Month: October 2004

Seems such a short time ago that we had reached 1000 soldiers dead in Iraq. Now it’s 100 more unnecessary deaths.

Casualties in Iraq

Rahul Mahajan puts his finger on the central issue of the Iraq occupation which makes the mutiny over the “suicide mission” an important story.

Apparently, an Army Reserve platoon, part of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, South Carolina, is under arrest for refusing to obey orders to go on what they considered a suicide mission.

Stationed at Tallil Air Base south of Nasiriyah, they were ordered to do a fuel resupply run up to Taji, north of Baghdad. Fuel convoys in the “Sunni Triangle” nearly always come under fire; one soldier reportedly claimed that the chance of being attacked was “99 percent.”

The platoon considered their trucks to be extremely unsafe; some were not able to go more than 40 mph, and would be sitting ducks. They ordinarily get an escort of armed Humvees and helicopters, but an escort was not available for the mission.

This actually points to the difficulty the United States would face if it tried to put in significantly larger numbers of troops, as John Kerry seems to want (he doesn’t say he’ll send more troops to Iraq; he says more troops are needed to do the job, that he intends to do the job, and that he’ll increase the combat forces by 40,000 — you do the math). It’s already difficult to find enough escorts for resupply operations; that difficulty will be compounded the more combat troops are put in (because the need for fuel will increase along with the number of troops in the field).

You could increase the number of logistical and supply troops proportionately, maybe, but then you have more and more people to be easily killed by the resistance.

To put what happened in some perspective, consider that one very successful strategy of the resistance has been to target the American logistic structure, which relied heavily on Jordanian and Turkish truckers for resupply. Those who have kept up with the news out of Iraq know that the victims of the Iraqi guerillas have overwhelmingly been collaborators, with an emphasis on truckers. Kidnapped Jordanians and Turks don’t make for big news stories in the American press, but these are the people who were trucking in supplies to the US military, and their ranks have been decimated by the guerillas. With the near elimination of any trucking firms either willing or able to resupply the US, the job has only recently fallen to the US military to drive their own convoys.

As Rajul points out above, more troops means more supplies that must be trucked in to Iraq. Even without an increase in troops, more of the US military is on the road in Iraq. The fact that the US now has few to no outside contractors driving the convoys means further overstretch and exposure to attack as soldiers take up the positions abandoned by contractors. Now, instead of military escorts of convoys driven by contractors, the military must drive and escort its own convoys, as well as use its own vehicles. It seems reasonable to assume that this is provoking a crisis in US military operations, partially evidenced by the request for British troops. This is precisely the goal of the Iraqi guerillas, as I pointed out here and as Zarqawi has allegedly announced today.

Today, 5 more US soldiers were killed in car bomb attacks. Yesterday’s attacks killed 6 in two separate bombings. Are the US troops more exposed due to the lack of contractors willing to brave insurgent attacks to resupply the US military? Undoubtedly, they are. Look for more troops, increasingly demoralized by their realization that their presence in Iraq is pointless, to refuse more suicide missions.

Today, from 4PM to 6PM Eastern, Scott Horton will be interviewing the great Jim Bovard, who has a new book, The Bush Betrayal. Scott will also interview Dr. No.
RBN’s “Listen Live” page contains enough live stream links to satisfy any system, so feel free to choose the most appropriate one for you.
We ran the first chapter of Bovard’s book, which is sensational. The simple, axiomatic truth of the first two sentences make me wonder how Bush can possibly be seen in public anymore. How can he campaign, how can he debate, how can he answer questions from the press, carrying this on his back:

“George W. Bush came to the presidency promising prosperity, peace, and humility. Instead, Bush has spawned record federal budget deficits, launched an unnecessary war, and made America the most hated nation in the world.”

Anyone want to argue with that? And yet he does campaign, he does answer questions from the press, he does debate, and in some polls, he seems to be leading. I’m not campaigning for the murderous Kerry here, but perhaps we need a child to come along and tell Bush he isn’t wearing any clothes.

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“But he has nothing on at all,” cried at last the whole people. That made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought to himself, “Now I must bear up to the end.” And the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train which did not exist.

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On second thought, perhaps the innocence of a child would not be enough to defeat ignorance on such a mass scale.

Al-Zarqawi makes the big leagues.

Has anyone ever been taken off the Terror List? Wouldn’t the list be shrinking instead of growing if Bush was “Winning the War on Terror,” as he claims?

Army platoon arrested for refusing “suicide mission”

A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a “suicide mission” to deliver fuel, the troops’ relatives said Thursday.

The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq — north of Baghdad — because their vehicles were considered “deadlined” or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook.

Sgt. McCook, a deputy at the Hinds County Detention Center, and the 16 other members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, S.C., were read their rights and moved from the military barracks into tents, Patricia McCook said her husband told her during a panicked phone call about 5 a.m. Thursday.

The platoon could be charged with the willful disobeying of orders, punishable by dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay and up to five years confinement, said military law expert Mark Stevens, an associate professor of justice studies at Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount, N.C.
[…]
The 343rd is a supply unit whose general mission is to deliver fuel and water. The unit includes three women and 14 men and those with ranking up to sergeant first class.

“I got a call from an officer in another unit early (Thursday) morning who told me that my husband and his platoon had been arrested on a bogus charge because they refused to go on a suicide mission,” said Jackie Butler of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Michael Butler, a 24-year reservist. “When my husband refuses to follow an order, it has to be something major.”

The platoon being held has troops from Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Mississippi and South Carolina, said Teresa Hill of Dothan, Ala., whose daughter Amber McClenny is among those being detained.

McClenny, 21, pleaded for help in a message left on her mother’s answering machine early Thursday morning.

“They are holding us against our will,” McClenny said. “We are now prisoners.”

Of course, we are only hearing about this because some soldiers managed to alert their families in the States.

Patricia McCook said her husband, a staff sergeant, understands well the severity of disobeying orders. But he did not feel comfortable taking his soldiers on another trip.

“He told me that three of the vehicles they were to use were deadlines … not safe to go in a hotbed like that,” Patricia McCook said.

Hill said the trucks her daughter’s unit was driving could not top 40 mph.

“They knew there was a 99 percent chance they were going to get ambushed or fired at,” Hill said her daughter told her. “They would have had no way to fight back.”

Another ominous item in this story:

Harris said conditions for the platoon have been difficult of late. Her son e-mailed her earlier this week to ask what the penalty would be if he became physical with a commanding officer, she said.

Larry Diamond, former senior adviser to the CPA in Baghdad, has a long, wonkish piece up at Foreign Affairs on “What Went Wrong in Iraq.” It’s supposed to be a how-to on occupation, not an argument against the war, but it does (unwittingly) illuminate the futility of nation-building – even as it endorses more vigorous nation-building in Iraq. Typical Council on Foreign Relations fare. Anyway, here’s the clearest articulation yet of what these folks mean by “staying the course”:

Because of the failures and shortcomings of the occupation – as well as the intrinsic difficulties that any occupation following Saddam’s tyranny was bound to confront – it is going to take a number of years to rebuild the Iraqi state and to construct any kind of viable democratic and constitutional order in Iraq. The post-handover transition is going to be long, and initially very bloody. It is not clear that the country is going to be able to conduct reasonably credible elections by next January. And even if those elections are held in a minimally acceptable fashion, it is hard to imagine that the over-ambitious transition timetable for the remainder of 2005 will be kept.

Does anyone seriously think the “construction” of a “viable democratic and constitutional order in Iraq” will be complete a year from now?