Bush's TV ads slam Kerry for "voting against giving body armor to our troops in Iraq" while witholding the info that Kerry was trying to cut back the wealthy elite's tax cuts to pay for it! That means putting the burden OFF the Middle Class and have the wealthiest people in America help pay for a war many are profiting from. NOW we learn of how Bush's leadership has left our troops without the proper armored vehicles because they were trying to play it cheap over safety. That's American's lives they are wasting! This administration is a moral failure trying to hide behind an obscene veil of hyprocisy.

April 30, 2004 NY TIMES EDITORIAL
Troops Without Armor in Iraq

It's hard to imagine what the Pentagon was thinking when it told the American Army and Marine replacement divisions bound for Iraq earlier this year to leave their tanks and other heavily armored vehicles behind. American military planners seem to have ignored evidence that armed resistance to the occupation was far from suppressed. As a result, they failed to anticipate the kinds of ambushes and urban firefights these troops are now caught up in and against which tanks and armored personnel carriers afford the best protection.

That costly miscalculation has left American soldiers in their thin-skinned Humvees nearly defenseless against the rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and AK-47 rifle fire they face almost daily. While political spokesmen have played down the seriousness of the fighting that has killed 126 Americans just this month, field commanders have been pleading desperately for more armor.

This week, the Pentagon finally ordered that thousands of armored vehicles be sent to Iraq, from 70-ton Abrams tanks to lighter and faster Bradley and Stryker combat vehicles, plus an armored version of the Humvee, whose production is now being accelerated. Every effort must be made to speed the movement of this badly needed equipment to minimize future American casualties.

The Defense Department now tries to justify its earlier mistake of leaving the heavy armor behind by arguing that tankbound soldiers are poorly suited to engaging with the Iraqi civilian population and winning hearts and minds. True enough, but having the tanks on hand would not have prevented such efforts in more secure areas, and would have saved lives in battle zones like Falluja and Najaf.

More than American troop reinforcements and heavier armor will be needed to resolve the underlying political problems in Iraq. That will take, at a minimum, a credible transfer of sovereignty to a representative Iraqi governing body backed by the legitimacy of full United Nations involvement. Meanwhile, for as long as American troops are needed, they must be properly equipped.

This latest military planning fiasco seems yet another example of the Pentagon's damaging insistence that American ground forces make do with fewer troops and lighter equipment than they really need to carry out the mission they have been assigned in Iraq. This page shares the long-term goal of transforming the Army into a more mobile and agile fighting force, but not at the expense of American soldiers' lives.

From the first days of the Iraqi conflict, the Pentagon's stubborn refusal to face up to the realities of the battlefield there has compounded the political and military problems of occupation and needlessly endangered American soldiers. It is past time for those lessons to be digested and for American forces to be given the reinforcements and equipment they sorely need.


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