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Commentary Too - Apr 12, 2005 - Printable Version
- (Not) Waiting to Exhale
by Jeff Buckley
"As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." -Donald Rumsfeld
Going to war “with the army you have” can be a downright royal bitch at times. Soldiers are being forced to pony up their own hard earned cash to pay for such trivial items as body and vehicle armor, medical supplies, and GPS units. You know, the things that the “army you might want or wish to have” would make sure they could provide before sending hundreds of thousands of Americans to wage war? Families of soldiers who can’t afford to buy their own equipment are holding garage and bake sales or relying on private donations to raise the money. Why the military doesn’t just issue giant bulls-eye patches and decals for soldiers to affix to their uniforms and vehicles is beyond me. Opting to dump jars of leeches on injured troops instead of actually treating them would seem equally prudent given the lack of foresight and common-freaking-sense displayed time and again by the brain trust at the DoD.
In the spirit of fairness, compassion, and maybe a little bit of nagging guilt thrown in with a dash of public outrage for good measure, Congress passed a law last year requiring the Defense Department to formulate and implement a plan to reimburse, up to a maximum of $1,100 per item bought, to each soldier who has had to buy equipment necessary for their job. While you do have to go to war with the army you have, that army shouldn’t be like a city softball league where they provide the field of play but you’re responsible for supplying your own bats, balls, and gloves, and uniforms.
This should have been simple enough. We’ve already spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $160 billion on the Iraqi-Oil-Grab-Halliburton-Get-Rich-Quick Scheme. Reimbursing our troops shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Even if every single US troop currently on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ll say 180,000 of them for a nice round number (145,000 in Iraq and 35,000 in Afghanistan - And don’t quote me on those numbers because they were pulled straight from my bum-bum), put in a request for the maximum reimbursement of $1,100 for two items, the grand total would come to $396 million.
To put this figure in perspective:
- It is only 4.4% of the $9 billion that has gone missing in Iraq.
- It is only 0.25% of the $160 billion we’ve spent in Iraq up to this point.
- It is only 0.10% of the projected $392 billion the Congressional Budget Office has estimated it could take from 2005-2014 to continue fighting Bush’s “War on Terr-uh.”
In other words, this is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the money they’ve spent, mismanaged, and misplaced up to this point. And it absolutely pales in comparison to the hundreds of billions we have yet to squander on King George’s lust for bombing brown people. So, there shouldn’t be any qualms about what the right thing to do is. I mean, it’s not like Rumsfeld doesn’t have the time to sign reimbursement checks now that his autopen has a clear schedule after having been retired from signing condolence letters. Right?
Well…
The deadline to develop regulations on reimbursement came and went on Feb. 25, 2005 – About a month and a half ago. Mind you, this was not a deadline to have any or every soldier reimbursed. This was only the deadline for some pencil pushers with the DoD to draw up a plan to explain who could and couldn’t be reimbursed, what and how many items could be included for consideration for reimbursement, and what would be the formula for determining the value of those items. Given some simple instructions and a week to work on it, the tag team of Charlie Gordon and Algernon would’ve had this project licked with enough time left over to knock off early on Friday afternoon and head out to Happy Hour at Hooters for some drinking and whoring.
So…
Given the fact that the fine folks at the Pentagon are the Iron Monkeys of bureaucracy and should be able write up a set of frustratingly redundant, double-speak regulations in their sleep, what great strides do you think have been taken to repay so little to the men and women who have given up so much.
None.
"Very simply, this is either negligence on their part, because they were not happy with this when it passed, or it's incompetence…It's pretty outrageous when you have all their rhetoric about how much we care about our people in uniform," Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, who sponsored the bill, is quoted as saying in an article that broke this story back in early March. Sen. Dodd has also stated that he is unsure if there is any action that can be taken other than to publicly embarrass Rumsfeld and the Pentagon to gain compliance.
Another toothless self-regulation by our pals in the Federal government…Mazel Tov!!! I’m sure it looked pretty and all on paper and I’m sure Sen. Dodd was stoked at his accomplishment – He probably did one of those Milli Vanilli running-leaping midair chest bumps with Ted Kennedy right after it passed. But, what good is it when your only recourse is to “publicly embarrass” Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon? Rummy does a good enough job of that by just opening up his cake hole and stringing several words together to form sentences. I’m beyond jaded by his ineptness. Now how about some real penalties?
We’re going to have to wait until Rumsfeld has had a chance to review the letter before responding to it according to Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke. Funny enough, mail sent to Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, the most secure building in the world, manages to be read by everyone, from his secretary right on down to the creepy janitor with the lazy eye that leers at children, and is then broadcasted to the entire freaking cable and satellite TV subscribing universe before Donald has even had a chance to roll out of bed and make a trip to the mailbox to find out if the mail even came in yet. I’ve kicked the crap out of former roommates for lesser offenses.
It’s been almost one month since the article containing Sen. Dodd’s comments was published and I’ve heard and read nothing resembling a response from Rumsfeld (If anyone on here has, please let me know because that will make for a great Part II to this). It’s not like I was expecting anything less than silence or disregard. I’ve learned to set very low expectations in the past four years.
I’m guessing that Donald’s Guatemalan housekeeper is reviewing Sen. Dodd’s letter right about now. That means it still has yet to be reviewed by the paperboy, his entire gardening and landscaping staff, the next-door neighbor’s three year-old Cocker Spaniel, and the homeless guy that talks to the sewer grates outside of the National Archives who you know is just going to have to let those damned sewer grates give it a good once over too.
In other words, I’m not holding my breath…
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