The guy deserves a medal for not slinking into the shadows now that the press has the story.

The best quote came from Ollie North, "Every unit I have ever been with in Iraq or Afghanistan has never needed anything." Shut up, shiatbag. Hillbilly Armor? The fire at the ammo dump in FOB Falcon? Lack of IBAS for NG troops?

WTF planet do these people live on? Up-armored HMMWV's were tasked for Iraq, not A-Stan. F*cking ridiculous. This ain't rocket surgery. First Cavalry Division redeployed in 2006 without adequate radios. They ran out of money and the soldiers threw out critical components before they got to the install yard.

No, everything is fine. Anyone who says otherwise is a terrorist.

adiabat: Trouble is, the Army captain Private from whom Obama got the story about soldiers..

FTFA

The captain told NBC News that

Honestly, after the last five years, why would anyone believe a single word that came out of the Pentagon? It's not in their best interest for the public to know the unfettered truth, so why is their word so supposedly authoritative? There's a reason that officers and soldiers have divergent opinions on a given situation.

NewportBarGuy: WTF planet do these people live on?

They are company men through and through. Did you ever try to get an opinion on a non-Microsoft product from a Microsoft employee. It's downright frustrating. It's only tolerable since usually no one dies from that kind of sycophancy.

log_jammin: FTFA

The captain told NBC News that

I think the point was that he's gonna be a private (and not a PFC) pretty soon

I don't know who can believe Ollie North. Look, ollie, you were a lying liar working for regan back in the day. To act like your word is beyond reproach is a bunch of crap. I know you don't want the kids nowadays to find out about Iran-Contra, but there are a lot of people who still remember you hypocrite.

Seems to me that B. Hussein Obama planned this controversy from the onset. He purposely made vague claim of some Captain leading a platoon.

Barry knew that Captains do not lead platoons, so he had given out just enough vague and seemingly bad information to start the uproar, then out of NOWHERE he trots out the Captain to support his story.

The Captain should be investigated for dereliction of duty for his participation in this shameful media stunt. God only knows what B. Hussein will if he every got the Bully Pulpit of the Oval Office.

/God Bless America and Support the Troops

Just pointing this out, but Iraq is an urban war, up armored Humvees have decent use in that situation. But they aren't everything for every job. The British have intentionally left their vehicles down amored because they are in more rural areas. The armor weighs down the vehicles and gets them stuck, which is kinda bad in a fight.

It'd be awesome if they could have tanks in both places so nobody had to worry much, but as the Soviets learned, heavy tanks are useless in a mountain war.

The story went from "our guys are so poorly equipped they're raiding Taliban weapons stashes for guns" to "our guys are so poorly equiped that they used some guns from a raid earlier during a quick training period, but we had the usual gear when we actually deployed to combat".

Oh, and this guys not slinking, but he's not standing up either. He's still an anonymous source "because he's on active duty". I'd be interested to see the situation more fully explained.

The Pentagon has become a Republican party organ. With a Republican in the White House for 20 of the last 28 years, the military leadership has been stacked with rank conservative partisans with whom we'll be stuck for a generation. Should the next president try to clean house and excise the rot, he'll be hypocritically flayed as trying to politicize the military.

This, needless to say, is a problem.

ricbach229: Oh, and this guys not slinking, but he's not standing up either. He's still an anonymous source "because he's on active duty". I'd be interested to see the situation more fully explained.

I don't see why he'd want to identify himself; whenever he comes home, Freepers and conservatives will spit on him, so he might as well remain anonymous.

Wow. I'm amazed Ollie North has time to do any news commentary at all with all the time it takes to sell weapons to Iran.

fark this administration. It almost makes me want to believe in religion just to know there's a hell for these assholes.

RandomExcess: Seems to me that B. Hussein Obama planned this controversy from the onset. He purposely made vague claim of some Captain leading a platoon.

Barry knew that Captains do not lead platoons, so he had given out just enough vague and seemingly bad information to start the uproar, then out of NOWHERE he trots out the Captain to support his story.

The Captain should be investigated for dereliction of duty for his participation in this shameful media stunt. God only knows what B. Hussein will if he every got the Bully Pulpit of the Oval Office.

/God Bless America and Support the Troops

Trollicious.

RandomExcess: blah blah blah i'm a troll blah blah my candidate is grandpa munster and has no chance of winning blah blah please listen to my dreamed up little theory blah blah

This was the only thing you said I could agree with.

/God Bless America and Support the Troops

GObama.

funmonger: Trollicious.

I almost fell for it, too.

I hope I'm not the only one regularly surprised that not only is Ollie North not rotting in prison, he's a Republican media icon.

When an officer in the field stands up and says something critical of the Pentagon, you can believe it. He places himself at risk by doing so, and there is little to motivate him unless he or his soldiers are in danger.

NubianzWithAttitude: I hope I'm not the only one regularly surprised that not only is Ollie North not rotting in prison, he's a Republican media icon.

Unfortunately, neither of these things surprises me.

of course captains don't lead platoons. good thing the captain in question was a lieutenant at the time. phew.

FOX is where old republican war criminals or just anyone that belongs behind bars go to live out the rest of their years in modest luxury

The Pentagon is lying...I'm shocked!

"The first casualty when war comes is truth." So said Sen. Hiram Johnson, a California Republican, in the year 1917.

>> Trouble is, the Army captain from whom Obama got the story about soldiers not being properly armed? He's backing it up

Darn that pesky truth.

Just think how great a president shrub would be if it weren't for that.

It's amazing how this completely mundane story that is pretty typical fare given the last 5 years and anyone who has actually been in the service cannot possibly be surprised by, has the freeper crowd all rabid and up in arms, calling for the guy to be prosecuted for TREASON!!!!

I hope they pump this story hard, because then we will have a lot of vets who have nothing to lose coming out of the woodwork, saying "yep, that how it was in Afghanistan, yep, we got screwed once the Iraq war spun up"

If nothing else, Obama seems to be running a campaign that knows what it's doing - he wouldn't have said this if he couldn't back it up.

I hate it when I'm in the middle of a good ol' ad hominem and some asshole's gotta start draggin' like "facts" and other gaywad shiat like that into it. Little pussy biatches. Still bet I could KICK YOUR ASS!!!

So the troops are backing up the worries made public by the treasonous anti-Iraq folks? Whodathunkit.

Last night Bill Moyer's Interviewed Sarah Chayes. She's been on the ground in Afghanistan watching the situation deteriorate. Please watch it here:

In this particular metaphor, we're the sheriff, right? We're going go out after the outlaw, Osama bin Laden. We gather this posse of Afghan criminals to gallop off with us. And then we put them in positions of the governor. We make them into the governor, the mayor, the, you know. And we don't ask them anything about how they're governing. We don't demand-- all we say is, we have to support the Afghan government. We have to support the Afghan government. And so we've fed them money, we've fed them arms, and then we say to the people, "okay, you're supposed to hold your government accountable." they're looking at these thugs with the whole power of the entire world, is what it looks like to them, behind them. And the Afghan people say, "you want us to hold them accountable?" So this, I think, is really the root of the problem. (new window)

depmode98: FOX is where old republican war criminals or just anyone that belongs behind bars go to live out the rest of their years in modest luxury

Take all your overgrown infants away, somewhere
And build them a home, a little place of their own
The Fox News Memorial Home for Republican Tyrants and Kings
And they can appear to themselves every day
On cable TV
To make sure they're still real
It's the only connection they feel

/had to

Fail. RTFA. The Captain is backpedaling.

Obama lies, and Obama plagiarizes.

OK, we have an unidentified source complaining about enough ammo or people. My question us why is this being treated as something new?
This smacks of politically motivated opportunist rhetoric.

Rarely in my over two decades worth of military service, including in regions where we got shot at and at time got to shoot back, was I in a unit that was up to full strength. You are almost always under strength because of people out due to illness, injury other training or nowadays even pregnancy.

None of the politicians whining now gave a damn about how some of us were stuck doing back to back deployments during the various "peace keeping" missions in the 90s. Nor did they give a damn about the shortage of spare parts and training ammunition because money had to be shifted from meeting those needs to supporting the deployments. So we ended up deploying under trained and under equipped. I would also add the militaries recruiting and retention problems were much worse in the 90s because of this. When National Guard units had to deploy for 10 months in the Balkans there was no outcry about how it hurt the members because of the loss in pay form their civilian jobs. Must have been because the guy ordering the deployments was form the correct political party.

It is like the body armor issue. The politicians jump all over it but the troops end up wearing too much body armor so the brass can cover their butts.

Politically Correct Body Armor Sucks
http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/2007751935.asp (new window)

Troops Reject New Body Armor as Dangerous
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htinf/articles/20060328.aspx (new window)

If you want to help the troops, and this applies to members of BOTH parties, stop using the for your political opportunism. Get out of the way a let them do their job. That lowly Marine Corporal on partrol in Western Iraq knows more about what needs to be done than some pointed headed politician sitting in Washington trying to jerk off his political base.

Dead_Mandela

Fail. RTFA. The Captain is backpedaling.

Obama lies, and Obama plagiarizes.

Wow a Hillary supporter!

*pokes

TofuTheAlmighty: The Pentagon has become a Republican party organ. With a Republican in the White House for 20 of the last 28 years, the military leadership has been stacked with rank conservative partisans with whom we'll be stuck for a generation. Should the next president try to clean house and excise the rot, he'll be hypocritically flayed as trying to politicize the military.

This, needless to say, is a problem.

--------------

It really doesn't depend on the President. The military is full of conservative partisans by and large because conservatives are the ones signing up and making a career out of military service. And the vast majority of the high ranking generals we have today started military service before Reagan was President.

Unless you are talking about the civilian leadership of the Pentagon which I think the military leadership just tolerates knowing that they'll have a new civilian leader a few years later anyway.

Bottom line: There's probably very little a President Obama could do to alter the overall political leanings of the U.S. military -- aside from re-instituting a draft.

hasty ambush: When National Guard units had to deploy for 10 months in the Balkans there was no outcry about how it hurt the members because of the loss in pay form their civilian jobs. Must have been because the guy ordering the deployments was form the correct political party.

I bet that the NG troops deployed today would love to change places with those guys in the Balkans.

Dead_Mandela: Fail. RTFA. The Captain is backpedaling.

Obama lies, and Obama plagiarizes.

CNN is reporting the captain in question said "Obama got the basics of the story right, just missed a couple details". Also went on to say te only real discrepancy was that "most of the 15 reassigned soldiers went to iraq, but wasnt sure if all 15 did". Sounds like very minor differences.

/keep up the great work freepers
//mountain out of a mole hill

hasty ambush: OK, we have an unidentified source complaining ....jerk off his political base.

I hate it when I do that!

If you want to help the troops, and this applies to members of BOTH parties, stop using the for your political opportunism. Get out of the way a let them do their job. That lowly Marine Corporal on partrol in Western Iraq knows more about what needs to be done than some pointed headed politician sitting in Washington trying to jerk off his political base.

The pointed headed politician sitting in Washington is the reason the cannon fodder troops are in that shiat hole in the first place!

/sarcasm/

Maybe the problem is the contractors are not billing the taxpayers enough?

If you believe Ollie, why arent you over in a uniform fighting for what you believe in?

Internet Tough Guys belong in the military, they don't belong on a comment board talkin about how tough they would be if they only had the balls to go and do it.

Supporting the troops would mean getting them the right weapons and armor, not sitting around lying about how everythings great when there's been plenty of evidence to show it isn't.

Sultan Of Herf Quote 2008-02-23 11:11:26 AM
Dead_Mandela: Fail. RTFA. The Captain is backpedaling.

Obama lies, and Obama plagiarizes.

CNN is reporting the captain in question said "Obama got the basics of the story right, just missed a couple details". Also went on to say te only real discrepancy was that "most of the 15 reassigned soldiers went to iraq, but wasnt sure if all 15 did". Sounds like very minor differences.

/keep up the great work freepers
//mountain out of a mole hill


How convenient that the "minor detail" that it was (allegedly) a training incident, not a combat incident, was not mentioned during the critical debate being watched by a national audience of millions.

Everyone who heard that line during the debate perceived it to be about a combat incident.

Some "Change", huh. Typical spinning, lying, plagiarizing politician.

The officer, at minimum, is spinning for Obama. That's a fact.

Fark It: The only chance the Republicans have is McCain beating Obama on policy during the debates. That's not going to happen.

McCain is toast.

He has been covering up for the GOP in the Jack Abramoff scandal



He's only released 3% of the documents he has obtained.

Dead_Mandela: The Captain is backpedaling.

Obama lies, and Obama plagiarizes.


I'm honestly curious about something: Since you are unable to make your point without lying, mightn't it occur to you that maybe you should find a better point to make?

If you are unable to support your candidate without lying, shouldn't that indicate to you that maybe you should support a better candidate?

If your ideology requires you to lie to defend it, wouldn't you be better off finding a superior ideology?

How much blindness or wilfull ignorance does it take to prevent yourself from seeing the plain, obvious truth of a situation?

Moreover, how does one sleep at night or even look into a mirror, knowing that the political party they support has destroyed the US as a superpower in this world by crippling our economy and military readiness, all for the sake of the wealth and power of a few fascist families?

/Do you smell like the shiat that you are? Everyone else in the world knows that you're nothing but shiat - why don't you?

I have a question for you 20%ers.

We have the largest budget allocated for military in the entire world. Where do you think that money is going if not to train and support our troops?

hasty ambush

Ok I don't think you're a troll so I'll bite. The reason that our military wasn't really prepared for these wars was because we had stopped building up our military since the USSR fell apart, which was about 12-14 years before Afghanistan really started. The reason that we let it go into somewhat disrepair is because it is a huge waste of money to keep a standing military up when we have no reason for one. The costs of keeping that up are astronomical and our economy does much better when we use that money to pay for things that actually benefit the people; for instance schools, health care, infrastructure, etc.

Bush decided that we needed to go to war after 9/11 in Afghanistan, which I understand, but they politicized the lead up to the war and have been using this as a political tool for the better part of the decade. They have --until recently -- had both the congress and the executive branch. If they wanted to fund the troops they farking could have, but look where our war money went. It went to giving huge contracts to their buddies and to mercenaries like Blackwater. At the same time, they said things like "you are with us or a terrorist" or Rumsfeld's quote in TFA.

The people who sent these people to war politicized it, and now that same rhetoric is the only way you can talk about it in modern campaigns or you look like an unelectable nancy-boy. They sent us to Iraq, they spent our money incorrectly, they didn't do any research on how to actually quell a nation after invasion, and now "B. Hussein Obama" is beating them at their own game.

grxymkjbn Quote 2008-02-23 11:24:31 AM
Dead_Mandela: The Captain is backpedaling.

Obama lies, and Obama plagiarizes.


I'm honestly curious about something: Since you are unable to make your point without lying, mightn't it occur to you that maybe you should find a better point to make?

If you are unable to support your candidate without lying, shouldn't that indicate to you that maybe you should support a better candidate?

If your ideology requires you to lie to defend it, wouldn't you be better off finding a superior ideology?


What is my ideology? Who is my candidate? You don't know shiat.

I'm addressing the nugget of this story (which seems to be growing legs), which is that Obama lies for political advantage.

Thank goodness for the intertoobs and the whole fact-checking a liar's ass thing.

Would this be the same pentagon that told us all about Pat Tillman's courageous charge that never happened?

Dead_Mandela: I'm addressing the nugget of this story (which seems to be growing legs), which is that Obama lies for political advantage.

Thank goodness for the intertoobs and the whole fact-checking a liar's ass thing.

Except when you get said "fact-checking" wrong. Idiot.

Dead_Mandela: The Captain is backpedaling.
Obama lies, and Obama plagiarizes.


Isn't it cute when Hillary Supporters and Freepers play together in the same sandbox?