In the beginning, there was no armor
When those running the U.S. government decided to go to war against Iraq in 2003, a lot of things were missing. A clear objective would have been nice, seeing as how even the troops, such as I, still don't have a clear idea of why we're in Iraq. Even without that, a way to get out of Iraq would be nice.
The troops, I'll tell you, would be just as happy to have the government tell them all the objectives have been met and that the U.S. is done with Iraq. But that can't happen yet because of another missing piece: there is no exit strategy.
Of course, in a lot of ways our non-existent exit strategy is tied to our ever-changing objectives. We started out looking to eradicate Iraq's WMD programs, then when that didn't pan out we decided we were there for the liberation of the Iraqi people. After it was apparent that the Iraqi government had dissolved completely through "liberation" and that the country wouldn't be able to pick the pieces up without help, Iraqi democracy became our objective. Now our objective isn't just democracy, but a democracy that gives unequally high representation to Hussein's backers. This is a brand new development, and one that has further fuzzied our objectives in Iraq. It could be argued that our exit strategy can be seen only through the lens of our objective. Until the objective is clear, an exit strategy is fuzzy at best.
But that's now. The questions of objectives and exit strategies are big parts of a bigger picture that troops, for the most part, aren't concerned with in the way Karl Rove is concerned. Day to day, the troops care about things like their families, whether their equipment will hold up, whether they are going to make it home alive. What they don't worry about so much is whether planning for the war was botched - at least the majority doesn't worry about that. The average troop's attitude is one that says, 'we're here now, so we're going to have to deal with it.'
A little more than a year into the war in Iraq, my unit became attached to the Coalition Forces Land Component Command. CFLCC, as it is called, is the organization that led the war effort early on, before it became apparent that there was a need for a headquarters in Iraq. CFLCC, based in Kuwait, was too far away from the action to call the shots for a drawn out campaign against insurgents. By the time I arrived in Kuwait on Aug. 1, 2004, CFLCC had become nothing more than a logistics hub for the war in Iraq.
As the logistics hub, CFLCC bore a lot of the responsibility for making sure that U.S. military units on their way to Iraq were properly equipped. Even by December 2004, it was pretty clear that CFLCC was falling behind in its equipping mission. It wasn't CFLCC's fault so much as it was the fault of the Pentagon and the White House. Both had failed to prepare for what had been predicted by many inside the White House and the Pentagon: a lengthy and bloody post-Hussein insurgency. Long before I got to the Middle East, former Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Eric Shinseki had been fired for suggesting the war in Iraq could take a lot of time and a lot of troops because of the threat of insurgency. Colin Powell, chairman of the joint chiefs when the U.S. went to war against Iraq in 1991, had predicted more than a decade before that it would be unwise to invade Iraq because of the possibility of insurgency. In that war, we drove Hussein back to his border and stopped.
But despite that an Iraq invasion would bog the U.S. down in an insurgency was a widely-held point of fact, the White House and Pentagon decided not to bend to this view, and in fact did not even prepare for the possibility of an insurgency. It was this key mistake that resulted in CFLCC's continued rush to catch up with the demand for armored Humvees and other trucks two years after the war began. And we aren't talking top-of-the-line armored Humvees and trucks. Most of what we're talking about is known as "hillbilly armor", armor made from rough-cut, 3/8-inch steel plating that is bolted or welded onto the sides of vehicles. CFLCC called this "Level 3 Up-armor," but later changed the name to "Level 3 Hardening" after criticism of the plating was made public during a town hall meeting with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In fact, I was present at that town hall meeting when Rumsfeld was asked the now-infamous question that went something like, 'Why do we have to dig through landfills to find armor for our vehicles.'
The other kind of armor CFLCC put on vehicles is known as Level 2 Up-armor. This level of armor comes as a prefabricated kit, and it is bolted or welded onto the vehicle for which it was designed. Two years after the war began, the Army still hadn't designed Level 2 armor kits for all of the unarmored vehicles it had rolling around Iraq. (A third type of armored vehicle, known as Level-1 Up-armor, was produced in the U.S. This type of armor is integrated into the vehicle during production).
In order to assuage concern over the lack of armored vehicles, CFLCC issued and enforced a policy that prohibited unarmored vehicles from rolling into Iraq under their own power. Unarmored vehicles instead had to be hauled into Iraq by armored vehicles. What happened with the unarmored vehicles after they left Kuwait wasn't CFLCC's responsibility, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from troops returning from Iraq that there were plenty of unarmored vehicles rolling along the streets of Iraq.
This is far from a conspiracy. That's not to say, however, there wasn't a conspiracy. Shortly after Rumsfeld's visit - really within hours - we (the CFLCC Public Affairs Office) were answering to every major U.S. publication and wire service about the status of CFLCC's armor program. The hoopla surrounding the armor question and Rumsfeld's callous response that we "go to war with the Army we have, not the Army we wish we had" had everyone asking for exact numbers of vehicles with each kind of armor. They were also asking how many armored vehicles were needed to carry on the war. It turned out the number needed was far more than the number on hand.
However, just a few months earlier it had been determined that far fewer armored vehicles would be needed for Iraq. Those numbers had been adjusted upwards at almost the same time as Rumsfeld's town hall meeting. CFLCC didn't want to look bad. The Petagon didn't want to look bad. They had me scrambling for statistics on the numbers of vehicles produced for World War II, which the White House and Pentagon were struggling to compare Iraq to, then scrapped that idea when it turned out the U.S. had produced such a phenomenal amount of materiel for that war that the whole military was embarrassed by their current low production numbers.
At the rate the Pentagon was producing new armored trucks for Iraq, it would take almost 400 years just to equal the number of trucks produced in four years during World War II. The only solution the Pentagon and CFLCC could find was to say that the requirement for armored vehicles was much lower than it actually was. CFLCC's logistics section coordinated with the public affairs section to give the media the old numbers that showed less of a need for armored vehicles.
By the time CLFCC caught up to the number of vehicles actually required for the Iraq war, the hoopla over armor had died down. No media outlets were coming to ask for numbers or to follow up to find out if CFLCC had met the downgraded quotas. By then, the country and the media were focused on Bush's Medicare prescription drug program and his plans for Social Security. And now, almost three years after the war began, there still isn't adequate armor for vehicles in Iraq. But at least there's more armor now than there was in the beginning when there was no armor. That's the line that Rumsfeld would give anyway.
The troops, I'll tell you, would be just as happy to have the government tell them all the objectives have been met and that the U.S. is done with Iraq. But that can't happen yet because of another missing piece: there is no exit strategy.
Of course, in a lot of ways our non-existent exit strategy is tied to our ever-changing objectives. We started out looking to eradicate Iraq's WMD programs, then when that didn't pan out we decided we were there for the liberation of the Iraqi people. After it was apparent that the Iraqi government had dissolved completely through "liberation" and that the country wouldn't be able to pick the pieces up without help, Iraqi democracy became our objective. Now our objective isn't just democracy, but a democracy that gives unequally high representation to Hussein's backers. This is a brand new development, and one that has further fuzzied our objectives in Iraq. It could be argued that our exit strategy can be seen only through the lens of our objective. Until the objective is clear, an exit strategy is fuzzy at best.
But that's now. The questions of objectives and exit strategies are big parts of a bigger picture that troops, for the most part, aren't concerned with in the way Karl Rove is concerned. Day to day, the troops care about things like their families, whether their equipment will hold up, whether they are going to make it home alive. What they don't worry about so much is whether planning for the war was botched - at least the majority doesn't worry about that. The average troop's attitude is one that says, 'we're here now, so we're going to have to deal with it.'
A little more than a year into the war in Iraq, my unit became attached to the Coalition Forces Land Component Command. CFLCC, as it is called, is the organization that led the war effort early on, before it became apparent that there was a need for a headquarters in Iraq. CFLCC, based in Kuwait, was too far away from the action to call the shots for a drawn out campaign against insurgents. By the time I arrived in Kuwait on Aug. 1, 2004, CFLCC had become nothing more than a logistics hub for the war in Iraq.
As the logistics hub, CFLCC bore a lot of the responsibility for making sure that U.S. military units on their way to Iraq were properly equipped. Even by December 2004, it was pretty clear that CFLCC was falling behind in its equipping mission. It wasn't CFLCC's fault so much as it was the fault of the Pentagon and the White House. Both had failed to prepare for what had been predicted by many inside the White House and the Pentagon: a lengthy and bloody post-Hussein insurgency. Long before I got to the Middle East, former Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Eric Shinseki had been fired for suggesting the war in Iraq could take a lot of time and a lot of troops because of the threat of insurgency. Colin Powell, chairman of the joint chiefs when the U.S. went to war against Iraq in 1991, had predicted more than a decade before that it would be unwise to invade Iraq because of the possibility of insurgency. In that war, we drove Hussein back to his border and stopped.
But despite that an Iraq invasion would bog the U.S. down in an insurgency was a widely-held point of fact, the White House and Pentagon decided not to bend to this view, and in fact did not even prepare for the possibility of an insurgency. It was this key mistake that resulted in CFLCC's continued rush to catch up with the demand for armored Humvees and other trucks two years after the war began. And we aren't talking top-of-the-line armored Humvees and trucks. Most of what we're talking about is known as "hillbilly armor", armor made from rough-cut, 3/8-inch steel plating that is bolted or welded onto the sides of vehicles. CFLCC called this "Level 3 Up-armor," but later changed the name to "Level 3 Hardening" after criticism of the plating was made public during a town hall meeting with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In fact, I was present at that town hall meeting when Rumsfeld was asked the now-infamous question that went something like, 'Why do we have to dig through landfills to find armor for our vehicles.'
The other kind of armor CFLCC put on vehicles is known as Level 2 Up-armor. This level of armor comes as a prefabricated kit, and it is bolted or welded onto the vehicle for which it was designed. Two years after the war began, the Army still hadn't designed Level 2 armor kits for all of the unarmored vehicles it had rolling around Iraq. (A third type of armored vehicle, known as Level-1 Up-armor, was produced in the U.S. This type of armor is integrated into the vehicle during production).
In order to assuage concern over the lack of armored vehicles, CFLCC issued and enforced a policy that prohibited unarmored vehicles from rolling into Iraq under their own power. Unarmored vehicles instead had to be hauled into Iraq by armored vehicles. What happened with the unarmored vehicles after they left Kuwait wasn't CFLCC's responsibility, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from troops returning from Iraq that there were plenty of unarmored vehicles rolling along the streets of Iraq.
This is far from a conspiracy. That's not to say, however, there wasn't a conspiracy. Shortly after Rumsfeld's visit - really within hours - we (the CFLCC Public Affairs Office) were answering to every major U.S. publication and wire service about the status of CFLCC's armor program. The hoopla surrounding the armor question and Rumsfeld's callous response that we "go to war with the Army we have, not the Army we wish we had" had everyone asking for exact numbers of vehicles with each kind of armor. They were also asking how many armored vehicles were needed to carry on the war. It turned out the number needed was far more than the number on hand.
However, just a few months earlier it had been determined that far fewer armored vehicles would be needed for Iraq. Those numbers had been adjusted upwards at almost the same time as Rumsfeld's town hall meeting. CFLCC didn't want to look bad. The Petagon didn't want to look bad. They had me scrambling for statistics on the numbers of vehicles produced for World War II, which the White House and Pentagon were struggling to compare Iraq to, then scrapped that idea when it turned out the U.S. had produced such a phenomenal amount of materiel for that war that the whole military was embarrassed by their current low production numbers.
At the rate the Pentagon was producing new armored trucks for Iraq, it would take almost 400 years just to equal the number of trucks produced in four years during World War II. The only solution the Pentagon and CFLCC could find was to say that the requirement for armored vehicles was much lower than it actually was. CFLCC's logistics section coordinated with the public affairs section to give the media the old numbers that showed less of a need for armored vehicles.
By the time CLFCC caught up to the number of vehicles actually required for the Iraq war, the hoopla over armor had died down. No media outlets were coming to ask for numbers or to follow up to find out if CFLCC had met the downgraded quotas. By then, the country and the media were focused on Bush's Medicare prescription drug program and his plans for Social Security. And now, almost three years after the war began, there still isn't adequate armor for vehicles in Iraq. But at least there's more armor now than there was in the beginning when there was no armor. That's the line that Rumsfeld would give anyway.
posted by Emcee Jeebus at 7:20 AM
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