One Of Obama's Stories

This information below is taken from Obama's Curious Tale
By Jack Kelly published on February 23, 2008. The complete article may be found at Real Clear Politics: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/02/obamas_curious_tale.html.
The author, Jack Kelly is a former Marine who later went into the Army and became a Green Beret. After his military service, he was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan Administration. Mr. Kelly has the military background and experience to make this call.

Basically, this is the story:

During a debate with Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama referred to "an Army captain who was head of a rifle platoon which is supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon, Who "ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 soldiers because 15 of his soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier for them to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief."

Soap Box Ravings says Obama appears to have the total story confused. Even if the unit was missing 15 soldiers how would that cause a lack of ammo, Humvees or weapons.

The author points out that Rifle Platoons are not commanded by a captain. They are normally commanded by a lieutenant, usually a second lieutenant.

The heart of Sen. Obama's charge is that the captain's platoon was cannibalized in order to send soldiers to Iraq. The Army does have a program called "cross leveling" where soldiers from units which are not deploying are sent to units which are to bring them up to full strength. But the Army emphatically denies taking soldiers from units which are scheduled to deploy to a combat zone to give them to other units. This would be insane.

Senator Obama also said, "As a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees..."

Soldiers on a mission carry a basic load of ammunition, typically seven magazines (210 rounds). It's possible to for undisciplined soldiers to burn through this quite rapidly in a firefight. Soldiers can run low on ammo until they are resupplied, but this has nothing to do with the adequacy of ammunition stocks in theater. There has never been a shortage of ammunition in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

The Senator further said, "They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief."

Soap Box Ravings feels the above statement by Senator Obama makes absolutely no sense from any angle. A soldier in an emergency will defend themselves with any weapon they can get their hands on. However, their supply system is not set up to provide ammunition or repair parts for enemy weapons. It would be crazy to try to use the enemies weapons for any extended period of time.

Units don't deploy to Afghanistan with their stateside vehicles. Afghanistan is 8,000miles from the U.S., in a mountainous region far from seaports. It's hard to ship stuff there. So unnecessary stuff isn't shipped. Units arriving in theater receive the equipment that was being used by the units they are replacing.

Even though he's a member of Congress, Sen. Obama seems to be unaware that it is him and his peers who fund the military. If Sen. Obama thinks the military is inadequately supplied, he should take it up with his Democratic colleagues, who routinely cut the president's defense budget requests.

Soap Box Ravings also feels that Senator Obama has really not thought out his position. He sounds like a lot of our population who want to point out problems that relate to others, while denying any personal responsibility or ownership of the problem that he has just identified. The truly scay part of this is the fact that Senator Obama is seeking the Democratic nomination for the Office of The President.

When ABC's Jake Tapper tracked down Sen. Obama's captain, he found out the Captain 's ammunition complaint was in regards to a shortage of ammo for his heavy machine guns and grenade launchers while training at Fort Drum before deployment, not in Afghanistan. This is a rather different story from the one Sen. Obama