February 26, 2008
Obama-McCain Squabble Injected Into Army Readiness Hearing
A controversial anecdote relayed by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in last week's Texas debate wended its way into a Senate Armed Forces hearing on Army readiness today.
Obama claimed that he'd "heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon" that was sent to Afghanistan grossly undermanned and underequipped. "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," Obama said during Thursday night's debate.
Lindsey Graham, who lately has been stumping hard for Republican John McCain, relayed the story to Army Secretary Peter Geren and Army Chief of Staff William Casey during the hearing. "Has Sen. Obama talked to you or anyone in the department about this?" the South Carolina Republican asked.
"I have not discussed this with Sen. Obama," Geren replied, before handing the baton to Casey.
"As we looked into this, the best we could tell was this incident occurred back in 2003 and 2004," Casey said. "We talked to the brigade commander, looked at readiness reports. The brigade was manned over 100 percent and stayed 100 percent manned when they were there."
Conservatives seized on Obama's story after the debate. Sen. John Warner, ranking Republican on Armed Forces and a McCain supporter, asked Obama to provide backup in a letter to the Illinois Democrat. Obama's campaign would not release the name of the commander, citing his request for anonymity, but it did put him in touch with ABC News' Jake Tapper, who found the story to be credible.
Obama's biggest error, it seems, was in not dating his story. Equipment shortages and failures of readiness were persistent problems at the beginning of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and are often blamed on former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"It's certainly possible that platoons in that brigade might not have been filled to the levels of the rest of the brigade. You'll recall that time as a very different time," Casey said, citing the difficulties DOD had in getting uparmored humvees onto the battlefield. "There may have been some spot shortages of spare parts and ammunition, but the commander said there was never a shortage of ammunition that impacted on the unit’s ability to accomplish its mission."
Casey said that it would be inappropriate to try to contact the captain in Obama's story -- who, incidentally, did not relate his story to Obama personally, in contrast to the way the senator portrayed it in Texas -- and that Obama had not contacted the Army about the story, either.
Obama's surrogate on the panel, Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill, was next to weigh in.
"Since we had a McCain moment, I think we need to have an Obama moment out of fairness," she said, before pointing out that the captain's "frustration" with equipment shortages had been "independently verified."
"I have no reason to doubt what it is that captain said," Casey agreed. "We acknowledge and we all worked together to correct the efficiencies with the equipment that we saw during that period, not only in Afghanistan but in Iraq."
McCaskill went on to praise Geren, Casey and current Defense Secretary Robert Gates for their frank assessments of Pentagon shortcomings after the Taliban and Saddam Hussein were toppled. In a dig to Obama's conservative critics, McCaskill said, "To act as if this Army captain is speaking about something we all haven’t acknowledged is frankly misleading."
The point of today's hearing wasn't to air differences on the campaign trail, of course. Geren and Casey were on the Hill to brief the committee on the state of the Army. It was no surprise that both expressed grave concern about the well-being of troops and their families.
The cumulative effects of the last six-plus years at war have left our Army out of balance, consumed by the current fight and unable to do the things we know we need to do to properly sustain our all-volunteer force and restore our flexibility for an uncertain future,” Casey said at the start of the hearing.
"With the length of time we have at home today... we do not have time to train for full-spectrum readiness in that time," Geren seconded. "Until we get to a deployment-to-dwell ratio that gives us adequate time at home, we are going to fall short of our goal of full-spectrum readiness."
The Army has been on a 15:12 deployment-to-dwell schedule since April. Before that, troops were on a 12:12 schedule. Sen. Jim Webb, who sits on the committee and is a former secretary of the Navy, has called for a restoration of the one year deployed/two years at home rotation.
Gates and the Joint Chiefs are expected to deliver recommendations for deployment rotations this summer. The Pentagon announced yesterday that it is projecting 8,000 more troops in Iraq than there were when the surge strategy was implemented in January of 2007. That troops aren't returning to pre-surge levels isn't a surprise, but it is a sign that DOD may remain reluctant to rotate troops out beyond this summer.
"We are consuming readiness now as quickly as we build it," Geren said. "If we are unable to extend the dwell time, if the number of brigades doesn't get down to a demand of 15 brigades for our Army, we are going to have a difficult time having a sufficient dwell time to accomplish all the missions we hope to accomplish when a soldier is home." Geren added that while counterinsurgency training has been a success, it also "understandably limits their ability to prepare for other missions."
Asked what impact congressional tug-of-wars over defense funding has had on the field, Geren and Casey said that piecemeal funding was far more detrimental to military preparedness and health than civilian overlords might realize.
"Predictable and timely funding is key for us to be able to operate an organization the size of the United States Army," Geren said. "When funding is unpredictable, it makes it very hard to plan long term."
"What you don't necessarily see are the second- and third-order effects of the [funding] delays," Casey said. He added that the effects "aren't visible" but "impact us over the long haul."
Photo Illustration: Reuben Dalke
Posted at 12:26 PM
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Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Campaigns, Congress, Democrats, Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq, John McCain, Middle East, Military, President Bush, Republicans, Robert Gates, Senate, WH 2008
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