said.
"We are preparing you and training you for what you're going to
encounter over there," Hubbard said.
"And they just have to get used to it."
Military analysts, however, questioned whether the soldiers' concerns
could be attributed entirely to the military's attempt to mirror
conditions in Iraq.
For example, the soldiers say that an ammunition shortage has meant
that they have often conducted operations firing blanks.
"The Bush administration had over a year of planning before going to
war in Iraq," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law
professor who has acted as a defense lawyer in military courts.
"An ammunition shortage is not an exercise in tough love."
Turley said that in every military since Alexander the Great's, there
have been "gripes from grunts" but that "the complaints raised by
these National Guardsmen raise some significant and troubling
concerns."
The Guard troops in New Mexico said they wanted more sophisticated
training and better equipment.
They said they had been told, for example, that the vehicles they
would drive in Iraq would not be armored, a common complaint among
their counterparts already serving overseas.
They also said the bulk of their training had been basic, such as
first aid and rifle work, and not "theater-specific" to Iraq.
They are supposed to be able to use night-vision goggles, for
instance, because many patrols in Iraq take place in darkness.
But one group of 200 soldiers trained for just an hour with 30 pairs
of goggles, which they had to pass around quickly, soldiers said.
The soldiers said they had received little or no training for
operations that they expected to undertake in Iraq, from convoy
protection to guarding against insurgents' roadside bombs.
One said he has put together a diary of what he called "wasted days"
of training.
It lists 95 days, he said, during which the soldiers learned nothing
that would prepare them for Iraq.
Hubbard had said he would make two field commanders available on
Tuesday to answer specific questions from the Los Angeles Times about
the training, but that did not happen.
The fact that the National Guardsmen have undergone largely basic
training suggests that Army commanders do not trust their skills as
soldiers, said David Segal, director of the Center for Research on
Military Organization at the University of Maryland.
That tension underscores a divide that has long existed between
"citizen soldiers" and their active-duty counterparts, he said.
"These soldiers should be getting theater-specific training," Segal
said.
"This should not be an area where they are getting on-the-job
training. The military is just making a bad situation worse."
The soldiers at Doņa Ana emphasized their support for the war in Iraq.
"In fact, a lot of us would rather go now rather than stay here," said
one, a specialist and six-year National Guard veteran who works as a
security guard in his civilian life in Southern California.
The soldiers also said they were risking courts-martial or other
punishment by speaking publicly about their situation.
But Staff Sgt. Lorenzo Dominguez, 45, one of the soldiers who allowed
his identity to be revealed, said he feared that if nothing changed,
men in his platoon would be killed in Iraq.
Dominguez is a father of two -- including a 13-month-old son named
Reagan, after the former president -- and an employee of a mortgage
bank in Alta Loma, Calif.
A senior squad leader of his platoon, Dominguez said he had been in
the National Guard for 20 years.
"Some of us are going to die there, and some of us are going to die
unnecessarily because of the lack of training," he said.
"So I don't care. Let them court-martial me. I want the American
public to know what is going on. My men are guilty of one thing:
volunteering to serve their country. And we are at the end of our
rope."
____________________________________________________
So, Red Staters, when are you enlisting?
Harry
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| User: "Randy Belong" |
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| Title: Re: Guardsmen Say They're Facing Iraq Ill-Trained. "We are going to pay for this in blood" |
25 Nov 2004 12:45:39 PM |
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"Harry Hope" <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:pmqbq0l4jcql26mgrkhj3d6290969r4jh8@4ax.com...
Military analysts, however, questioned whether the soldiers' concerns
Strange as it might seem you do not
hear of the resistance fighters complaining about their equipment. Mind you
they do not understand what it means to be part of the best equipped
military force in the world. Why don't the Americans obtain bullets the way
they get everything else and just steal them.
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| User: "The Last Liberal" |
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| Title: Re: Guardsmen Say They're Facing Iraq Ill-Trained. "We are going to pay for this in blood" |
26 Nov 2004 11:28:32 AM |
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On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 14:24:58 GMT, Harry Hope <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com>
wrote:
From The Los Angeles Times, 11/25/04:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guard25nov25,0,6896648,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Guardsmen Say They're Facing Iraq Ill-Trained
Troops from California describe a prison-like, demoralized camp in New
Mexico that's short on gear and setting them up for high casualties.
By Scott Gold
Times Staff Writer
DOŅA ANA RANGE, N.M. --
Members of a California Army National Guard battalion preparing for
deployment to Iraq said this week that they were under strict lockdown
and being treated like prisoners rather than soldiers by Army
commanders at the remote desert camp where they are training.
More troubling, a number of the soldiers said, is that the training
they have received is so poor and equipment shortages so prevalent
that they fear their casualty rate will be needlessly high when they
arrive in Iraq early next year.
"We are going to pay for this in blood," one soldier said.
Solution: *REFUSE* and *RESIST!* Why the ***** are they soldiers?
---
http://lastliberal.org
"If a man pretend to me that God hath spoken to him supernaturally and
immediately, and I make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what
argument he can produce, to oblige me to believe it... To say that
God... hath spoken to him in a dream, is no more than to say he
dreamed that God spake to him." - Hobbes 'Leviathan'
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| User: "George Washington Hayduke" |
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| Title: Re: Guardsmen Say They're Facing Iraq Ill-Trained. "We are going to pay for this in blood" |
28 Nov 2004 01:15:56 PM |
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(The Last Liberal) wrote:
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 14:24:58 GMT, Harry Hope <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com>
wrote:
From The Los Angeles Times, 11/25/04:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guard25nov25,0,6896648,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
"We are going to pay for this in blood," one soldier said.
Solution: *REFUSE* and *RESIST!* Why the ***** are they soldiers?
Because they like to slaughter brown-skinned children. There's no other
legitimate reason.
---
Stop Elmer Fudd web site: http://www.ElmerFudd.US/
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