You wouldn't know this from the news coverage following
Thursday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The
hearing was convened to discuss the administration's
request for an additional $25 billion to fund operations
in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it quickly turned into a
political slugfest. Mainly the attacks came from the
Democratic side. Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and Jack
Reed spent their time grandstanding, mostly about Abu
Ghraib.
THE WESTERN FRONT
What's Needed in Iraq
Soldiers are up in arms over up-armoring.
BY BRENDAN MINITER
WSJ.com
"We spent the entire day running through a gauntlet of IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). Four in all. These were big rounds, not soda cans. They were mortar rounds and 152/155 mm artillery rounds. Big explosions. I was inside the blast radius on the first one, but no scratches. By the Grace of God we have no casualties. We put armored doors on all of our vehicles, and the reinforced glass on the windshields worked. I pulled golf ball size pieces of shrapnel out of the windshield that were stuck in it, but did not penetrate."
--Sgt. Maj. Dale W. Miller,
First Battalion, 24th Marines
The above dispatch was sent from the frontlines to thank Marine acquisition officers for "up-armoring" their vehicles before shipping them out for Iraq a few months ago. "Myself and several other Marines are alive and grateful to you all for spending the money," Sgt. Maj. Miller wrote in an e-mail in March.
As the Abu Ghraib scandal swirls around the Pentagon, this is also a message many soldiers in Iraq hope isn't lost on Donald Rumsfeld. There's a war on, and chief among the soldiers' concern is whether they will get the gear they need to win. The Marines have at least some armor plating on all of their vehicles, but they could use more and thicker steel plates. Meanwhile, many Army vehicles in Iraq remain unarmored, and some soldiers are complaining about not having the plates they need for the protective vests they wear.
A soldier put it bluntly to Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers at a town-hall meeting in Iraq last week: "The question is, are we going to get up-armored Humvees?" The soldier, who identified himself as a member of a unit operating in "five of the six red zones in the country," noted that the doors on their Humvees "are not as good as the ones on the up-armored Humvees. . . . We lost some soldiers due to them." Another soldier asked, "Do we foresee an increase across the board so we maybe can get more additional armored kits, or armor, hazard pay, weapons, basic health and comfort items for soldiers overseas?"
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Gen. Myers's answers were not encouraging. He said there are about 1,400 vehicles that still need armor plating in Iraq, and although production is ramping up, the military can turn out only enough armor kits for about 220 to 225 vehicles a month. At that rate it will take six months to meet the military's combat needs. "It's not a matter of resources; it's a matter of how fast can we build these things and get them over here," he said.
You wouldn't know this from the news coverage following Thursday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The hearing was convened to discuss the administration's request for an additional $25 billion to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it quickly turned into a political slugfest. Mainly the attacks came from the Democratic side. Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and Jack Reed spent their time grandstanding, mostly about Abu Ghraib.
All of this made for nice political theater, but that doesn't help the soldiers on the ground. The big problem, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz explained to Sen. Susan Collins, is that the Pentagon doesn't have enough flexibility to shift money around to meet emerging needs. That's been an impediment for everything from getting more armor to equipping and training Iraqi security forces. This country hasn't lost its industrial base yet, and, as House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter noted recently, many steel mills in America are operating well below their capacity. So there's little reason armor plating couldn't be quickly rolled out if it were a priority.
That's one reason why while the senators were grandstanding last week, Mr. Hunter's committee passed a bill to require the secretary of defense to meet requests from the field within 15 days. Getting armor on the Humvees is a "good example of something that needs to be fast-tracked," Rep. Jim Saxton (R., N.J.) said in voting for the legislation.
Abu Ghraib is the outrage of the moment, but what the soldiers need and need now is armor. Ask your congressmen and senators what they are doing about that.
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Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.
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