More Support for the Troops...

I think all of this speaks for itself. My blood has been close to the boiling point and I'm going to meet a friend for lunch here in a little while, so I wanted to assemble these items together not unlike the modifications that the boys and girls over there have had to employ for years now just to feel like they have a chance of surviving an ambush:

But here we are in Iraq after 15 bloody months still welding steel plate onto Humvees. Sure, our soldiers gain a tad more protection, but it also turns the vehicles into rollover queens because it shifts their center of gravity.

The problem is that the soft-skinned Humvee was conceived as a light utility truck – not a close combat vehicle. "The Humvee is horribly thin-skinned and underpowered," says Army veteran Scott Schreiber, who drove one for six years. "It should be used in roles that don’t call for armor. If the role calls for armor, it’s simple: use armor."

Bob Geiger:

A study completed in late June by the Pentagon's Inspector General concludes that the Department of Defense (DoD) has risked the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq due to malfeasance in awarding and monitoring contracts for badly-needed armored vehicles.

The study, which was requested by Democratic Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York, found that since 2000 the DoD has awarded "sole-source" contracts valued at $2.2 billion to just two companies, Force Protection, Inc.(FPI) and Armor Holdings, Inc (AHI).

Inspector General auditors found that the Marine Corps Systems Command (MCSC) made these two companies the sole providers of armored vehicles and armor kits for troops, despite knowing that other suppliers may have produced the equipment so desperately needed in Iraq substantially faster. Both manufacturers fell far behind delivery schedules, while AHI also produced inadequate and faulty equipment.


Democracy Now!:

On Wednesday, Republicans defeated an amendment that would require U.S. troops to get as much or more rest between deployments as the time they were deployed. Seven Republicans joined Democrats in support but the measure failed to attract the sixty votes needed to move ahead. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid criticized Republicans, saying: “Our troops are not machines, they are human beings.”

UPDATE 14 JUL 07 (very early):

Then there's this:

Following the Committee’s April 24, 2007, hearing on the Tillman fratricide, the Committee wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding seeking “all documents received or generated by any official in the Executive Office of the President” relating to Corporal Tillman’s death. The White House Counsel’s office responded that it would not provide the Committee with documents that “implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests” and produced only two communications with the officials in the Defense Department, one of which was a package of news clippings. The response of the Defense Department to the Committee’s inquiry was also deficient.

How far are these bastards willing to go? As Poppy put it in 1990:

That's why, in the Persian Gulf, George Bush had to say, 'This will not be another Vietnam.' He actually said, 'this time we're going all the way.'

*Rubbing eyes fiercely...*