Crossposted from Town Called Dobson & My Left Wing
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When I was selecting BushCo quotes for yesterday’s strip, one really bugged me – Rumsfeld’s “you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want.”
This was in response to one soldier’s question wondering why he had to scrounge through the garbage dumps of Baghdad to find makeshift armor plating for his Humvee. Rumsfeld response has to be in the top ten callous quotes this administration has ever made.
Now this nugget falls across my desk:
Army National Guard units that’d already served the maximum time on active duty, in combat, are being told that the rules have changed, and they’re again being called back for Iraq service.
It doesn’t matter that those Guard units were ordered to leave virtually all of their equipment in Iraq and have had none of it replaced so that they might actually train for the eventuality that has befallen them. Nor does it matter that there may not be equipment and vehicles waiting for them in Iraq when they get there.
Nor does it seem to matter that, four years into this war, there still aren’t enough sets of body armor to provide one for every soldier sent to Iraq in this escalation.
So all those new surge troops are going to war even more ill-equipped than those the preceded them.
And yesterday, on the 4th Anniversary of this debacle, 7 more soldiers died.
Welcome to the 5th year of Iraq.
HAT TIP: To all the old friends and new ones that my wife and I dined with last night. We had a great time and yes, this strip is all YOUR fault.