Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community

We're Hurting Our Troops

by Larry Johnson
Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 01:15:54 PM EST

Some brave soul in the U.S. military sent Pat Lang a memo issued Monday that shows the U.S. ability to support its troops is collapsing and very vulnerable to disruption.

Download iraq_food_deliveries.pdf

The memo states:

Due to a theater-wide delay in food delivery, menu selections will be limited for the near future. While every effort will be made to provide balanced meals, it may not be possible to offer the dishes you are used to seeing at each meal. Fresh fruits and salad bar items will also be severely limited or unavailable.

The bottomline is that our troops depend on a ground supply line that runs from Kuwait to the various bases in Iraq. When I was in Iraq last year at the U.S. base in Balad I had the chance to eat four meals a day--breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight rations (midrats). If you like late nights the midrats were great--steak, eggs, pancakes. Pretty good food. Well, based on this memo, it looks like those were the good old days. We don't have enough convoys to give our troops three hot meals a day. We want them to step up the patrolling. We want them to search 24-7 for missing soldiers. But, by God, they don't deserve three hot meals a day.

Excuse my rudeness, but that is fucked up. Way to go General Petraeus.

We're Hurting Our Troops | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: We're Hurting Our Troops (4.00 / 3)

Everything about Iraq is fucked up.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. Franklin D. Roosevelt

by Steven D on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 01:21:27 PM EST

Re: We're Hurting Our Troops (4.00 / 2)

Has the mainstream media deemed this worthy of reporting?

If you want things to get better, be prepared to deal with change.

by Kahli on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 03:02:28 PM EST

Re: We're Hurting Our Troops (none / 0)

The discrepency between the 4 meals-a-day life of Americans and the average Iraqi's alimentation is probably not lost on the locals. It's an Koranic tradition that a 'full stomach is void of wisdom and filled with sin'. That phrase could aptly describe our nation at it's all too typical worst, no?

While this may suck for the soldiers, this situation could be used to bring them closer to the population in many ways, no? Just look at the bright side.

Declaring the bottom is the only way back up..

by anarchronarchist (mincers (-at-) hotmail (-dot-) com) on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 01:50:39 PM EST

Re: We're Hurting Our Troops (none / 0)

As I am sure you have heard, many in the 101st referred to Petraeus as General Betrayus because he had a reputation for hot dogging with the press/brass and not taking care of the soldiers under his command.

by nlacey (nlacey) on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 04:40:21 PM EST

Re: We're Hurting Our Troops (none / 1)

So the Republicans are escalating the number of fighters and support people, while cutting benefits and making them go without showers or food or Internet? No salads or fresh fruit in summer? And it will get worse as the numbers of soldiers in theatre increases.

Some planning!

During the invasion, troops went hungry because they were moving faster than the supply convoys. This was a temporary situation. Halliburton charged for those undelivered meals anyway.

Is Halliburton still charging for nondeliverables? Taking the money and running? By moving headquarters out of the USA, they hope to avoid being accountable. I would suggest freezing all of their assets and denying them further contracts or payments until they have fulfilled their obligations. If they can't... drop them like the shitbags they are.

Undermining morale is a bad thing to do in wartime. "An army travels on its stomach" is more than a proverb.

After this many years of war in the Middle East, surely those brains at the Pentagon no longer need emergency appropriations over and above the Defense budget. And surely they know basic logistics. The desert of Iraq can be just as deadly as the snows of Russia to an overextended army.

Undefended pawns die or get captured.

by hauksdottir on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 06:35:13 PM EST

We're Hurting Our Troops | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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