There is a lot of storm and fury right now over an anecdote that Barack Obama made at last night's debate. I'm not going to pile on this one, but will refer readers to some of the folks who have, including Jake Tapper who claims that he has fact-checked and believes the story is accurate. Here's Obama's quote:
"You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon," he said. "Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those 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 to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief."
Here's part of the result of Tapper's fact check:
The Army captain, a West Point graduate, did a tour in a hot area of eastern Afghanistan from the Summer of 2003 through Spring 2004.
Prior to deployment the Captain — then a Lieutenant — took command of a rifle platoon at Fort Drum. When he took command, the platoon had 39 members, but — in ones and twos — 15 members of the platoon were re-assigned to other units. He knows of 10 of those 15 for sure who went to Iraq, and he suspects the other five did as well.
The platoon was sent to Afghanistan with 24 men.
"We should have deployed with 39," he told me, "we should have gotten replacements. But we didn't. And that was pretty consistent across the battalion."
You can go read the rest. I'll just point out one thing here. The story is almost five years old according to Tapper's source. It seems a bit late to be making an issue of it now, rather than when the officer was deployed. (Since the officer told Tapper that he trained at Fort Drum, I'm wondering if he was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division. How much equipment are they supposed to have?)
One other point while I am visiting this topic: Had the military not been downsized so extremely during the 1990s, would this have been an issue at all?
Keep those things in mind as this story unfolds.
Rather silly for Obama to bring up this as a campaign issue considering as Senator he voted against funding for the troops.
Is he admitting in his eloquent way that he is the problem?
Dang. I wish I could remember where I read a piece-by-piece disassembly of this nonsense. It said among other things that a rifle platoon is normally commanded by a second lieutenant, or in a pinch a sergeant; that a captain commands a company, a whole lot more than one platoon; that a platoon consists of a lot more men than described and is considered the smallest mobile mass of men, etc. etc. Just took this nonsense apart. This is doubtless some fake “soldier” feeding this garbage to the press.
No, clifto. I actually think Tapper did a reasonably good job of tacking down the facts here. (Minus his snark at rightwing blogs, however,) The captain was a lieutenant at the time stated – five years ago or so. The real problem is it is a five-year old story – tere may be a lot of factors here that make the story Obama told irrelevant today.
The problem is that Tapper doesn’t put the unit in question in context. It was almost certainly a platoon of the 10th Mountain. They were deployed then to Afghanistan from Ft. Drum. A light infantry battalion only has 26 Hummers and 20 TOW Hummers. There are only 15 .50 cal M2 machine guns in the entire battalion, and none at the platoon level. There are no 7.62mm machineguns at platoon level. There are no dedicated vehicles at platoon level.So he wouldn’t have had those weapons to train with. In all my years in the military i _never_ had a full complement of soldiers.This should have been a story of praise for soldiers that adapted and overcame.