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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (181823)	1/29/2004 12:26:53 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1572508

Again, the rich are getting richer at a faster rate than the rest of us! If over a long period of time the rich have ten times as much real wealth, the middle class has only 3 times as much wealth and the poor's wealth only doubles why would that be a major problem? Because I don't want the fukking rich to become richer at my expense! Why do you think they deserve to? ted

To: TimF who wrote (181823)	2/3/2004 3:38:00 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1572508

Army Study of Iraq War Details a 'Morass' of Supply Shortages By ERIC SCHMITT Published: February 3, 2004 WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — The first official Army history of the Iraq war reveals that American forces were plagued by a "morass" of supply shortages, radios that could not reach far-flung troops, disappointing psychological operations and virtually no reliable intelligence on how Saddam Hussein would defend Baghdad. Logistics problems, which senior Army officials played down at the time, were much worse than have previously been reported. While the study serves mainly as a technical examination of how the Army performed and the problems it faced, it could also serve as a political document that could advance the Army's interests within the Pentagon. Tank engines sat on warehouse shelves in Kuwait with no truck drivers to take them north. Broken-down trucks were scavenged for usable parts. Artillery units cannibalized parts from captured Iraqi guns to keep their howitzers operating. Army medics foraged medical supplies from combat hospitals. In most cases, soldiers improvised solutions to keep the offensive rolling. But the study found that the Third Infantry Division, the Army's lead combat force, was within two weeks of being halted by a lack of spare parts, and Army logisticians had no effective distribution system. "The morass of problems that confounded delivering parts and supplies — running the gamut of paper clips to tank engines — stems from the lack of a means to assign responsibility clearly," the study said. It also found that the Pentagon's decision to send mostly combat units in the weeks before the invasion had the "unintended consequence" of holding back support troops until much later, contributing greatly to the logistics problems. The findings are contained in a 504-page internal Army history of the war written by the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The unclassified study, a draft of which was obtained by The New York Times, was ordered last spring by the former Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who clashed with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over troop strength for postwar Iraq. It draws on interviews with 2,300 people, 68,000 photographs and nearly 120,000 documents. Its senior author was Gregory Fontenot, a retired Army colonel who commanded a battalion in the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and a brigade in Bosnia. The Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy are all conducting similar reviews of their forces' performance. Army officials said the timing of the study was not intended to influence passage of a proposed military budget the Bush administration submitted to Congress on Monday. But it could fuel a debate on Capitol Hill over whether the military, and the Army in particular, has enough troops to carry out missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and other trouble spots. Senior Army officials say lessons from the study — from revamping how soldiers are deployed to overhauling battlefield supply-distribution networks — are being incorporated into Army training centers and among the 110,000 troops now replacing 130,000 soldiers in Iraq. The bulk of the study, a book entitled "On Point," is a lucid narrative devoted largely to detailed accounts of several pivotal battles. For the most part, it praises the Army's combat operations and the ability of soldiers and commanders to adapt to rapidly shifting battlefield conditions. The report refers only glancingly to two of the most contentious issues of the war: Iraq's suspected illicit weapons and the Pentagon's preparations for securing and rebuilding the country after major combat ended. The study does note, however, that the strategy of starting the war before all support troops were in place, in order to achieve an element of surprise, taxed the postwar resources of local commanders, who in many cases were shifting back and forth between combat operations and the task of restoring civil services. "Local commanders were torn between their fights and providing resources — soldiers, time and logistics — to meet the civilian needs," the report concluded. "Partially due to the scarce resources as a result of the running start, there simply was not enough to do both missions." nytimes.com