That has been the tragic lesson of April, a month in which a record
115 U.S. soldiers have died so far and 879 others have been wounded,
560 of them fairly seriously.
A breakdown of the casualty figures suggests that many U.S. deaths and
wounds in Iraq simply did not need to occur.
From Newsweek, May 3 issue:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4825948/
The Human Cost
They were sent to fight for their country.
But some GIs didn't have all they needed to protect themselves
By Melinda Liu, John Barry and Michael Hirsh
NewsweekMay 3 issue -
The inaugural mission of the 1st Cavalry's 2d Battalion, 5th Cavalry
Regiment was, in its humble way, a bid for hearts and minds.
It was to safely dispose of Iraqi sewage.
Having arrived in Iraq in late March, a 19-man patrol from the
battalion, traveling in four Humvees, had just finished escorting
three Iraqi "honey wagons" on their rounds in the grim slum of Sadr
City, where vendors stash eggs and chickens in bamboo crates next to
puddles of viscous black mud.
("You're lucky if it's mud," joked one U.S. officer.)
Suddenly the street became "a 300-meter-long kill zone," recalls
platoon leader Sgt. Shane Aguero, courtesy of gunmen from the Mahdi
militia of Shiite rebel Moqtada al-Sadr.
The Humvees swerved and ran onto sidewalks, rolling on the rims of
flat tires, as gunmen kept up the barrage of bullets.
Sgt. Yihjyh (Eddie) Chen, gunner in the lead vehicle, was shot dead.
Another soldier was hit and began bleeding from the mouth.
And their trouble was just beginning.
Two of the Humvees became disabled.
Aguero yelled at one driver to gun the engine to get his Humvee
moving.
The engine fell out.
As they'd been drilled to do, the soldiers set out to strip the
disabled vehicles of sensitive items and to "zee off the radio"--to
see that codes and equipment don't fall into enemy hands.
When another group got ambushed nearby, an enemy round came through
the Humvee's right rear door--through retrofitted panels that the
soldiers had been told would repel AK-47 rounds.
Miraculously, none of the three people inside were hit.
Then a third Humvee sputtered to a halt: debris had pierced the fuel
tank.
"It just wouldn't start; we coasted the last 50 yards out of the kill
zone," said its driver, Spc. Dee Foster.
At last an armored Bradley fighting vehicle arrived, and its steel
ramp opened to scoop him and his buddies to safety.
For the Bush administration it has been a mantra, one the president
intones repeatedly:
America's troops will get whatever they need to do the job.
But as Iraq's liberation has turned into a daily grind of
low-intensity combat--and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld grudgingly
raises troop levels--many soldiers who are there say the Pentagon is
failing to protect them with the best technology America has to offer.
Especially tanks, Bradleys and other heavy vehicles, even in some
cases body armor.
That has been the tragic lesson of April, a month in which a record
115 U.S. soldiers have died so far and 879 others have been wounded,
560 of them fairly seriously.
Those numbers greatly exceed the tallies in the combat-heavy weeks of
the invasion last spring.
And the impact of those deaths was felt more fully last week when
blogger Russ Kick, after filing a Freedom of Information Act request,
won the release of photos showing coffins returning to Dover Air Force
Base in Delaware.
Soldiers in Iraq complain that Washington has been too slow to
acknowledge that the Iraqi insurgency consists of more than
"dead-enders."
And even at the Pentagon many officers say Rumsfeld and his brass have
been too reluctant to modify their long-term plans for a lighter
military.
On the battlefield, that has translated into a lack of armor. Perhaps
the most telling example: a year ago the Pentagon had more than 400
main battle tanks in Iraq; as of recently, a senior Defense official
told NEWSWEEK, there was barely a brigade's worth of operational tanks
still there.
(A brigade usually has about 70 tanks.)
In continuing adherence to the Army's "light is better" doctrine, even
units recently rotated to Iraq have left most of their armor behind.
These include the I Marine Expeditionary Force, which has paid dearly
for that decision with an astonishing 30 percent-plus casualties (45
killed, more than 300 wounded) in Fallujah and Ar Ramadi.
The Army's 1st Cavalry Division--which includes the unit in Sadr
City--left five of every six of its tanks at home, and five of every
six Bradleys.
A breakdown of the casualty figures suggests that many U.S. deaths and
wounds in Iraq simply did not need to occur.
According to an unofficial study by a defense consultant that is now
circulating through the Army, of a total of 789 Coalition deaths as of
April 15 (686 of them Americans), 142 were killed by land mines or
improvised explosive devices, while 48 others died in
rocket-propelled-grenade attacks.
Almost all those soldiers were killed while in unprotected vehicles,
which means that perhaps one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq
might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them, the study
suggested.
Thousands more who were unprotected have suffered grievous wounds,
such as the loss of limbs.
The military is 1,800 armored Humvees short of its own stated
requirement for Iraq.
Despite desperate attempts to supply bolt-on armor, many soldiers
still ride around in light-skinned Humvees.
This is a latter-day jeep that, as Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling,
assistant division commander of the 1st Armored Division, conceded in
an interview, "was never designed to do this ... It was never
anticipated that we would have things like roadside bombs in the vast
number that we've had here."
One newly arrived officer, Lt. Col. Timothy Meredith, says his
battalion had just undergone months of training to rid itself of "tank
habits" and get used to the Humvees.
"We arrived here expecting to do a lot of civil works," says Meredith.
According to internal Pentagon e-mails obtained by NEWSWEEK, the
Humvee situation is so bad that the head of the U.S. Army Forces
Command, Gen. Larry Ellis, has urged that more of the new Stryker
combat vehicles be put into the field.
Sources say that the Army brass back in Washington have not yet
concurred with that.
The problem: the rubber-tire Strykers are thin-skinned and don't
maneuver through dangerous streets as well as the fast-pivoting,
treaded Bradley.
According to a well-placed Defense Department source, the Army is so
worried about the Stryker's vulnerability that most of the 300-vehicle
brigade currently in Iraq has been deployed up in the safer Kurdish
region around Mosul.
"Any further south, and the Army was afraid the Arabs would light them
up," he said.
Other quick fixes are being rushed in.
In Ohio, O'Gara-Hess and Eisenhardt Armoring Co. says it is flush with
new orders to crank out 300 "up-armored" Humvees per month.
And Rumsfeld has just approved a quiet plan to fly 28 M1A1 tanks from
Germany into Iraq by April 27, NEWSWEEK has learned.
The move comes as the military is planning for a final assault on the
insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
Meanwhile, soldiers are rushing to jury-rig their Humvees with
anything hard they can find: bolt-on armor, sandbags, even plywood
panels, creating what one senior officer calls "Mad Max-mobiles."
But Pentagon sources say many of the retrofitted Humvees cannot take
the extra weight, and their suspension or transmission systems fail.
Another method is to spray shock-absorbing polyurethane foam--one
popular brand name is called Rhino--to the inside or outside of
unarmored vehicles.
The biggest problem, perhaps, is that the insurgents--whoever they
are--continue to be quick to spot vulnerabilities.
It is probably no coincidence that attacks have picked up
significantly in April as the Marines, the 1st Cav and other
fresh--and untried--troops have rotated in.
U.S. bomb-disposal personnel generally succeed in discovering and
disarming about half of the homemade bombs that are planted.
In March, an estimated 600 to 700 attacks involving homemade devices
were either discovered or foiled.
In April, one administration source said, as many as 1,000 homemade
bomb attacks have been attempted.
The need for more armor--and possibly troops--erupted as an issue on
Capitol Hill last week in combative hearings of the Senate and House
Armed Services committees.
"We are not structured for the security environment we're in," Joint
Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers told senators and congressmen,
including some angry Republicans.
As part of his 2005 budget request, Rumsfeld had originally cut the
Army budget by 6 percent.
But the Army has identified nearly $6 billion in unfunded
requests--and more are on the way.
"The costs are going to be staggering," says Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode
Island Democrat who has pestered the Pentagon for months for better
estimates.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the House committee that
military operations in Iraq are now costing about $4.7 billion a
month--a sum that approaches the $5 billion a month (on average) that
the Vietnam War cost, adjusted for inflation.
Sen. John McCain says the Pentagon needs an additional division beyond
the 20,000 men it is leaving in Iraq for 90-day extensions.
Another senator and Vietnam vet, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, even
suggested the nation might have to take a long-term look at reviving
the draft.
Few others went that far, but one knowledgeable Army officer points
out that Rumsfeld's standing "stop-loss" order--basically a freeze on
retirements--is a "silent draft."
It is not expected to be lifted "for the foreseeable future," the
officer said.
On Capitol Hill, Myers spoke of transforming old field-artillery and
air-defense battalions into new units.
But the Pentagon has yet to come to grips with its armor crisis--or
its human cost.
_______________________________________________________
What a Bush-created mess.
Harry
.
|
