Back in December, in response to a question from a Tennessee National Guardsman about the lack of armor for troops fighting in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tersely replied: “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later date.”
And that Army was, in some ways, woefully under-equipped. As many as 30,000 U.S. troops spent their own money to buy bulletproof vests and other protective gear — gear the U.S. government did not initially supply.
Today, New York Times reporter Michael Moss explains just why U.S. troops had to make do without proper gear:
In the case of body armor, the Pentagon gave a contract for thousands of the ceramic plate inserts that make the vests bulletproof to a former Army researcher who had never mass-produced anything. He struggled for a year, then gave up entirely. At the same time, in shipping plates from other companies, the Army’s equipment manager effectively reduced the armor’s priority to the status of socks, a confidential report by the Army’s inspector general shows. Some 10,000 plates were lost along the way, and the rest arrived late.
In all, with additional paperwork delays, the Defense Department took 167 days just to start getting the bulletproof vests to soldiers in Iraq. … But for thousands of soldiers, it took weeks and even months more, records show, at a time when the Iraqi insurgency was intensifying and American casualties were mounting.
By contrast, when the United States’ allies in Iraq also realized they needed more bulletproof vests, they bypassed the Pentagon and ordered directly from a manufacturer in Michigan. They began getting armor in just 12 days.
Countless Americans who heard Rumsfeld’s testy exchange with the Tennessee guardsman or read news stories about families buying protective vests for their sons or daughters in Iraq asked: How can this be? Moss did what a good reporter gets paid to do: He asked the same question — and kept asking until he got the answers.
He filed Freedom of Information Act requests, sought out experts inside and outside the military, and talked to manufacturers of the equipment. His story introduces us to Col. Bruce D. Jette, who holds a Ph.D. from MIT, and was assigned the task of figuring out ways to circumvent the painfully slow requisition process for troops in the field. And, for a while, he was successful. But in October, Moss writes, Jette resigned in frustration. The old system of testing and acquisition was just too entrenched to overcome.
Last month, during an appearance on “Meet the Press,” Rumsfeld was asked about his remarks to the Tennessee soldier. Providing adequate safety equipment is not a matter of money or desire, said Rumsfeld, “it’s a matter of production and capability of doing it.”
Today, Moss vividly details just how flawed those systems are.
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Susan Q. Stranahan wrote for CJR.