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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Rebuttal to NYT article about Marines and Armored Vehicles |
| 2005-04-26 |
| COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us Monday, April 25, 2005 The Marines of Company E The Marines of Company E (the New York Times doesn't bother to tell us the parent unit, for some reason, but I want to say it was the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines...ah, yes, there it is on page 3) took over Combat Outpost, on the eastern edge of Ramadi, from the 1st Bn, 124th Infantry regiment's Charlie company, plussed up with a platoon (+) from my own Headquarters company. I was a frequent visitor, and often spent a day or two there to visit HHC soldiers and get away from the flagpole across town. The Marines of 2/4 took over central Ramadi from us, after a brief relief in place operation and a right-seat/left-seat ride process that was probably too short, in retrospect. The Marines were just trickling into town as we were packing up to leave, and we even encountered the 2/4's stay-behind elements in Kuwait frantically trying to scavenge anything useful they could find - especially armor. Now the Marines are sounding off about equipment problems in the New York Times. It doesn't surprise me that the Times is covering the story. And it deserves to be covered. But where was the Times when Brian Chontosh won his Navy Cross? MIA, that's where! And the Times has been MIA on a lot of other stories, too: http://iraqnow.blogspot.com/2004/08/why-arent-reporters-interested-in.html Aside from the inexplicable omission of the unit designation until three quarters of the way into a lenghty article (WTF, guys???), the Times does a reasonable job here, for a layman's effort, in profiling the challenges of Company E. The leadership challenges, though, are by far the more compelling and interesting story to me, rather than the equipment shortage story. Believe me, the Marines rolled into Iraq far better equipped than we did. We hit the ground in Iraq with a whole headquarters company full of troops and exactly zero (0) vehicles. What's more, the vehicles we didn't have yet had canvas doors on them. Armor? What armor? We still had the old Viet Nam era soft flak vests, not the kevlar vests -- and just two desert camoflage uniforms per man (the active duty standard issue was four). Actually, the active army guys were pretty incredulous that we had no kevlar vests. Some notes about the New York Times article: Read the rest at the link. Bias in the NYT? They don't begin to tell the whole story. |
| Posted by:Deacon Blues |
| #12 :-) I bow |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-04-26 5:23:19 PM |
| #11 Thank you, thank you. |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-04-26 5:10:26 PM |
| #10 Agreed, Ship. Matt is rockin' & rollin' today, lol! "Donnie", heh heh. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-04-26 4:34:14 PM |
| #9 Superor laughs Matt! |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-04-26 4:29:23 PM |
| #8 to My Lai, site of the Vietnam War's worst atrocity Bullshit. I bet you could find a thousand worse, but committed by the Communists. Of course, to a reporter, nothing a Communist (or Islamist) does is an atrocity, right? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-04-26 2:54:49 PM |
| #7 "Lincoln raps Rumsfeld inability to compromise" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-04-26 1:51:48 PM |
| #6 Or alternatively: "Rumsfeld Failed To Anticipate Ardennes Offensive" by Edward Wong "Sources close to the beleaguered Secretary of Defense have told the Times that Mr. Rumsfeld was caught entirely unprepared for Germany's armored strike, despite having twelve full years of life experience at the time. Said one: 'Yeah, Donnie thought that Hitler was whipped, just like we all did. I dunno where he gets off being SecDef.' As morale dropped sharply, US soldiers were repeatedly heard to complain about the superior armor of the insurgent Panther and Tiger tanks. Rumsfeld, apparently, had no answer, other than an irrational confidence in eventual US 'victory'...." |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-04-26 1:40:34 PM |
| #5 Damn, Rooters is quick off the mark. The NYT is going to have to go to its fallback article: "In Blow to Rumsfeld, Marines Surrender at Wake Island." |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-04-26 1:16:19 PM |
| #4 Many believe Saddam lost the war and power simply because he did not have his own people on his side to stand up to the U.S. invasion as the Vietnamese did. Yeah, but that's such a minor point so why even bring it up... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2005-04-26 1:12:59 PM |
| #3 "Thirty Years After the Fall of Saigon, Eerie Similarities Exist in Iraq." Reuters beat the NY Times to it, Matt: Echoes of Iraq Ring Through Vietnam HO CHI MINH CITY (Reuters) - Military strategists will be debating for years the similarities and differences of the U.S. wars in Vietnam and Iraq but on the ground in Vietnam there is no argument -- Baghdad was a mistake, a big one. From Diem Bien Phu, where Vietnamese communists also beat the French in colonial times; to My Lai, site of the Vietnam War's worst atrocity; to the tank commander who smashed down the gates of Saigon's presidential palace, there is genuine bewilderment at U.S. actions in Iraq. "Didn't the Americans learn anything from Vietnam?" asks tour guide Pham Phu Bang, 76, who fought both the French at Diem Bien Phu and the Americans from 1966 to 1968, including taking part in the 1968 Tet offensive on then Saigon. "Why are they in Iraq? It's the same." |
| Posted by: Steve 2005-04-26 12:44:23 PM |
| #2 What the NYT story from yesterday really tells you is that the news coming of Iraq today is so positive that the NYT has to recycle stories from a year ago to make things look bad. You just know what the NYT's lead article on April 30 is going to be: "Thirty Years After the Fall of Saigon, Eerie Similarities Exist in Iraq." |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-04-26 11:45:48 AM |
| #1 Thanks Deacon, I knew there was more to the story than what the Times reported. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2005-04-26 10:42:38 AM |