Supporting Our Troops
Feb 27th, 2007 at 7:33 am by Susie
Any Democrats who let this happen need to be reminded why they were elected:
Soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division had so little time between deployments to Iraq they had to cram more than a year’s worth of training into four months.
Some had only a few days to learn how to fire their new rifles before they deployed to Iraq — for the third time — last month. They had no access to the heavily armored vehicles they will be using in Iraq, so they trained on a handful of old military trucks instead. And some soldiers were assigned to the brigade so late that they had no time to train in the United States at all. Instead of the yearlong training recommended prior to deployment, they prepared for war during the two weeks they spent in Kuwait, en route to Anbar, Iraq’s deadliest province.
As the Pentagon prepares to boost troop levels in Iraq by 21,500 people, such logistical and training hurdles are emblematic of the struggles besieging a military strained by unexpectedly long and grueling commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“It’s happening just about to all the units now,” said Lawrence Korb, who oversaw military manpower and logistics as assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. “No unit is completely combat ready.”
