How the Pentagon has failed U.S troops

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.iht.com/articles/536423.html

In the 16 months since President George W. Bush landed on the U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and declared major combat activities in Iraq complete, the nearly 400,000 U.S. service men and women deployed in active duty around the globe have faced unprecedented difficulties.

By now, the litany of strategic miscalculations in Iraq by civilian leaders at the Pentagon is well known. What the public and news media often neglect, however, are the less publicized policies that have quietly but insidiously undermined American troops, making it increasingly challenging to fight under the U.S. flag.

Four major Pentagon policies in the past year have undermined the morale of U.S. troops and their families - and are likely to leave a negative long-term impact on the ability of the armed services to recruit and retain service members in the long term.

First, in the dog days of August 2003, while Congress recessed, the Pentagon quietly cut payments for imminent danger and family separation. Earlier that summer, Congress had given the nearly 150,000 U.S. troops serving in Iraq and the 9,000 serving in Afghanistan a $75 a month imminent danger pay increase and a $150 monthly allowance to fund rent and child care for their families at home. The administration cited budgetary concerns for this pay cut. Yet the two payments totaled approximately $450 million - a meager amount next to the $400 billion 2003 defense budget or the $166 billion spent in 2003 on supplemental spending bills for Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Lieutenant Paul Rieckhoff recently returned from Iraq, where he led a platoon in the 3rd Infantry Division for 10 months. He is founder and executive director of Operation Truth, an advocacy and educational organization created to support American troops in Iraq. Dafna Hochman, a doctoral student in political science at Columbia University, was a foreign policy and defense adviser in the U.S. Senate.

[nosmokes]

1. lieutenant rieckhoff says:

""This week in New York, the president and the Republican Party will proudly celebrate their security accomplishments. Yet the baseline test of a government's national security credibility during wartime should be its authentic compassion for its soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen and women and their families.""

and i say that bushco and the pentagon he has assembled has failed the test by any yardstick you care to use. from the danger that the troops were put in by being ill equipped, in some cases ill trained for the job assigned, and in some instances poorly led, to the shameful crimes they were coerced into committing at abu ghraib and other detention facilities in iraq and afghanistan.

good article, thanks for posting this one.

[indepat]

2. Bushco "has failed the test by any yardstick you care to use" in every

aspect of governance, br oy foreign or domestic, fiscal or tax policy, environmental, Bill of Rights or rule of law. The list go on and on.

[nosmokes]

3. no argument here. n/t