Fatigue cripples US army in Iraq

[Newsjock]

Source: The Observer (UK)

Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
Sunday August 12, 2007
The Observer

... Where once the war in Iraq was defined in conversations with these men by untenable ideas - bringing democracy or defeating al-Qaeda - these days the war in Iraq is defined by different ways of expressing the idea of being weary. It is a theme that is endlessly reiterated as you travel around Iraq. 'The army is worn out. We are just keeping people in theatre who are exhausted,' says a soldier working for the US army public affairs office who is supposed to be telling me how well things have been going since the 'surge' in Baghdad began.

They are not supposed to talk like this. We are driving and another of the public affairs team adds bitterly: 'We should just be allowed to tell the media what is happening here. Let them know that people are worn out. So that their families know back home. But it's like we've become no more than numbers now.'

... A week later, in the northern city of Mosul, an officer talks privately. 'We're plodding through this,' he says after another patrol and another ambush in the city centre. 'I don't know how much more plodding we've got left in us.'

When the soldiers talk like this there is resignation. There is a corrosive anger, too, that bubbles out, like the words pouring unbidden from a chaplain's assistant who has come to bless a patrol. 'Why don't you tell the truth? Why don't you journalists write that this army is exhausted?'

It is a weariness that has created its own culture of superstition. There are vehicle commanders who will not let the infantrymen in the back fall asleep on long operations - not because they want the men alert, but because, they say, bad things happen when people fall asleep. So the soldiers drink multiple cans of Rip It and Red Bull to stay alert and wired.

... The anecdotal evidence on the ground confirms what others - prominent among them General Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State - have been insisting for months now: that the US army is 'about broken'. Only a third of the regular army's brigades now qualify as combat-ready. Officers educated at the elite West Point academy are leaving at a rate not seen in 30 years, with the consequence that the US army has a shortfall of 3,000 commissioned officers - and the problem is expected to worsen.

Read more: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2147052,00.html

[babylonsister]

1. 'Why don't you tell the truth? Why don't you journalists write that this army is exhausted?'

These poor people; troops hot and exhausted, as are the Iraqis. My heart breaks for them all.

[rodeodance]

2. Gee, do you think the US papes will pick this up?

[SpiralHawk]

3. "Funny, I'm not fatigued at all." - Commander AWOL

"I mean, I have been working out on the social circuit and the golf course and fishing and napping and stuff, but I have no sense of fatigue at all. What's wrong with you military grunts anyway? Must be a buncha liberal wimps, i guess. Smirk, smirk, smirk."

- Commander AWOL

[babylonsister]

4. That makes me even angrier, because it's true. nt

[rodeodance]

6. Recall he sleeps well at night also.

[arewenotdemo]

11. Here I am after outracing a couple more of my new running buddies...

See, I barely worked up a sweat.

[arikara]

14. He looks far worse than they do

It looks like they're supporting him and holding him up. Look how he has his knees locked. That is one weird photo.

[MadMaddie]

16. He looks like is uncomfortable with handicapped people....

it really hasn't dawned on him that these otherwise healthy men have been crippled by his war.

[defendandprotect]

5. Is John Murtha still hitting this issue?

Evidently he has a lot of entanglements with the MIC --
He's kind of disappeared from the scene; after having lost of few battles????

[Middle finga]

7. This is ridiculous, the media has allowed the republicans to frame

this insane argument that if you want the troops to come home immediately you don't support the military but if you're one of those chicken hawks that want the troops to remain in Iraq indefinitely then you are a good patriotic military supporting american.

[babylonsister]

8. Bingo. It's maddening, but that's what's going on. nt

[NuttyFluffers]

17. grinding the troops to death equals support! --head-up-ass RWer

:crazy:

[0007]

9. ...but .. but .. "The Propaganda Ministry" and the "Ministry of Truth"

is saying the surge is working. And things are hunky Dorey in Iraq..

....and junior has the thought police out in full force. Wasn't NYC about to get radiated with what-ever?

[dweller]

10. "we've become no more than numbers now"

3684

http://icasualties.org/oif/



dp

[aquart]

12. Our leaders are on vacation. Our soldiers are not.

What's wrong with this picture?

[IndianaGreen]

13. The Democratic Congress was elected to end the war, they failed miserably!

Instead of defunding the war, they caved in to Bush, one of many cave-ins culminating in last week's FISA vote.

From a high approval of 65%, the Democratic Congress is now polling lower than Bush.

Elections have consequences, Barbara Boxer said. Betraying the electorate has consequences too!

[ninkasi]

15. Anybody with an ounce of sense

would surely know that our troops are exhausted. Look at them, wearing combat gear, and carrying all of the materials they must carry in order to fight...see what the temperatures are in Iraq...they are being worked to death, by a coward who runs away to Crawford, Tx to hide for a month.

Although the Repuke mindset is such that we peasants are expendable, the lives they are destroying have meaning to those they leave behind. Bushco can only recognize the validity of lives lived by his cronies, or their peers. The rest of us don't, and ever have, mattered.His daughters, and Romney's sons, will never be placed in jeopardy in the war Bush claims will determine the fate of our nation.

This so-called war is either a war to determine the fate of our country, or it is a sham to steal the oil reserves of another country. If the real reason is our freedom, then every single child of all of us, rich and poor alike, should be fighting. That the offspring of our pampered have-more class are not enlisting, tells me that Iraq is not, and never was, a danger to us.

The ones who will benefit from this fight will be the big oil companies, and their children. If it's a fight worth fighting, let them do it.

[NuttyFluffers]

18. you all know why this is so, right? broken army = mercenary conquest

right?

you do understand that's why all the contracts are going in one direction, right?

you do know why contractors cannibalize away the best of our military spec ops, right?

you do know why these same companies are building the "internment camps" already, right?

you all get this, right? please tell me no one's still confused, right?

right? right? RIGHT? :think:

[Karenina]

19. And upon returning...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2950470

[unhappycamper]

20. The 15 month tours are going to do a number on our forces.

k&r

[lynnertic]

21. So then: all our MSM happy-crap lies are demoralizing the troops.

There is a corrosive anger, too, that bubbles out, like the words pouring unbidden from a chaplain's assistant who has come to bless a patrol. 'Why don't you tell the truth? Why don't you journalists write that this army is exhausted?'

[frogcycle]

22. cross-post to another thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1568116&mesg_id=1568116

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1568116&mesg_id=1568565

[reprobate]

23. Yes! Bring back the draft. Quickest way out of this quagmire is to propose a new draft.

"War tsar' calls for return of the draft to take the strain"



"America's 'war tsar' has called for the nation's political leaders to consider bringing back the draft to help a military exhausted by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a radio interview, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute said the option had always been open to boost America's all-volunteer army by drafting in young men in the same way as happened in Vietnam. 'I think it makes sense to consider it,' he said. Lute was appointed 'war tsar' earlier this year after President Bush decided a single figure was needed to oversee the nation's military efforts abroad."

But king George knows better. That would certainly bring on Impeachment. Maybe.