What Embarassment From This Administration Is Next????

[Quote:] BIGJACK
"Come on silver bullet, you know thats a bunch of bull. Facts are that metal was being salvaged from bombed machinery and vehicles for several weeks prior and many of the vehicles did not get armour for weeks after the "questioning" incident as well as there was a lack of bp vest at the time also. Furthe more, even Rumsfeld admitted the short commings with his famous "this ant no pick nick we (meaning the foot soldiers) fight with what we have."

Facts are BigJack the HMMV was not designed as an armoured vehicle and many wars were fought before armoured vehicles were "required equipment". I agree they are great to have, but you still have to fight with what you have not what you wish you could have.
 
Sort of like sending the troops in unprepared, I would say. And I see no proof that it was actually a military officer that made the statement, could have been one of those "paid information specialist."
The hUmve was designed as a military weapon and I believe that it was designed to be armored, but many were sent to iraq with out the armor, My opinion from participants input.
 
I know that when we deployed our orders said that Interceptor Vests would be issued... we shipped with Vietnam Era Flack Vests. Many soldiers and thier families had to purchase thier own body armor.

The HUMMV is not designed to be an armored vehicle, you can add armor to it but all that does is put more wear and tear on the tranny and engine making them wear out faster. The M1151 is the new HUMMV that has a bigger engine and better suspension. This allows them to handle the 1500 lbs of armor. There have been some reports that that are not the best thing for hilly terrain in Afghanistan...but work great on the flat terrain in Iraq.

I can introduce you to a unit of about 150 soldiers that were in Iraq at Camp Anaconda with unarmored vehicles. They didnt get any armor until one of the soldiers was killed by an IED and one was wounded pretty good. The one soldier that was wounded has been in and out of the Hospital for over a year now and is still on conveleasence leave.

The fact is that there are still unarmored vehicles in Iraq. However, they have been limited to on base use.

The big item that should concern everyone is is the recall of Body armor by the Marines... something like 23,000 vests in total. Some of the vests were tested after the return form Iraq and were not found to meet standards. When the initial test results were pulled they were defective even before they were issued. Thats okay tho...this administration is a friend of big business *wink*wink*nod*nod* whats a few dead soldiers against lots of profit?
 
The hUmve was designed as a military weapon and I believe that it was designed to be armored, but many were sent to iraq with out the armor, My opinion from participants input.
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The HUMMV was designed to replace the famous Willy's Jeep. I guess it needs to be said that besides serving well in three wars, the Jeep was completely unarmored. That the HUMMV was never supposed to be an armored vehicle, that's not opinion, that's fact.
Thats okay tho...this administration is a friend of big business *wink*wink*nod*nod* whats a few dead soldiers against lots of profit?
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Prove that anyone in the administration made even one dollar off this company selling defective vests to the military. You made a very serious charge, you need to back it up or take it back.
 
BigJack. You remind me of an associate during the last election who continued to spew nonsensical garbage about the Republicans, even when the information was not true. He was a broken record... over and over again the same crap. We are long overdue in trying to win the propaganda battle in Iraq. I don't care if we pay for the printing of articles or not. You think Radio Free Europe was free at the beginning? Time proved it to be an extremely worthwhile effort in terms of providing non-communist information to a part of the world that generations knew nothing but communism and a totalitarian form of government. Iraq is the same. Good things take time.
 
The hUmve was designed as a military weapon and I believe that it was designed to be armored, but many were sent to iraq with out the armor, My opinion from participants input.
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A great opportunity to share information! Except for a couple of specialized variants, the HMMWV was not designed to be armored, but an armor kit was developed and is now in fairly common use in Iraq.
 
BIGJACK
"Sort of like sending the troops in unprepared, I would say. And I see no proof that it was actually a military officer that made the statement, could have been one of those "paid information specialist."


Jack,
There's a huge difference between unprepared and not being equipped with the best Gucci gear. We have the best trained and prepared military in the world. We don't always have the best of equipment, but we can thank liberals for that since they seem very good at reducing military budgets. Our equipment is provided by the lowest bidder it has nothing to do with which piece of equipment is the better value. If both pieces of equipment do the same thing the cheaper one get bought even if it's inferior. Like I always tell my guys "Remember, you're equipment was provided by the lowest bidder."

"The hUmve was designed as a military weapon and I believe that it was designed to be armored, but many were sent to iraq with out the armor, My opinion from participants input."


Jack,
You believe wrong. The Air Force Peacekeeper was designed to be armoured, but not the HMMV.
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Bigjack, yes I did see the stories. I asked because I don't see any indication of untrue stories being planted and I would like you to back up your statement. Like this:
"The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments" http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-infowar30nov30,0,5638790.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Doesn't sound like fake stories to me, and that's from the LA Times, hardly neocon cheerleaders.

As far as the armor goes: the M1151 is a heavier vehicle designed to allow add on armor to be easily put on and off. The M1114 is the armored HMMWW, of which there are now thousands in Iraq. They carry around 3 tons of armor. There were indeed problems with supply of armored HMMWVs. The Army didn't have a lot of them initially. However, you listen to uniniformed comments it sounds as if the govt was irresponsible in not giving every soldier their own personal impenetrable armored vehicle. The fact is some missions call for armor and some don't, everything is a trade off. More armor on the HMMWV limits mobility and visibility. Better against IEDs, worse against some guy with an RPG you don't see and can't shoot at cause the windows are up. Once IEDs turned out to be the big threat, we went with more armor.

Everyone going to Iraq now has Interceptor Body Armor. Again there were supply chain issues and that was not the case at the beginning, but no one goes in without it since at least early 2004 (may be earlier than that, but that's as far as I can go from personal experience). Before this war, the Army didn't have armor (besides flak vests) for everybody. It has only been relatively recently that reasonable weight armor that is effective against rifle rounds has become available. Now that it has, the Army has it. Could they have gotten it faster? Probably, but that's the way it goes.
 
Does anyone really believe there is any truth to be found out there anymore. You could never really trust what you saw on tv but nowadays it's all been edited censored scrutinized and made as politically correct as can possibly be just so someone doesn't get sued. The only way anyone could possibly get truth is to PHYSICALLY go to whatever it is you are wondering about and ask him, her, them, yourself. I don't even watch the news anymore, life is hard enough on it's own without hearing about everyone else's problems.:(
 
I am still a little bit confused about the Hummve, That thing is way past my time, we still had jeeps and I believe that the hummve was supposed to offer a considerable more protection to the occupants than the jeep, thus armour.:p
Some of the afore posted "experts" :rolleyes: have said the "proposed" armour weight was 1500 # and others say 3 tons (6000#),:rolleyes: i wonder just where the number really is:confused:
Sort of like using a condom with a hole in it.:D
 
Hey Silver bullet, you sure yu are not a front man for the gwb administration/
You just got a way about your self, of twisting the facts!!:confused:
Hav a nice day, buddy.
 
Prove that anyone in the administration made even one dollar off this company selling defective vests to the military. You made a very serious charge, you need to back it up or take it back.
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Did not say anyone in the administration made a dollar of the vests. I find it strange that 23,000 USMC vests have been recalled and we dont hear a peep about it for W or Rummy. hrmmm.... If I was President and somebody gave my troops bad armor, I would be lookin to hang some cajones on the wall.

As far as the HUMMV it was never designed to be armored. When I first enlisted we still had the M151 jeep.

some reading for ya...

http://www.sftt.us/PDF/article06232005a.pdf

http://www.sftt.org/main.cfm?action...rchives=defense&htmlId=4301&HtmlCategoryID=30
 
Thats okay tho...this administration is a friend of big business *wink*wink*nod*nod* whats a few dead soldiers against lots of profit?
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Did not say anyone in the administration made a dollar of the vests.
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You're contradicting yourself now. Either prove it, or take it back.
I find it strange that 23,000 USMC vests have been recalled and we dont hear a peep about it for W or Rummy.
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Because it's not their job to keep track of procurements, and they have other things to do? Or to advertize that our troops are now vulnerable, so it can be played on Al Jeezera 24/7?
 
show me the words where I said the administration made a profit. The companies made a profit selling shoddy equipment to the military. Second Chance has gone bankrupt after taking millions of dollars in taxpayer money with it. Wonder which political party they contributed too? Has anybody been sent to jail for it?

as Commander in Chief and Secretary of defense it is there job to ensure that the soldiers are taken care of and not given shoddy equipment
 
show me the words where I said the administration made a profit.
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You're accusing the administration of allowing substandard items to be issued so that "big buisness" could make a profit. Prove it.
as Commander in Chief and Secretary of defense it is there job to ensure that the soldiers are taken care of and not given shoddy equipment
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So it's their job to make sure everything from underwear to aircraft carriers, and everything in between, is up to standards? Is that really your position?
 
I believe that the hummve was supposed to offer a considerable more protection to the occupants than the jeep, thus armour.
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BIGJACK seems to prefer to cling to preconceptions or convenient misconceptions rather than seek facts.

For those who might be interested, here are the facts from the HMMWV's manufacturer, AM General.
Most HMMWV models were not required by the U.S. military to have any armor protection.
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A few variants of the HMMWV were intended to provide some armor protection.
The "basic" armor package uses a combination of steel, kevlar and layered polycarbonate windows designed to stop a fragment weighing 17 grains.

"Supplemental" armor adds some additional steel to increase the protection to stop a fragment weighing 44 grains.
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Wow, that's protection against things like debris and shell fragments weighing up to a whopping 44 grains - and just barely enough to stop a .22 Long Rifle bullet.

After problems with land mines in Bosnia, an after-market armor kit was developed by O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhart and HMMWVs with the kit installed were termed "up-armored." Since the payload capacity of HMMWVs varied from 2,500 to 6,000 pounds and armor kits weighed about 2,000 pounds, some of the older, lower-capacity units simply couldn't be up-armored.

The US military has over 100,000 HMMWVs.
 
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