Juan Cole, professor of history at U. Of Michigan asks “Is Bush Shortchanging Our Troops”. It would fit Bush’s pattern of failing to implement even the more blatant of his “promises” and his many empty “Show of Strength” which are backled up by absolutely NOTHING.
Kerry said in the first presidential debate,
KERRY: The president just talked about Iraq as a center of the war on terror. Iraq was not even close to the center of the war on terror before the president invaded it.
The president made the judgment to divert forces from under General Tommy Franks from Afghanistan before the Congress even approved it to begin to prepare to go to war in Iraq.
And he rushed the war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace. Now, that is not the judgment that a president of the United States ought to make. You don’t take America to war unless have the plan to win the peace. You don’t send troops to war without the body armor that they need.
KERRY: I’ve met kids in Ohio, parents in Wisconsin places, Iowa, where they’re going out on the Internet to get the state-of-the-art body gear to send to their kids. Some of them got them for a birthday present.
I think that’s wrong. Humvees — 10,000 out of 12,000 Humvees that are over there aren’t armored. And you go visit some of those kids in the hospitals today who were maimed because they don’t have the armament. ‘
Bush’s only response to the charge that the troops are not properly equipped has been that Kerry voted against the $87 bn appropriation bill submitted last fall. But this is just playing for the camera, since he knows very well that Kerry’s “no” vote on that bill had nothing to do with equipping the troops, and that there was never any question that the military appropriation for Iraq would go through.
The real issue is that the bill passed, but that the money doesn’t seem to have gotten to the troops on the ground. The incident at Tallil sheds a flood of light on the continued problems of lack of proper equipment that US troops face. Zell Miller came before the Republican convention with a litany of all the weapons programs that had proved useful in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the fact is that really fancy equipment, aside from the ability to laser-target objectives, was never very useful in Afghanistan. As Donald Rumsfeld noted, there were “no good targets in Afghanistan.” In Iraq after the war, what would have been useful was just armored transport vehicles that had some chance of surviving a grenade attack.
Cole’s blog, Informed Comment, which was linked to by Mike, looks like one I’ll have to start watching. I can add it to the list of “real experts” who almost to a tee line up with warnings and writing disgustingly of this president. Economics, History, Law, Sociology, and Bible. All of them W. gets a flunkiung grade, becuase basically, he didn’t give a rip, and now he does only when it directly profits him.
Oh yeah, dude. Juan Cole is the shit. He knows so much about Middle East issues and culture. It’s amazing. I read his site daily.