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March 8, 2005
[Have an opinion about the views expressed in this article? Sound
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By Roger Charles
If you want to read a depressing, pathetic indictment of the Perfumed
Princes of the Pentagon (those in and out of uniform), read the
latest major investigative article in The New York Times today ("Many
Missteps Tied to Delay in Armor for Troops in Iraq," March 7,
2005).
According to article, the Pentagon's "difficulties in shielding
troops and their vehicles with armor have been far more extensive
and intractable than officials have acknowledged."
Here is but one example of the bureaucracy at work, according to
the Times investigation:
"In the case of body armor, the Pentagon gave a contract for thousands
of the ceramic plate inserts that make the vests bulletproof to
a former Army
researcher who had never mass-produced anything. He struggled for
a year, then gave up entirely. At the same time, in shipping plates
from other companies, the Army's equipment manager effectively reduced
the armor's priority to the status of socks, a confidential report
by the Army's inspector general shows. Some 10,000 plates were lost
along the way, and the rest arrived [in Iraq] late." "In all, with
additional paperwork delays, the Defense Department took 167 days
just to start getting the bulletproof vests to soldiers in Iraq
once General [Richard] Cody placed the order. But for thousands
of soldiers, it took weeks and even months more, records show, at
a time when the Iraqi insurgency was intensifying and American casualties
were mounting." "By contrast, when the United States' allies in
Iraq also realized they needed more bulletproof vests, they bypassed
the Pentagon and ordered directly from a manufacturer in Michigan.
They began getting armor in just 12 days."
At the end of the article's too-long litany of incompetence, piss-poor
judgment and lethal bureaucratic inertia, this reader bowed his
head and fought twin temptations. One, to scream in frustration
that Pentagon apparatchiks saw only business as usual while great
young Americans were being killed and maimed in Iraq with increasing
severity and frequency. And, two, to cry in grief for the lives
that were lost or maimed when so many of these deaths and horrible
injuries could have - and should have - been prevented.
Unfortunately, preventing a goodly number of these casualties would
have required that some senior Army or DoD official - just one -
truly cared more for the welfare of the troops than for the proper
staffing of some piece of paper. It's brutally obvious that proper
staffing "within" the DoD acquisition system was the be-all and
end-all that overrode every other consideration.
It did not and does not have to be this way. During the Falklands
War in the spring of 1982, then-Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger
faced the same bureaucracy while trying to support our British allies
in their fight to prevent the Argentine junta from annexing their
islands in the South Atlantic following the invasion.
Weinberger's response to the "most-urgent" British requests for
U.S. materiel assistance was instructive: He ignored the DoD acquisition
system altogether! Over the strong protests of the bureaucrats,
Weinberger short-circuited the materiel mafia that continues to
force U.S. troops to rely on "process and procedure" to the detriment
of getting their hands on live-saving equipment in a timely fashion.
Weinberger's solution was brilliantly simple. At least once a day,
he and his British counterpart in the Ministry of Defense had a
secure telephone call. The British "SecDef" told his American counterpart
what the Brit forces needed, and Weinberger issued an order for
the DoD acquisition system to provide the specified items. The only
"staffing" was the execute order!
For example, the Brits most urgently needed the best air-to-air
missiles that the United States had - the AIM-9L Sidewinder.
To no surprise, our own admirals protested, and may have actually
succeeded in "hiding" some of the requested Sidewinders. In spite
of this obstructionism, enough AIM-9Ls were transferred to U.K.
forces to enable the British Harrier jump-jets to protect their
fleet with minimal losses.
Please note that no U.S. troops were at risk in this British-Argentine
shoot 'em up. Nonetheless, Weinberger ignored the bureaucratic niceties
(and maybe a legal stricture or two in the Federal Acquisition Regulations).
The moral of this too-long sea story, is that if SecDef Donald
Rumsfeld and the closed circle of high-level hand puppets that surround
him had truly given even half of a damn about the welfare of our
troops in harm's way, he and his lackeys had both the Weinberger
precedent and power at their disposal to have ensured that body
armor and up-armored vehicles got to our troops in Iraq in sufficient
amounts and in time to have saved lives and limbs.
That this did not happen is a major indictment of the Pentagon's
current leadership.
To date, no one has been fired, or even reprimanded for the armor-shortage
scandal. No doubt, many of the uniformed and civilian leaders on
whose watch this disgrace occurred have subsequently been promoted.
The ugly truth is that they all chose by inaction and failure to
use all the tools available to them, to let stout-hearted Americans
needlessly die and be maimed for life. How they as individuals can
live with the consequences of their dereliction of duty is a matter
for them and their consciences.
For what it's worth, they have earned my complete and utter contempt.
©2005 DefenseWatch. Roger Charles is
SFTT President and Senior Washington Correspondent for DefenseWatch.
He can be reached at sfttpres@aol.com.
Send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
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