Obama's Soldier Story

At the Austin Democratic debate, Sen. Barack Obama made a comment about US troops using Taliban weapons due to the lack of available US ammunition and vehicles.

I heard from a Army captain, who was the head of a rifle platoon, supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24, because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition; they didn't have enough humvees.

They were actually capturing Taliban weapons because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief. Now that's a consequence of bad judgment, and you know, the question is on the critical issues that we face right now who's going to show the judgment to lead. And I think that on every critical issue that we've seen in foreign policy over the last several years — going into Iraq originally, I didn't just oppose it for the sake of opposing it. I said this is going to distract us from Afghanistan; this is going to fan the flames of anti- American sentiment; this is going to cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives and overstretch our military, and I was right.

Now of course the right-wing bloggers swarmed out like hornets to attack Obama, because we all know that when a Democrat criticizes a national security issue, well, he's always wrong. Except when he's not. Phil Carter weighs in at Intel Dump:

I talked this morning with two friends who led rifle platoons in Afghanistan. Both confirmed to me that they did, at times, use captured or found weapons or ammunition. One relayed the story of mounting a Soviet 12.7mm heavy machine gun (the equivalent of a U.S. .50 caliber machine gun) on his HMMWV because it was too difficult to get the spare parts needed to fix their G.I. (government issue) .50 cal. Another told me his platoon carried AKs anytime they patrolled with their Afghan counterparts, and that it was always much easier to get 7.62mm ammo for the AKs than to go through the U.S. bureaucracy for ammunition requisition. These stories are timeless; you’ll see similar ones in the narratives from WWII, Korea and Vietnam vets too. Anyone who’s dealt with the Army supply system – particularly at the pointy end of the spear – ought to be able to sympathize.

As an adviser to the Iraqi police, I sometimes carried non-standard weapons, including an Iraqi police Glock 9mm pistol and an AK47 that had been handed down from the previous adviser team. Early in my tour, my M9 Beretta broke; the armorer could neither fix it, nor figure out how to replace a reserve-component weapon, so I carried the Glock instead. I preferred the U.S. weapons because I had a lot more experience with them, and confidence in my ability to use them. But as an adviser, it was important to show solidarity with my Iraqi brethren, and one way to do that was to carry the same weapons they did. I saw other advisers to the Iraqi army and police doing this too, as well as a few conventional units that were partnered with Iraqi units.

In addition, Obama's staffers gave the captain's name to ABC News, who has this report.

I called the Obama campaign this morning to chat about this story, and was put in touch with the Army captain in question.

He told me his story, which I found quite credible, though for obvious reasons he asked that I not mention his name or certain identifying information.

Short answer: He backs up Obama's story.

The longer answer is worth telling, though.

The Army captain, a West Point graduate, did a tour in a hot area of eastern Afghanistan from the Summer of 2003 through Spring 2004.

Prior to deployment the Captain -- then a Lieutenant -- took command of a rifle platoon at Fort Drum. When he took command, the platoon had 39 members, but -- in ones and twos -- 15 members of the platoon were re-assigned to other units. He knows of 10 of those 15 for sure who went to Iraq, and he suspects the other five did as well.

The platoon was sent to Afghanistan with 24 men.
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As for the weapons and humvees, there are two distinct periods in this, as he explains -- before deployment, and afterwards.

At Fort Drum, in training, "we didn't have access to heavy weapons or the ammunition for the weapons, or humvees to train before we deployed."

What ammunition?

40 mm automatic grenade launcher ammunition for the MK-19, and ammunition for the .50 caliber M-2 machine gun ("50 cal.")

"We weren't able to train in the way we needed to train," he says. When the platoon got to Afghanistan they had three days to learn.
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"We should have had 4 up-armored humvees," he said. "We were supposed to. But at most we had three operable humvees, and it was usually just two."

So what did they do? "To get the rest of the platoon to the fight," he says, "we would use Toyota Hilux pickup trucks or unarmored flatbed humvees." Sometimes with sandbags, sometimes without.

Also in Afghanistan they had issues getting parts for their MK-19s and their 50-cals. Getting parts or ammunition for their standard rifles was not a problem.

"It was very difficult to get any parts in theater," he says, "because parts are prioritized to the theater where they were needed most -- so they were going to Iraq not Afghanistan."

"The purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons," he said, but on occasion they used Taliban weapons. Sometimes AK-47s, and they also mounted a Soviet-model DShK (or "Dishka") on one of their humvees instead of their 50 cal.

Obama is guilty of stretching the truth a tiny bit in this anecdote - the ammunition issue was during training, and this anecdote is a few years old, but the facts remain clear. Our troops are going into Afghanistan with less training, less equipment, and less support than what is required. And it's clear that the reason these troops aren't ready for combat operations  is the administration's focus on Iraq instead of on the organization that caused 9-11. That's not an "economy of force" issue, that's just bad practice.

UPDATE: In Abu Muqawama's coverage of this issue, he accurately notes in the comments section that the real point is Obama's need for better familiarity of military issues. While Obama may want to do the right thing in Iraq/Afghanistan, McCain will outmaneuver him on defense topics in the debates unless the young senator from Illinois gets schooled quickly.

Comments

[Catzmaw]

Then there's this fascinating tidbit from Elizabeth Rubin's excellent story in the New York Times Sunday Magazine yesterday (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/magazine/24afghanistan-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin)

"It didn’t take long to understand why so many soldiers were taking antidepressants. The soldiers were on a 15-month tour that included just 18 days off. Many of them were “stop-lossed,” meaning their contracts were extended because the army is stretched so thin. You are not allowed to refuse these extensions. And they felt eclipsed by Iraq. As Sgt. Erick Gallardo put it: “We don’t get supplies, assets. We scrounge for everything and live a lot more rugged. But we know the war is here. We got unfinished business.”"

[bill_fogarty]

Just stand by. McCain has so many skeletons in his closet that he is kaput. Between campaign financing, the Keating scandal, his affairs and abandonment/divorce of his first wife during her recovery from the hospital...and his less-than-honor behavior as a POW (yes, even that)...there are enough skeletons and scandals in his history that you can bet that MSM will make this the most lopsided election in a long time.

[Raymond Lee]

So what is at the heart of the Supply problem? Is it the money, or is it blockages through Red Tape? The general impression here in the UK is, -wrongly as it turns out- that the US hasn't any supply of arms problems, that the flow is "unlimited". Recently, after an enquiry into the death of a captain who had been killed as a result of not being supplied night-sight goggles in time for a mission ,the MoD UK stated that there were no longer UK supply problems...
Once, when walking along the Flight Deck of an Aircraft Carrier, I was in conversation with the Fleet Chaplain. We had just lost a pilot and his aircraft due to equipment error. I pointed out that we might have lost him through a possible lack of supplies. The Chaplain replied bitterly, "How much is a man's life worth?" That was in l961.
2008: Yes: how much are these men's lives worth?

R.

[Grandjester]

Obama will make Jim Webb SecDef. Problem solved.

[NVH]

You guys are dreamin'

Oh, and since you're getting SO MANY comments about your 5 years ago blogs J., why don't you rename them 10 years ago and talk trash about that administration too, oh wait that's right, they politicked themselves out before the shit hit the fan...wait while I channel Beastie Boys "Sabotage" thru my MP3

[Jason]

NVH, you'll have to refresh my memory about 1998. All I remember from a national security standpoint is that a bunch of asshole Repugs in Congress tried to push Pres Clinton into funding ex-pat Iraqis to invade Iraq in 1998, and all he settled on was bombing a bunch of sites.

It's almost as if the Clinton administration couldn't find appropriate rationale to invade Iraq then. What a mystery.