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08/11/2003 Archived Entry: "War On The Cheap is killing American kids."
War On The Cheap is killing American kids.
This story has been going around - Col. David Hackworth has been hammering it, we covered it on TBTM Radio #5, and now Paul Krugman has taken all the disparate stories and put them into one article small enough to shove down the 'Support the Troops, Support the President' crowd's throat.
Letters published in Stars and Stripes and e-mail published on the Web site of Col. David Hackworth (a decorated veteran and Pentagon critic) describe shortages of water. One writer reported that in his unit, "each soldier is limited to two 1.5-liter bottles a day," and that inadequate water rations were leading to "heat casualties." An American soldier died of heat stroke on Saturday; are poor supply and living conditions one reason why U.S. troops in Iraq are suffering such a high rate of noncombat deaths?[...]
Military corner-cutting is part of a broader picture of penny-wise-pound-foolish government. When it comes to tax cuts or subsidies to powerful interest groups, money is no object. But elsewhere, including homeland security, small-government ideology reigns. The Bush administration has been unwilling to spend enough on any aspect of homeland security, whether it's providing firefighters and police officers with radios or protecting the nation's ports. The decision to pull air marshals off some flights to save on hotel bills — reversed when the public heard about it — was simply a sound-bite-worthy example. (Air marshals have told MSNBC.com that a "witch hunt" is now under way at the Transportation Security Administration, and that those who reveal cost-cutting measures to the media are being threatened with the Patriot Act.)
There's also another element in the Iraq logistical snafu: privatization. The U.S. military has shifted many tasks traditionally performed by soldiers into the hands of such private contractors as Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The Iraq war and its aftermath gave this privatized system its first major test in combat — and the system failed.
According to the Newhouse News Service, "U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up." Not surprisingly, civilian contractors — and their insurance companies — get spooked by war zones. The Financial Times reports that the dismal performance of contractors in Iraq has raised strong concerns about what would happen in a war against a serious opponent, like North Korea.
If you have a relative or friend who is serving in Iraq, write your rep in the House of Representatives. Tell him that you will not consider voting for any Republican at any level of government unless and until our military gets the treatment, pay, and respect that they deserve.
Be specific - tell them lip service won't cut it - either the troops get the logistic support they need, or you're voting them out of office. Support the troops - put your representatives on notice that they'd better support them, too.
Replies: somebody speaks up.
But wait a minute, I thought privatization was going to solve ALL our problems.
It's pathetic when the military can't even provide H-2-O to the troops. "Bring 'em on," indeed.
Posted by Metropolitan99 @ 08/12/2003 11:49 AM NY
