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Al Jazeera (English)
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Army assessment says troops lacked basic necessities in Iraq
(David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times, July 4, 2004)
American soldiers who defeated the Iraqi regime 15 months ago received virtually none of the critical spare parts they needed to keep their tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles running. . . . They ran chronically short of food, water and ammunition. Their radios often failed them. Their medics had to forage for medical supplies, artillery gunners had to cannibalize parts from captured Iraqi guns, and intelligence units provided little useful information about the enemy. . . . These revelations come from the Army itself. In the first internal assessment of the war in Iraq, an exhaustive army study has concluded that American forces prevailed despite supply and logistical failures, poor intelligence, communication breakdowns and futile attempts at psychological warfare. . . . the report also describes a broken supply system that left crucial spare parts and lubricants on warehouse shelves in Kuwait while tankers outside Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, ripped parts from broken-down tanks and raided Iraqi supplies of oil and lubricants. . . . "No one had anything good to say about parts delivery, from the privates at the front to the generals" at the U.S. command center in Kuwait, the study's authors concluded after conducting 2,300 interviews and studying 119,000 documents. . . . Among other highlights, the report revealed that the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad before cheering Iraqis was the brainchild of a U.S. Army colonel, with help from psychological operations, or PSYOPS, units. . . . As the authors point out their battle-by-battle narrative, there were many precarious moments when U.S. units were critically short of fuel and ammunition, with little understanding of the forces arrayed against them. . . . The study, by the Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group at Fort Leavenworth, called ammunition re-supply "problematic" and said the medical supply system "failed to work." . . . Engineers desperate for explosives foraged for abandoned Iraqi explosives and tore apart mine-clearing charges to use the explosives to blow up captured Iraqi equipment. . . . Many soldiers plunged into combat not knowing whether they had enough food or water to sustain themselves in punishing heat and blinding sandstorms. . . . "Stocks of food barely met demand," the study said. "There were times when the supply system was incapable of providing sufficient MREs (meals ready to eat) for the soldiers fighting Iraqi forces." . . . A 3rd Infantry tank commander whose company was attacked by Iraqi fighters hidden in an elaborate bunker and trench system in Baghdad April 8 told the Los Angeles Times that he later learned from a French journalist that newspapers had reported details of the bunker network. Yet his own intelligence officers had told him nothing. . . . The study, which covers events in Kuwait and Iraq until President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1, 2003, does not address the insurgency, which has killed far more Americans than were killed during the so-called "combat phase." Nor does the study discuss the Pentagon's failure to anticipate or control the looting and chaos after the collapse of the Iraqi regime in April 2003. . . . The principal authors -retired Col. Gregory Fontenot, Lt. Col. E.J. Degen and Lt. Col. David Tohn - warned that Iraqi forces could have created significant problems if they had attacked relatively undefended U.S. units staging in Kuwait in the winter of 2002-2003. Those units arrived without significant firepower or reinforcements and were vulnerable to a surprise attack.

posted by LoZo 1:03 PM