New MRAP vehicles to be delivered in quantity by 2008
"You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have." -- U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Kuwait, December 2004.
Fours years of the Bush/Cheney neocon ideology carried out with Katrina-like incompetence in Iraq since 2003 is once again showing its dullard strategic planning this year. Despite everything, the long tail of defense contracting may end up being too little and too late for the boots on the ground during Bush's surge plan because of the Rovian priorities of domestical political power over the realities of foreign policy.
Over two years ago, we had more than one discussion about sending thousands of servicemen and women into the combat zones without proper equipment. You can read about armor-gate and the follow-up entry from December 2004. I thoroughly believe that the presidential election of 2004 was a major factor in allowing Iraq to spiral out of control.
Why? The answer is simple. The White House was too busy dealing with domestic politics all year long. It was a lost year in Iraq. The price of the absent Democrusader was a year that included the two worst months of highest casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom. While Bush and Cheney celebrated their re-election, 2004 ended with an additional 848 killed and 8002 wounded.
While Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld were criss-crossing the country making speeches to win the November 2004 election, there were two major things going apparently unnoticed on the ground in Iraq. First, just like now, there was a surge of the clear-hold-build strategy that brought us the battle of Najaf fighting Shiite militia, and the battle of Fallujah fighting the Sunni insurgents. Second, the cause for Moqtada al Sadr militia going live might have been the worldwide publicity of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Donald Rumsfeld's infamous statement (above) from December 2004 was in reply to a soldier's concerns about driving around a war zone without appropriate armor on their vehicles. Now, even with up-armored Humvees, 70% of all casualties in Iraq are still from Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Now, we're doing the same thing -- another surge, fighting both Sunni and Shiite. Despite all the efforts by the Counter-IED task force, the Humvees are inadequate vehicles to protect U.S. servicemen and women from death and injury.
On Friday, the military finally announced a $34.5 million contract for 36 prototype Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) test vehicles. It's the next better thing for our troops. There's only one problem. These vehicles will not arrive in Iraq until after Congress may have already put a stop to the Bush/Cheney Iraq debacle.
According to the witness testimony given by military officials at the January 16th, 2007 House Armed Services Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee (watch realvideo), it is the intention of the Pentagon to deliver 4100 MRAP vehicles by January 2008 even under an expedited testing, production, and delivery program. In the meantime, there will be a trickle of these life-saving vehicles into Afghanistan and Iraq.
The basic force protection problem is that the Humvee hull design has a flat bottom and sits too low to the ground. When it hits a mine, the blast is actually funneled up into the crew compartment, either launching the vehicle violently into the air or simply breaching the undercarriage, shredding the crew inside.
In comparison, the MRAP vehicle has a V-shaped hull that directs the blast energy from a mine or IED out and away from the crew compartment. The MRAP vehicle is also built upon a truck chassis design, not an SUV chassis, which considerably raises it up off the ground.
As the press release and contract award documents state, the Pentagon is ordering a mix of category I and category II MRAP vehicles. While the Marine service is handling this acquisition, the majority of the vehicles will be delivered to Army commands in Iraq. Category I is the Mine Resistant Utility Vehicle (MRUV) for urban combat operations (shown top). Category II is the larger Joint Explosive Ordnance Disposal Rapid Response Vehicle (JERRV) for multi-mission operations such as convoy lead, troop transport, ambulance, explosive ordnance disposal and combat engineering. While the military has its own acronyms for category I and II, MRUV and JERRV, the industries producing these vehicles have odd animal names for them. The most common names are the Cougar (MURV) and Buffalo (JERRV).
The difference between these MRAP vehicles and the current Humvee fleet is significant not only in design and crew survivability, but also in an intimidating visual psyop way. While the Humvee looks like a soccer mom's SUV, the Buffalo is a military vehicle straight out the post-apocalyptic Mad Max Road Warrior movie.
I think that's great. Protect the troops until we can bring them home.
However, I am critical of the Bush/Cheney administration politicking while our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines fought and died in the lost year of 2004. I am critical of the previous Republican-led 109th Congress -- The Worst Congress Ever -- rubber-stamping an incompetent Katrina-like administration war effort by shirking their Congressional oversight responsibilities of fact-finding some reality concerning Iraq, instead of parroting the delusional faith-based foreign policy.
Without the oversight of an engaged Congress, the appropriations (the money) isn't focussed on the Department of Defense to solve these problems as they arise in the prosecution of its missions. DoD can be a slow moving bureaucracy. Oversight of the Pentagon is not punishment. Instead, it can lead to expedited action that can save lives. For that, I'm happy that the citizens of the country purged the Republican hubris from the Congress in November and left only a minority of GOP partisans whose only job now is to whine on Faux News about their impotence.
It's Phriday Night! It's time for Phriday Night Phaves! If you have a active blog here on Blogdrive and your profile is linked to it with an image, you might be a future Phriday Night Phave. It's very much like Blogdrive's main page of featured subscribers and profiles, except that I get to add my comments about them and so do you. There are thousands of very interesting people on Blogdrive, so I am just going to highlight a few at a time.
Look up Halcyon in the dictionary and discover the opposite between the man and his messed up world. Halcyon is a trained chemist but continually struggles to find the formula for a happy life, just like you and me. Maybe that's his talent -- telling that story. He also writes about the story of Caelris, aka the Dark One.
PROFILE: Angelena LOCATION: Virginia, US BLOG: Occasional CREATED: 12/27/03
Angelena suffers from Occasional Madness to the delight and reading pleasure of all who love her dearly and check in on her blog. She also suffers from occasionally writing a 50,000 word novel in less than 30 days, as she won a NaNoWriMo award for her fiction. Curl up in your chair and check that out at her fiction writing blog, 50k Challenge.
Darren Shan is a prolific author, published novelist and generally interesting person. I think you have to be interesting to get yourself a wikipedia entry. In a very mentoring way, Darren likes to blog about the process of writing and publishing one's work. He also holds the record for the most comments that I've ever seen on a Blogdrive blog ... over 4400.
PROFILE: Soni Pitts LOCATION: North Carolina, US BLOG: Soni Pitts CREATED: 6/25/04
Soni Pitts is also a professional writer, except unlike the others I have pheatured here, her genre is not pure fiction. Instead, Soni's writing genre is something I would classify as enhanced non-fiction. She is a professional copywriter who helps businesses and organizations market their message. Soni tells the story in an attention-grabbing way. Her blog is mostly personal, but even that is written with humor and intrigue. Always entertaining!
U.S. President George W. Bush came to a joint session of the U.S. Congress Tuesday night to give his 2007 State of the Union speech. It has some traditional aspects and formalities, which were described by the C-Span host. The protocol isn't as weird as the Sovereign speech in the United Kingdom that I watched earlier this year, but it was also much less entertaining. The video and transcript are available at the White House.
According to the Nielson TV ratings available via FutonCritic, "FOX's "Idol" remains untouchable as "State of the Union" coverage disrupts most networks' lineups." In the key 18-49 year-old TV demographic, three times as many people watched "Idol" as watched the President's State of the Union speech.
Sometimes, I think people just don't care anymore. Either that, or it's just that Bush has lied so many times in the past that it's pointless to continue paying attention to anything that he has to say. Given that Bush's popularity with average people is about equal to that of venereal disease, I'm not going to bother disecting his entire speech.
I would like to point out an ongoing lie about his administration foiling a terrorist plot: "We stopped an al Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast."
He's starting to believe his own propaganda. He trotted the Library Tower plot out last year to defend his wiretap program. That "plot" turned out to be bogus, likely derived from a tortured confession. Next, he'll be taking credit for saving the Sears Tower in Chicago from the Miami Seven al Qaeda cell.
I listened to the speech Tuesday night, expecting him to lay out the case to bomb Iran. Everytime he speaks these days, he's making the case to attack Iran. This speech was no exception. People say that Bush/Cheney have no plan B. I think they're wrong. I think Plan B is to allow Iraq to freefall into anarchy and then blame Iran for it.
Most people wanted to hear what Bush was going to say about escalating the war in Iraq. I'm not going to analyze that. The U.S. Congress is acting (finally) to try to limit the Bush/Cheney madness. We should see something formal in the upcoming weeks.
Virginia Senator Jim Webb gave the State of the Union response for the Democratic party. A highly decorated Vietnam Veteran, Webb's son is a Marine currently serving in Iraq. You can read that here or watch it here. Stephen Zunes, from Foreign Policy in Focus, ripped apart the Iraq section of Bush's speech, line by line, here.
Karl Kemp is a wealthy antique and art dealer in New York City. He owns Karl Kemp & Associates Antiques which operate out of two very upscale stores that specialize in some of the most expensive furniture available to purchase on the planet. Shown on the left, Kemp poses with his Boxer dog in one of his many warm and cozy showrooms displaying furniture for the perusal of his ultra-wealthy clients.
The average American would likely have to spend more than an annual salary to purchase a single piece of furniture shown in this friendly, promotional image. However, Kemp is apparently having some troubles at his one store, located near other obscene boutique shops like Prada on Madison Avenue, in Manhattan. Several homeless people are trying to stay warm this winter by sheltering themselves over a heated exhaust vent in the sidewalk in front of his precious storefront.
As reported first by Mathew Chayez in the New York Sun, Karl Kemp decided to sue these homeless people for one million dollars, after two years of attempting to remove them from in front of his upscale Manhattan shop through social services and police complaints. In addition, Kemp is asking the New York court to enforce a de-facto restraining order on these people to make them stay at least 100 feet away from his storefront. The lawsuit names these nameless poor, trust-fundless, souls as John Smith, John Doe, Jane Doe and Jane Smith.
It's quite interesting to read the reactions of people commenting about this story as it spread to other media -- like the New York Post and the New York Daily News -- then later on CBS news and the Washington Post. It was discussed on NYC blogs like the Gothamist before it went to the international media, but the comments by New Yorkers are most diverse and telling.
The Real Fisher King
The Gothamist speculated that Kemp may have simply filed the lawsuit to draw attention to his concerns about the problem. Ironically, John Doe's reaction to his recent status as a New York media celebrity has been, "Leave me the fuck alone. I don't want to be fucking involved," or scurrying away from the cameramen and reporters now showing up at his warm spot in front of Karl Kemp's to photograph or interview him.
All the media attention has done much more than simply annoy John Doe, though. It has also apparently identified him over the last week as Robert Greenlee, 54, from Pennsylvania. His brother recognized him from NY Daily news photos thirty years after of his disappearance. In contrast to Karl Kemp, Greenlee has also been the beneficiary of the charitable spirit from another New York multi-millionaire, Edward Baron Cohen, who happens to live down the street from the antique shop.
John Doe, aka Roger Greenlee, might be mentally ill -- and he also might be the real-life Fisher King, too. He's already flipped the mirror of self-assured morality around in the capital of the haves and have-nots. At the same time, I recall that wisdom comes from understanding.
[added 01-21] The city officials in St. Pete, Florida ordered police to swarm a homeless tent-city and destroy it Friday. It wasn't the first time. The homeless people said they prefer to live in a group for security reasons after two homeless men were murdered recently. Video and related stories from the local TV news can be found here.
