The mass media in America are on a mission; have been for 60 years. The mission, and they chose to accept it, was to discredit any Republican Administration at any cost. Little bothersome details like facts and truth rarely enter into the equation. When I want the truth I read a good blog, such as this one. When I want sensationalist bullshit I read a newspaper or watch one of the three DNC TV networks.

Apparently fact checking has been left to people like Ace and other bloggers who take the time to examine what has been spewed from the MSM's clunky old typewriters. My local paper won't print anything unless it's pro Democrat, on their op-ed page.

I don't want to rain on the parade, but the numbers are 85% of forward deployed HumVees and 15% of supply vehicles are now armored. At the beginning of the year, less than a 3rd of Guard Hummers were armored. In 2 years in Iraq, the Pentagon was slow to act - convinced the expense was uneeded, given their conviction there were only a "few dead enders" and less everyday. Now they are moving, but a significant number of the 1250 KIA and 9000 wounded could have been saved if a real priority had been placed on armor and jammer equipment as soon as we realized this wasn't a "cakewalk with rose petals at our feet" by a nation that "saw us as liberators and wished to sign a friendship treaty with Israel"...as the Pentagon civvies claimed.

Many units, inc my nephew's last summer, dead smack in the middle of Injun country in the Sunni Triangle - had no armored Humvees and they were short of personal protection armor - that the families ended up buying on the civilian market for the guys. They took combat every week, lost several enlisteds to RPGs, inc. one that took out 4 in one Humvee. As they left Ramadi in November and staged in Kuwait for a 1 1/2 month stand-down, THEN their HumVees got armored at the Kuwaiti motor pool depot. One IED attack on an unarmored truck right before the attack on Fallujah started killed 8 Marines and rendered the 5 survivors into discombobulated amputees. While the focus is on KIA, what the public ISN't getting is news that 1/3rd of our wounded are blinded, traumatic brain injuried, or amputees - mostly from attacks on vehicles using IEDs, recoiless, or RPGs..

Focusing on the HumVees being completed with armor upgrades in the next six months and the mostly unarmored supply trucks now getting attention - and jammers being given to the troops vs. just top officials now that 4 billion was magically found after the sargent complained to Rumsfeld - ignores the casualties we took in the past 2 years due to inadequate planning and material support mattering.

And the next big problem on the horizon is the 2 year active every 5 years law passed by Congress to prevent abuse of Reservists. Most Guard and Reservists have burned up those 2 years since the start of 2002, because they were used to compensate for the Pentagon's refusal to add active duty Army and Marine Divisions. Because they were convinced for almost a year that anyday foreign troops would take over for us, anyday the insurgents would be defeated, anyday the Iraq army and police we were trying to train after firing all the orginals would take over......
It didn't happen. In 6 months, most Reserve and Guard will have fulfilled their 2 year active requirement, and they are now 40% of the troops in Iraq or working logistics to support Iraq.

And as troops are extended and word gets back, it looks like people are steering clear of the Reserves, as recruiting shortfalls have grown to 30% and look like will reach 50%. It is believed that Rumsfeld has bucked adding to active duty troops because he wants a 21st century Army to fight wars of the future and he doesn't want ordinary Marines or Army soldiers...as well as being reluctant to tell Congress his neocon staff botched things, they ARE short of troops....and jeopardize his Boss's tax cuts for his wealthy benefactors.

Crunch time comes in 6 months for doing something about continuing and winning THIS war. As well as what to do over the next 3 years with the fact that most of the Reserves obligated time has been burned up these past 2 years.

Cedarford's "facts" sound impressive, and they even be true, though I doubt in their totality they are. He loses perspective of what has been accomplished in Iraq over what may be some bad news. But the really important point here is that in every war mistakes are made, people are killed and many needlessly so, on both sides. There will never be a perfectly executed war in every detail. Even Rommel and Lee made some terrible blunders. And though Rummy's arrogant answer was a public relations nightmare, he is credited with a brilliant strategy of smashing mobile warfare that rolled up Saddam's army very quickly with very low casualties. Tommy Franks, Rummy, and his "Neocon staff" (Liberal codewords for bad guys) were faced with the possibility of massive use of chemical and biological weapons and decided that massed, slow moving divisions were too vulnerable to chemical attack and they needed another way to attack without presenting the enemy these targets of opportunity. I wonder if Cedaford was one of the Greek Chorus who said that we were walking into a disaster of chemical and biological weapons that we were "totally unprepared" for? But to restate the obvious: we are fighting a war against Radical Islam on many fronts and they have long used the western press as a tool against us. It is the most powerful weapon they have. Our public disunity and constant petulant public criticism of our own leaders only emboldens them and encourages them to keep trying, and aids in their propoganda war to turn others against us. If we didn't have a diloyal opposition party of Liberals so full of hate for Bush that they'd like to see us lose the war just to hurt Bush, we could all talk about this like adults. Whatever mistakes may have been made in Iraq are nothing compared to the devastating power that this Chinese Water Torture steady drip, drip, drip of constant carping and criticism of Bush and his "neocons." For if we lose heart and are forced to run, the consequences will so terrible for the future of the world that they are simply unthinkable. And the Constant Critics will have more to do with it than anything Bush, Rummy or Franks did or did not do.

If you want someone to blame for un-armored humvees and lack of body armor, blame the congressionally mandated, sclerotic supply and procurement system.