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Last updated on July 27th, 2017 at 06:30 am
A tremendously detailed and informative report on conditions faced by US troops in Iraq. Of course, it appeared in a car magazine. Recommended to peaceniks and wardogs alike. In fact, the article—available for several weeks now—contains a few lines that should have been picked up by the mainstream antiwar crowd, if only they read more widely. For example …
On the insurgency:
“We created an insurgency that wasn’t here,” Col. Pinnell freely admits of the post-invasion days when U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer ran, or misran, Iraq. “Now it’s our job to fix that.”
On the war’s cost:
Today, we’re escorting a group of VIPs in armored Chevy Suburbans. Most of the vehicles have superficial body damage from ramming things out of the way. Some have bullet splatters on their windshields. “We replace windshields once a week,” one driver said, laughing. “They’re double-layer.” The $150,000 vehicles are also disposable. “We’re on our third one,” the driver added, “this month.”
And on the hugely overburdened new armoured Humvees:
For our protection, each of our Humvees comes from AM General, via armoring specialist O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, covered with 4000 pounds of quarter-inch-thick steel plate, looking like a motorized armadillo. In addition to propelling these 9800-pound war wagons (12,000 pounds when you add personnel and munitions), their 190-hp, 6.5-liter GM turbo-diesels must drive an air-conditioning compressor, which is on six months of the year, when temperatures run above 100 degrees.
They race through the quarter mile in less than 40 seconds! Read the whole, very balanced, thing.
