2 Army units will forgo desert training ( No time, being rushed due to * surge)

[maddezmom]

WASHINGTON - Rushed by President Bush's decision to reinforce Baghdad with thousands more U.S. troops, two Army combat brigades are skipping their usual session at the Army's premier training range in California and instead are making final preparations at their home bases.

Some in Congress and others outside the Army are beginning to question the switch, which is not widely known. They wonder whether it means the Army is cutting corners in preparing soldiers for combat, since they are forgoing training in a desert setting that was designed specially to prepare them for the challenges of Iraq.

Army officials say the two brigades will be as ready as any others that deploy to Iraq, even though they will not have the benefit of training in counterinsurgency tactics at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., which has been outfitted to simulate conditions in Iraq for units that are heading there on yearlong tours.

more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070227/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/rushing_to_iraq_2

[wakeme2008]

1. training, rifles and humvees are not required just warm bodies

:grr:

[Maeve]

5. And they may not be 'warm' long...damn.

:argh: :argh:

[babylonsister]

10. ...warm bodies full of blood to be spilled. nt

[Jeanette in FL]

2. Cutting corners seems to be an understatement

Congress better get on this ASAP. Here is another article from earlier in the month:

Corners cut in rush to add troops
Shorter training time, lack of equipment hurt readiness, experts say
Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, February 4, 2007

Soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division had so little time between deployments to Iraq they had to cram more than a year's worth of training into four months.

Some had only a few days to learn how to fire their new rifles before they deployed to Iraq -- for the third time -- last month. They had no access to the heavily armored vehicles they will be using in Iraq, so they trained on a handful of old military trucks instead. And some soldiers were assigned to the brigade so late that they had no time to train in the United States at all. Instead of the yearlong training recommended prior to deployment, they prepared for war during the two weeks they spent in Kuwait, en route to Anbar, Iraq's deadliest province.

As the Pentagon prepares to boost troop levels in Iraq by 21,500 people, such logistical and training hurdles are emblematic of the struggles besieging a military strained by unexpectedly long and grueling commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It's happening just about to all the units now," said Lawrence Korb, who oversaw military manpower and logistics as assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. "No unit is completely combat ready."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/04/MNG9ONUKVT1.DTL

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

3. "Support The Troops"

Time for the administration to add more flags to their lapels.

Time for the 30% to put another bumper sticker on their cars.

No need to worry, that will solve the problem.

But please....whatever you do.....don't question the war or it's operations, because that would mean you DON'T SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!! And if that happens, they might not be able to do their job.

Of course, all this other stuff like training, resting and preparing, has no impact on how successful our troops are. But if Congress should debate....look out. THAT will cause the problems.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!! We're being led by SONS OF BITCHES!!! Is there any fucking hope?

[Drum]

4. Outrageous.

:mad:

[jamesinca]

6. Seems to me there were a few campaign slogans involved

did they not go after Al Gore in 2000 because of the readiness of the military?

"It's happening just about to all the units now," said Lawrence Korb, who oversaw military manpower and logistics as assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. "No unit is completely combat ready."


Is this what Rumsfeld was talking about when he said you go with the military you have, not the one you want?

"Army officials say the two brigades will be as ready as any others that deploy to Iraq" Yet none of them are ready, so the sickening truth is this, they are all just as prepared as the other divisions.

Support the troops, give tax breaks to the have and the have mores.

[Thor_MN]

7. So how was it that Saddam kept control of Iraq again?

He had to be removed because he was an evil dictator (fourth or fifth version of the reason for invading) and he killed his own people. Haven't we pretty much taken on that same role in Iraq? So no WMDs, no Chemical weapons, no reconstituted Nuclear program, no drone planes, no mobile bioweapons RVs and now we are killing the people of Iraq... Are we ever going to be able to call the neocons wargasm illegal and prosecute them?

[Kolesar]

8. I thought General Petraeus was going to introduce whole new concepts in urban warfare

He wrote the book on it, literally. It was his thesis at the War College*, IIRC.

*I don't know the name of the school he was at.

[burrowowl]

33. I wonder if Petraeus has ever heard of

Stalingrad? Prehaps the biggest lesson on urban warfare. The Russians finally won at a horrible cost, but they won.

[Kolesar]

35. Our Stalingrad has been racing thru the streets of Baghdad, dodging IEDs

Petraeus actually wants our Army to proceed slowly and be more coupled to the population. Shades of "community policing" , but there is more to it than that.

If I were a praying man, I would be praying for them.

[mcscajun]

9. The lead sentence makes it sound like the troops' decision, when

you know that is most definitely NOT the case.

"...two Army combat brigades are skipping their usual session." Sure, all the soldiers got together and decided they really didn't need specialized training, so they thought they'd just "skip" it.

Your kids might "skip" classes, I might "skip" going to the gym. Such a Light Word, "Skip". Somebody cut orders on this.

:mad:

[gratuitous]

18. If the troops don't "need" this specialized training

Why is it being offered? Why did we waste so much time and energy giving specialized training to the other troops if it isn't needed?

This doesn't just fail the smell test; it fails the look, listen, feel and taste tests. And the logic test. And the pencil test. Probably passes the blood test, though.

[bemildred]

11. The very definition of "cannon fodder".

Maybe it should be IED fodder or RPG fodder these days.

[wellst0nev0ter]

12. Army STRAWNG!! (n/t)

[tabasco]

13. The NTC is what really gets units ready for combat.

By skipping this valuable field exercise, the unit will not be fully prepared.

[rocktivity]

14. Who's undermining the troops NOW?

And what better way to give aid and comfort to the enemy by supplying them with inexperience, underequipped opposition?

:headbang:
rocknation

[saigon68]

15. K & R

[KansDem]

16. From "Support the Troops" to "Deport the Troops"

Sounds like BushCo is getting impatient about that new Iraqi oil contract and the 100% return on all oil revenues in oil fields as yet undiscovered and undeveloped.

[RedEarth]

17. Send this to the wingers............ Support the Troops????

[Earth_First]

19. So now we're sending our troops without enough rifles AND the necessary training ahead of deployment

National Guard going to Iraq don't have enough rifles

The Pentagon is planning to send more than 14,000 National Guard troops back to Iraq next year, shortening their time between deployments to meet the demands of President Bush’s buildup, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.

“We’re behind the power curve, and we can’t piddle around,” Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, commander of the Oklahoma National Guard, said in an interview. He added that one-third of his soldiers lacked the M-4 rifles preferred by active-duty soldiers and that there were also shortfalls in night vision goggles and other equipment. If his unit is going to be sent to Iraq next year, he said, “We expect the Army to resource the Guard at the same level as active-duty units.”

Capt. Christopher Heathscott, a spokesman for the Arkansas National Guard, said the state’s 39th Brigade Combat Team was 600 rifles short for its 3,500 soldiers and also lacked its full arsenal of mortars and howitzers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/22/washington/22military.html?_r=2&hp&o ref=slogin&oref=slogin

Unreal.

[TexasLawyer]

20. Policemen

From what I've read about the "surge" it's going to be primarily urban, house-to-house raids. That is the training I most hope they've gotten.

Our soldiers are asked to be police officers in the most hostile "beat" in the world. Is this really how we want to use our military?

[donsu]

21. so how many will die of heat stroke? what with no desert training

nt

[fooj]

22. This is criminal.

[Joe Chi Minh]

23. Everyone does it, I know, but why peddle the Orwellian Newspeak terms of

the neocons - even between inverted commas? Surely, instead of the metaphorical, counterfeit term, "surge", the proper, unadorned, English-language term, "escalation", should always be used. The same with any and every other Newspeak euphemism they coin.

[Supersedeas]

24. But FOX News thinks that Murtha is a kook for demanding proper training

[sakabatou]

25. ::headdesk::

[JerseygirlCT]

26. Great. They'll arrive just as the hot weather is really ratcheting up

fully unprepared -- training-wise and eqipment-wise -- for the horror awaiting them.

These people in the Bush machine truly have no consciences.

[Nihil]

27. Hey, look on the bright side will you?

They probably wont last long enough to worry about the weather ...
:cry:

[JerseygirlCT]

30. Awful, isn't it? nt

[superconnected]

28. more meat for the grinder.

I really don't get why people are still joining.

[Contrary1]

29. K & R n/t

[truthisfreedom]

31. Our country has known no greater evil than bushco. It's just heart-wrenching to learn this stuff

every day... and the stories never end.

[ProudDad]

32. Gee, how much training does one need

to be cannon fodder...? :shrug:

[sofa king]

34. Replacements on a grand scale.

Who hasn't seen a World War II flick in which a greenhorn replacement is dropped into a battle-hardened unit and shunned by everyone?

There were good reasons, however cruel, for avoiding replacements in the American Army in World War II. First of all, the chances that a replacement was going to get killed within the first 72 hours was much higher than that of soldiers with a little bit of experience. Soldiers don't want to get too attached to someone who's just going to get killed.

But more importantly, replacements had a bad habit of getting others killed, in a hundred different ways--revealing a position, tripping mines, freezing up or running away, not covering his sector of fire, et cetera.

Now ramp that incompetence up to the brigade scale and imagine what's going to happen when the greenhorns are responsible for an entire area and don't know how to patrol and sweep it, how to conceal their movement, how to correct the mistakes they've made, and how to hold it together when things get confused.

Even the Soviet Army, hardly the most subtle war machine ever to scar the earth, quickly learned that the best way to kill well trained and highly disciplined German troops was to hit the less well trained units of the Italians, Rommanians, and Bulgarians which were next to the Germans, then maul the German units as they moved in to stabilize the situation, or surround them if they didn't.

It's a lesson as old as warfare itself, and it will be applied against us.