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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (153871)	12/13/2004 10:24:44 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Neocon, re: So it is probable that the pace of change in respect to the production of these vehicles has been rapid........ You still don't get it and maybe you never will. Here's the deal; first, the most dangerous threat to the life and limb of our troops has been IEDs. The most common method of transport for our troops has been Humvees. Better armored Humvees equate directly to less severely injured and DEAD soldiers. That means that sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers and fathers will survive or will survive without paralysis, no legs, missing an arm, etc., depending on whether or not they are riding in the BEST armored Humvees we can produce or retrofit versus the ones they are riding in now. Second, without question we have rapidly increased production of armor and armored vehicles from the time when there was no real need for them. It is also true, however, that the army never foresaw the coming level of need for such vehicles because our feckless planners did not seem to understand that we could not occupy an Arab, Muslim nation without having to take on an insurgency. That's why they never ramped up production nor did they secure the many munition sites containing material from which terribly powerful IED devices could be manufactured. Third, the "rapid" increase in production was not the "maximum" increase in production that we were capable of. The manufacturer of new armored Humvees told the press that at the time the soldier asked Rumsfeld the question, the military had not requested their maximum production and that they had additional capacity. Fourth, you can read a lot into the thinking of someone by how they respond to a question that goes to the life or death of the troops. When such issues arise and the answer is "bring em on," or "you go with the army you have," or "soldiers can also be killed in armored tanks," then you know that you are dealing with someone who evidently feels very little empathy for the horrors and sacrifices we are imposing on our soldiers. Fifth, all Rumsfeld had to say, and genuinely mean when he said it, was; "I hadn't heard that. I will promise you that I will look into it immediately and if what you say is true and something could have been done about it, I will hold those responsible accountable, I will make sure the problem is remedied and I will send a message up and down the uniformed and civilian chain of command that we will never, ever, put our soldiers at a greater risk than necessary." The fact that it wasn't in him to say this speaks volumes about him and you can be absolutely sure that those who ride in Humvees in Iraq will not miss that fact. Nor should you. Ed

To: Neocon who wrote (153871)	12/13/2004 11:40:16 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Yes but the change was not executed to perfection, nor was the need anticipated so it becomes one more convenient club for the administrations opponents to use. It has the advantage of being a real issue, so people who argue against the exaggeration of the issue can be painted as not caring about it at all and thus they can in turn be attacked as not caring about our soldiers lives. The issue may be exaggerated and the problem may be mostly dealt with but that doesn't change the perceived opportunity of those who don't like Bush. They see it as a perfect change to attack Bush and Rumsfeld, while at the same time sticking up for the soldiers. Now that it is mostly dealt with (15k out of 19k are armored) the complaint is moving on to the fact that a lot of the trucks are not armored. Of course even an armored truck is very vulnerable in a war zone, so this issue is exaggerated to but if you point this out you are painted as supporting our troops getting screwed by the administration and killed by the Iraqi insurgents/terrorists. The distinction between saying "we are and we would be providing good armor for our soldiers but you have been exaggerating the problem" and saying "who cares about the armor, Bush is perfect", is somehow to subtle for some people to pick up on... Tim