Plywood and Sandbags

Michelle Neumann

“One thing remains certain, as long as the Commander in Chief orders our armed forces into harms way, the Congress should extend blue chip financing to our troops. De-funding their bullets is dishonorable and deadly." -Sen. Gordon Smith, January 10, 2007

There is no missing the ugly point of this remark - Democrats don't support the troops. They don't support the troops to the extent that they have a callous disregard for the troops' safety and lives.

Sen. Smith's comment is, quite simply, despicable, as were many similar comments our nation was forced to endure from the GOP caucus this week. Such accusations are so far beyond the scope of plausibility that it is clear to all they do not represent good faith, genuinely held beliefs, but are instead shameless political attacks.

It is long past time for all of us to make it clear that we will no longer tolerate this kind of divisive, irresponsible rhetoric from our leaders. It is an insult to the civility and intelligence of the American people. It destroys comity and impairs Congress' ability to solve problems. It serves no legitimate purpose whatsoever. It is a self-indulgent waste of time and tax dollars.

From our elected officials we expect honesty, integrity, humility, respect for our system of government and simple common decency. If they cannot meet those minimum standards, they do not deserve to hold public office. If they cannot restrain themselves from engaging in abject, rabid partisanship whenever conducting the people's business, they are fundamentally unfit to represent us.

Those who refuse to elevate their discourse must no longer enjoy impunity from criticism. They must be held accountable for what they say while they are acting as our representatives.

With that in mind, let's review the record of "blue chip" support the military received while Sen. Smith and the Republicans ran Congress.

60 Minutes, October 31, 2004

Every couple of weeks Karen Preston gets a telephone call from her son Ryan who is serving in Iraq with the Oregon National Guard.

But Karen Preston has been worrying a lot ever since last summer when Ryan returned home on leave and showed her these photos of the unarmored vehicles his unit was using for convoy duty in Iraq.

Lacking the proper steel plating to protect soldiers from enemy mines and rocket propelled grenades, they had been jerry-rigged with plywood and sandbags.
…
Staff Sgt. Sean Davis from the Oregon National Guard was critically wounded last June when his unarmored Humvee hit an IED outside of Baghdad. He suffered shrapnel wounds, burns, and was unable to walk for six weeks.
Davis said his Humvee was armored with plywood, sandbags, and armor salvaged from old Iraqi tanks.
…
[Commanding General of the Oregon National Guard] Byrne says stories about families in Oregon having to go out and buy for their sons and daughters radio equipment, body armor, GPS gear, computers and night vision goggles because they weren't being issued are true.

He said some Guard units are also using Vietnam era M-16 assault rifles, which he calls adequate for state duty but not acceptable for duty in Iraq. There is also a bullet shortage for training, he says.
…
The Army acknowledged to 60 Minutes that there is a shortage of radios in Iraq and a shortage of bullets for training, and says both are in the process of being remedied. There have also been problems with maintenance and replacement parts for critical equipment like Abrams tanks, Bradley personnel carriers and Black Hawk helicopters.

Associated Press, July 5, 2006

Homelessness a Threat for Iraq Vets

…It was a "hell" familiar to Noel during his eight months in Iraq. But it didn't stop when he returned home to New York last year and couldn't find a job to support his wife and three children. Without enough money to rent an apartment, he turned to the housing programs for vets, "but they were overbooked," Noel says.

While he was in Iraq, his family had lived in military housing in Georgia.

In New York, they ended up in a Bronx shelter "with people who were just out of prison, and with roaches," Noel says. "I'm a young black man from the ghetto, but this was culture shock. This is not what I fought for, what I almost died for. This is not what I was supposed to come home to."

Southwest Washington Workforce Development Council, December 2005

WDC leader testifies to Congress on Veterans reemployment issues

Forty percent of National Guard and Reserve soldiers returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming home to find themselves unemployed, according to a recent U.S. Senate hearing. 


…Last spring approximately 700 Oregon National Guard soldiers returned home, many of them residents of southwest Washington. Fully 40% of them were unemployed upon return. Another group of 700 is scheduled to return next month. Of these, at least 30% anticipate being unemployed. An equal number consider themselves to be underemployed,” testified Nisenfeld. 


…Nisenfeld says the Southwest Washington Workforce Development Council, WorkSource, and its other partners in the area will continue to work at the local level to help the returning veterans. However, she hopes that Congress will also provide assistance and aid veterans across the United States. That was a sentiment echoed by Senator Murray who said, “After bravely serving our country oversees, many Guard and Reserve members are coming home from combat and having trouble finding a new job or returning to their old jobs.

Washington Post, February 12, 2007

Thousands of Army Humvees Lack Armor Upgrade

The Army is working to fill a shortfall in Iraq of thousands of advanced Humvee armor kits designed to reduce U.S. troop deaths from roadside bombs -- including a rising threat from particularly lethal weapons linked to Iran and known as "explosively formed penetrators" (EFP) -- that are now inflicting 70 percent of the American casualties in the country, according to U.S. military and civilian officials.

…U.S. Army units in Iraq and Afghanistan lack more than 4,000 of the latest Humvee armor kit, known as FRAG Kit 5, according to U.S. officials. The Army has ramped up production of the armor, giving priority to troops in Baghdad, but the upgrade is not scheduled to be completed until this summer, Army officials said. That is well into the timeline for major operations launched last week to quell violence by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, which the U.S. military now views as the top security threat in Iraq.

Bush deployed the surge troops without providing them with armored humvees?

The Lake Oswego Review, January 24, 2007

Oregonians take a hard look at service in Iraq

Oregonians, have paid a steep price for their time in Iraq. Hundreds or thousands have been injured. Fifty-five Oregonians have been killed there – a fatality rate for Oregonians that’s 50 percent higher than the nation as a whole.

USA Today, August 8, 2006

Center for war-related brain injuries faces budget cut

Congress appears ready to slash funding for the research and treatment of brain injuries caused by bomb blasts, an injury that military scientists describe as a signature wound of the Iraq war.

House and Senate versions of the 2007 Defense appropriation bill contain $7 million for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center — half of what the center received last fiscal year.
Proponents of increased funding say they are shocked to see cuts in the treatment of bomb blast injuries in the midst of a war.

"I find it basically unpardonable that Congress is not going to provide funds to take care of our soldiers and sailors who put their lives on the line for their country," says Martin Foil, a member of the center's board of directors. "It blows my imagination."

The Brain Injury Center, devoted to treating and understanding war-related brain injuries, has received more money each year of the war — from $6.5 million in fiscal 2001 to $14 million last year. Spokespersons for the appropriations committees in both chambers say cuts were due to a tight budget this year.

"Honestly, they would have loved to have funded it, but there were just so many priorities," says Jenny Manley, spokeswoman for the Senate Appropriations Committee. "They didn't have any flexibility in such a tight fiscal year."

Yes, the rich needed their tax cuts very urgently. Even that last $7,000,000.

USA Today Editorial/Opinion, January 1, 2006

For lack of body armor, troops die. Why the delay?

After Army and Marine Corps generals were summoned Wednesday to a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill, the brass emerged with vows to improve body armor for all U.S. troops in Iraq. …That's good to hear, but shouldn't it have happened sooner?

Members of Congress were reacting to a newly reported analysis by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, which concluded that 80% of the fatal injuries to Marines in the study might have been prevented by additional armor coverage. Side armor, a special concern, is just beginning to arrive in Iraq.

The armor situation fits a deadly pattern of blunders by the war's architects. …

The occupying U.S. troops soon found themselves facing deadly new tactics with inadequate armor on both their vehicles and themselves. This tragic miscalculation has had tragic consequences.

… the Pentagon owes further explanations to military families and to Congress, which since 2001 has appropriated $302 billion to cover operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. … In November, more than 18,000 vests were recalled for failing to meet ballistics tests.

San Francisco Chronicle, August 15, 2003

Pentagon drops plans for scheduled rollback

The White House quickly backpedaled Thursday on Pentagon plans to cut the combat pay of the 157,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan after disclosure of the idea quickly became a political embarrassment.

The Pentagon's support for the idea of rolling back "imminent danger pay" by $75 a month and "family separation allowances" for the American forces by $150 a month collapsed after a story in The Chronicle Thursday generated intense criticism from military families, veterans groups and Democratic candidates seeking to unseat President Bush in 2004.

...In San Francisco, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut said, "The idea is just unconscionable. The government can afford the billions they give in tax cuts to millionaires, but there's not enough to give a little something to men and women who are putting their lives on the line."

Report to the Subcommittee on Personnel, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate:

September 2004:

Over 335,000 reserve members have been involuntarily called to active duty since September 11, 2001, and the Department of Defense (DOD) expects future reserve usage to remain high.
…

Under the current partial mobilization authority, DOD increased not only the numbers of reserve component members that it mobilized, but
also the length of the members' mobilizations.

The average mobilization for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990-91 was 156 days. However, by December 31, 2003, the average mobilization for operations Noble Eagle, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom was 319 days, or double the length of mobilizations for Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

By March 31, 2004, the average mobilization for the three ongoing operations had increased to 342 days, and that figure is expected to continue to rise.

National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, January 31, 2007

…Nearly 200,000 veterans may be homeless on any given night and twice that many veterans experience homelessness during the year. Homeless male veterans are more likely to be homeless for an extended period of time than homeless male non-veterans.

PBS, NOW, September 17, 2004

Currently over 40% of the troops being rotated into Iraq are National Guard members and Reservists. This reliance on Reservists hasn't been seen since World War II; of the 2 million people who served in Vietnam, only 9,000 were National Guardsmen. Roughly half of the U.S. forces deployed for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are part-time troops called to active duty from the Army National Guard and Reserve.

Houston Chronicle, Nov. 10, 2005

Veterans still haven't seen college money

Over a year after Congress passed law promising aid, not one check has been mailed out.

Bangor Daily News, Jul 8, 2006

Guardsmen Recall Iraq Perils

…At first, our armor was just an old Vietnam-era flak jacket bungee-corded around the door," said Cowan, a patrol sergeant with the Kennebec County Sheriff's Office.

Jewett recalled a trip to Balad with Fish in a 5-ton truck with a loose windshield and no protection but for some "hillbilly armor," or steel welded onto the side. "I got there and started looking at the vehicles and thought, oh my god, the reports on CNN and all that are true. This is crap," Jewett said of his first impression of Iraq.

USA Today, March 26, 2004

Soldiers in Iraq still buying their own body armor

USA Today, September 19, 2005

Guard relief hurt by obsolete equipment

WASHINGTON — Hurricane Katrina exposed serious weaknesses in the National Guard's communications systems, particularly a shortage of high-tech radios and satellite communications gear, the Guard's top general said Monday.

If it's going to protect the USA while also fighting overseas, the Guard needs better equipment, Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, head of the National Guard Bureau, said in an interview with USA TODAY.

…Last week, Sens. Kit Bond, R-Mo., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote President Bush asking for $1.3 billion to buy new equipment for the Guard.

…Only 34% of the Guard's equipment is available for use in the USA, the letter said, with the worst shortages in trucks, night-vision goggles, engineering equipment and communications gear. The Guard has historically used hand-me-down equipment from the active-duty military. For example, the Army Guard is using Vietnam-era radios while it needs 37,000 newer radios, according to a recent Guard budget briefing paper posted on its website.

Washington Post, February 16, 2007

Iraq Troop Boost Erodes Readiness, General Says

Outgoing Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said yesterday that the increase of 17,500 Army combat troops in Iraq represents only the "tip of the iceberg" and will potentially require thousands of additional support troops and trainers, as well as equipment -- further eroding the Army's readiness to respond to other world contingencies.

… "We are having to go to some extraordinary measures to ensure we can respond," he said, but he added that even then he could not guarantee the combat units would receive all the translators, civil affairs soldiers and other support troops they request. "We are continuing today to get requests for forces that continue to stress us."

Schoomaker, in one of his last congressional testimonies as Army chief, also made it clear that he had raised concerns in advance about President Bush's plan to increase troops in Iraq because it would further deplete Army units at home.

Virtually all of the U.S.-based Army combat brigades are rated as unready to deploy, Army officials say, and to meet the immediate needs in Iraq and Afghanistan they are finding it necessary to transfer personnel and gear to those units now first in line to deploy.

... "We are in a dangerous period," said Schoomaker, adding that he recently met with his Chinese counterpart, who made it clear that China is scrutinizing U.S. capabilities.

" Virtually all of the U.S.-based Army combat brigades are rated as unready to deploy…"

Is this a "blue chip" record of supporting the troops?

Sen. Smith, please stop trying to maniuplate the debate for partisan purposes and start focusing on the real and urgent problems your constituents are facing.

By Michelle Neumann Feb. 17, 2007