KERRY CALLS ON BUSH ADMINISTRATION TO PROPERLY EQUIP TROOPS
Sen. John Kerry today called upon the Bush Administration to make immediate improvements to the equipment and supplies issued to US troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Citing a series of reports showing that many troops stationed in Iraq are exposed to higher risks because of the lack of equipment - including such critical items like body armor - Kerry asked the Pentagon to take immediate steps to protect our men and women serving abroad.
Kerry's statement, as prepared, is included below:
Four years ago, we sent our young men and women to Iraq for a war that many of us now believe was a grave and tragic mistake. But day after day, and month after month, this Administration has repeatedly exacerbated that mistake by leaving our soldiers in the field without the equipment and protection they needknowing full well what the lethal consequences would be.
There will be disagreement on the next difficult steps to take in Iraq. We can disagree on troop numbers, on timetables, on the shape of a future political settlement for Iraq. These are honest differences of opinion.
But there should be no disagreement that we must give our troops everything they need to be as safe as they possibly can. There should be no disagreement that when we ask young men and women to leave their families to fight deadly foreign enemies halfway across the world, when we ask them to put their lives on the linethe very least we owe them is the equipment they need to protect themselves.
One soldier who dies from a roadside bomb because he doesn't have enough armor is one too many.
And when it comes to body armor and armored vehicles, our troops are not getting what they need. According to The Washington Post this week, our soldiers are short more than 4,000 of the latest Humvee Armor Kit, the FRAG Kit 5. Fewer than half of the Army's 14,500 up-armored Humvees in Iraq and Afghanistan have the latest equipment. As Lt. Gen. Stephen Speakes, the Army's deputy chief of staff for force development, said: "We don't have the kits, and we don't have the trucks."
And it's not just armored vehicles that would keep our troops saferthey need better body armor too. People are actually holding bake sales to raise money to send body armor and helmets to the troops. Over a year ago, the Pentagon issued a report that many of the deaths in Iraq caused by upper body injuries could be prevented if all body armor issued to our troops included side armor plates. Some of my colleagues raised this issue with Secretary Rumsfeld, and he assured them that the Pentagon would begin procurement and delivery of an additional 230,000 sets of side armor plates.
But just last month, another Pentagon report found continued shortages in force-protection equipment for our soldiersa shortage of body armor, a shortage of up-armored vehicles, a shortage of communications equipment, and a shortage of electronic countermeasure devices. We've also heard firsthand from troops that many are still being issued body armor without the side-armor plates.
How could anyone send our soldiers on the most dangerous patrols in the roughest neighborhoods of Baghdad without the best possible protection? In the last four years, over 1,100 Americans have died from roadside bombs. And thousands of our best troops have suffered debilitating injuries or had their lives permanently altered by these terrible weapons. Knowing full well that we don't have enough armor for the troops already in the field, how can we possibly send more than 20,000 additional American soldiers to do a job that Iraqis ought be doing for themselves?
By themselves, these shortages are troubling, but the President's plan to send over 20,000 more troops makes them even more calamitous. And now we hear that the troops pouring into Iraq won't have enough up-armored Humvees and other armored vehicles until July. How can we send over 20,000 soldiers in now when the armor their lives depend on won't arrive until July? How can we justify this policy to the mother of a soldier killed in a Humvee without proper armor? How can we explain it to a wounded soldier at Walter Reed whose injury could have been prevented with the right equipment?
Eighteen months into the war, Donald Rumsfeld told a roomful of troops in Kuwait, "As you know, you go to war with the Army you have."
"You go to war with the army you have." In addition to being a smug and cavalier thing to say, it was ridiculous then, and it's even more ridiculous now. You may go into war with the army that you have, but then you adapt to your enemy's tactics, you exploit their weaknesses, and you work to minimize your own. We ended World War II- in less time than the current Iraq warwith a weapon that didn't even exist when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
We've known for years that the technologies our enemies use to kill our troops were outpacing the equipment we use to protect them. And the gap between their offensive weapons and our defensive armor is only growing, thanks in part to a major increase in an especially lethal kind of roadside bomb, the Explosively Formed Penetrator or EFP. This is a diabolical contraption that has been described as "a spear that rips right through the vehicle." It can shoot a metal projectile through the side of even an up-armored Humvee and turn pieces of the vehicle itself into shrapnel that kills or maims the soldiers inside.
And 90% of American fatalities from these terrible weapons have come in Baghdad. Baghdad where against the warnings of former secretary of state Colin Powell, Gen. John Abizaid and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff last yearthe President is sending five brigades to referee a Sunni-Shia civil war. And we're sending them without the protection they need to survive EFP attacks.
Unfortunately, even with the latest armor kit, soldiers will still die from these roadside bombs. But the new armor does reinforce the doors, it does slow down the projectile, and it will keep our soldiers safer and save many lives. Just listen to General James T Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps. When he talked about the armor kit, here's what he said: "They are expensive, but they are going to save lives."
The technology already exists to keep our troops saferso why, four years later, don't our they have it? Partly, it's due to gross incompetence at the highest levels of the Bush administration. But mostly, the fact is that this Administration never mobilized the country for the war in Iraq. Since we invaded, the need for a fleet of vehicles that can keep our troops safe has been unmistakable. And yet we've kept relying on a single provider of up-armored Humvees. That's right, one provider. And given the chronic shortfalls we've seen, that was clearly insufficient.
But even after all we've heard, over several years, about our soldiers lacking equipment and armor, this Administration still doesn't seem to get it. The President's defense budget request for next year doesn't include funds for enough armored vehicles, and so the Marine Corps had to ask Congress for an additional $2.8 billion to buy more Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles. Going back to 2002, the Bush administration terminated funding for one alternative vehicle more suited to the battlefield in Iraq because of what they called different "budget priorities."
While this is an urgent short-term concern, we also need to think long-term about what our soldiers will need for 21st-century warfare. Enemies are taking note of our strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, this will not be the last war in which our troops are targeted in the vehicles they ride. Since Somalia in 1993, we've known that Humveeswith their thin skins and square-bottomed chassis-- are ill-suited for counterinsurgency and for the modern battlefield. So we need to bridge this short-term gap, but we also need to invest in the armored vehicles that will keep our soldiers safe in the future. This is serious business and we had better get to it. We can't afford to remain vulnerable.
No Commander in Chief, no Congress should knowingly put the lives of soldiers at risk unnecessarily. And yet, as we escalate this war, we do so with neither a plan for success nor protection for our troops.
And it's long past time we have an honest conversation about what protecting our troops really means. Some of my Republican colleagues blocked a Senate vote on the President's escalation plan because they wanted an Amendment saying that if Congress were to use the power of the purse to force this Administration to change its failed policy in Iraq, it would somehow be putting our troops at risk.
Aren't we putting our troops at risk when we send over 20,000 more Americans into the crossfire of a civil war without life-saving equipment? You want to talk about protecting the troops? Give them the armor they need and then get them out of there. That's how you protect the troops.
We need to give our soldiers extra body armor and the latest up-armored Humvees they need to do their job as safely as they can. But ultimately we need to fix this failed policy and provide a responsible strategy for ending the war. That is why I will again introduce a resolution to the Senate that offers us the best chance to salvage some measure of success in Iraq. The troops ought to be protected for as long as they police Iraqi streets, but they shouldn't be policing those streets in the first place. We can and must bring our combat troops home within a year.
We need to create a whole new dynamic on the ground by setting a one-year deadline for redeployment of our troopsleaving only those necessary to finish training Iraqi security forces, conduct counterterrorism operations, and protect our facilities and personnel.
Iraqis need to take responsibility for Iraq. We need to recognize that Iraqis have shown over and over again that they only respond to deadlines- a deadline to transfer authority, deadlines to hold two elections and a referendum, and a deadline to form a government. Without hard deadlines, our best hopes for progress in Iraq have been dashed by squabbling politicians unwilling to take responsibility for their country's future.
Deadlines are also necessary to instill a sense of urgency in Iraq's neighbors and the international community. Setting a deadline drives home a basic but essential point: None of Iraq's neighbors want chaos on their borders. None of them want to see Iraq fall apart. But the status quo works well for a country like Iranthey are delighted to see us bogged down while they expand their influence in Iraq. By setting a deadline, we can help change their strategic calculus so that their interest in preventing chaos in Iraq is stronger than their desire to see us bogged down there. Setting a deadline also signals to Iraq's Sunni neighbors that the time has finally come to pressure Sunnis inside Iraq to make the hard compromises necessary to bring about a lasting political solution.
But none of that will be accomplished by sending in over 20,000 more troops. None of that will be accomplished with a mere shift in tactics. We need a whole new strategy. Here's the surge we ought to be talking about: We should be making an aggressive push to bring together the various factions inside and outside Iraq to begin taking ownership of the future of the country and the region. With a one year deadline I believe we could really make things happen diplomatically.
The mistakes we have already made cannot be undone but that does not mean we're doomed to repeat them. The soldiers in the field already bear the burden of this Administration's decision to invade Iraq and lack of a postwar plan. Many of them paid for it with their lives. They bear this burden with incredible courage, resilience, and guts.
They go out and do their job, even as their mission amidst another country's civil war becomes less and less clear every day. They shouldn't have to bear that burden without the best protection we can offer. It's time to get this right, once and for all, and not send any more Americans into harm's way without a strategy to guide them and without the equipment they need to protect them.
http://kerry.senate.gov/v3/cfm/record.cfm?id=269387