The Liar on the Deck of the Honest Abe

Words seldom fail me. I’ve been a student of language and an admirer of communication skills since high school, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I am seldom nonplussed – not where words are concerned. But last night’s congressional hearings concerned with Department of the Army “efforts” to “up-armor” Humvee fighting vehicles left me gulping like a fish.

And scared enough to tell my friends we’d damned well better look to ourselves for any of the protection and security we might expect would be provided by the people our Constitution charges with that sort of thing. Military Intelligence is, indeed, an oxymoron. Folks, the watchmen ain’t watchin’.

As to the hearings, I can only summarize. Man alive, I was so stunned, so damned disgusted and mad, I can’t even remember it all – the mental film that’s memory burned up in places. General Richard Cody, Vice Chief of Staff, US. Army (assumed that position June 24, 2004) said basically – I paraphrase, mind you – that Panjandrums on the Potomac didn’t know, don’t know, couldn’t and can’t, have no idea, have better things to do, and are annoyed that anyone notices.

Soldiers are just equipment, goddammit, and generals – that includes commanders in chief – use equipment any way they see fit. Patriotic citizens mind their own goddamned business. Mothers should listen to “Taps,” take the f------ flag, go home, and shut up. Unless, of course, they are asked to participate in a photo op for His White House Majesty, or provide a media clip wherein she relates how proud and glad she is to have sacrificed her son for our freedom in the “war on terror.”

As for the congressman, their Herculean posturing and sickening demagoguery left no doubt as to their fecklessness lack of consequence in matters like these. Several simpered like grade-schoolers who’ve just recited their ABCs successfully at being able to similarly recite the numerical designations of the several (three, from what I could gather) kinds of “retro-fit” armor. We want the folks back home to know we care. Look how we’re keeping an eye on things.

“Retro-fit,” incidentally, obviously means what should have been there in the first place, but now goes there because some tactical genius Pentagon grade didn’t originally know it would come in handy. We planned to retro-fit, of course.

Does anybody remember that Colonel David Hackworth, now deceased (damn it, Hack – couldn’t you have stuck around a little longer?), not only called guys like this “perfumed princes,” but warned time and again that crap like this was coming?

How long has it been since we recognized that our Humvees needed armor? Let’s see: the war started in March, 2003, and our magnificent leader of men declared “mission accomplished” on May 1, 2003. That, you’ll recall, on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. That kind of “floors” me, too. Probably the biggest liar in our history, lying like the proverbial rug on the deck of a ship named for Honest Abe. How’s that for irony?!

But, as these “hearings” make it damned clear that isn’t all our Bush League administration has been lying about. “Mission Accomplished.” There’s only one way to make that the truth. That’s if the “mission” was to spend billions and to justify spending billions more.

Remember how our man Secretary of State Rummie assured us all that everything was going exactly according to plan? Well, now we discover that it was. Still is, from what I can gather. The only trouble is that we haven’t been in the huddle, and don’t know the real plan. We’re still thinking about winning, freeing all those wonderful Iraqi people whose freedom and welfare we’ve always been so concerned for all these years, and deposing that awful Saddam Hussein (you know – the guy we waited twenty-four years to suddenly hate).

That, you’ll surely remember, was supposed to somehow cramp Osama bin Laden’s style. Osama, you’ll also remember, was the one bee in the beehive of people who justifiably hate us that we singled out for the stinging that was the World Trade Center attack . . . er, which our carefully planned defenses against “terror” somehow let happen. Mind you, now - if you don’t follow that, it’s, of course, because you’re not the Napoleonic tacticians that our military genius leaders are.

You probably think the “mission accomplished” banner was meant for Halliburton and the rest of the military industrial corporations.

But let us recapitulate this truly wondrous military campaign. We began with “shock and awe” (by the way, isn't that the definition of terror?) that was “surgical” and “wonderfully humane” (our man Rummie – remember?), a barrage of two thousand pound bombs.

That’s to say nothing of double talk: as I reminded us all at that time, the result of a two thousand pound bomb is – and I quote – “utter destruction of everything within a radius of about 500 feet. ‘Overpressure,’ in the parlance of explosives experts, reaches several thousand pounds per square inch. The temperature goes to 8,500 degrees. Overpressure and heat simply obliterate everything, human and material, within that 500 foot circle. Next, metal fragments – the 1,055 lbs of the bomb that doesn’t actually explode - are spewed hundreds of yards. No one within 400 yards can expect to remain whole, and flying shrapnel kills and damages things up to 1,100 yards . . . “

I sort of gathered that planning for this clambake wasn’t – shall we say, conventional – when with much of Baghdad reduced to rubble, we proceeded to invade, only to somehow get a large part (who can say – you know how much truth we get out of these “leaders’) of the troops intended for the operation stranded and impounded in Turkey. The Turks wouldn’t help, either – something about their not being able to go through Kurdish territory in Iraq. Great, great planning, you see.

Now just about everybody who ever humped a military pack or carried a military rifle knew what the Arabs we trained during their tiff with the Soviets in Afghanistan would do, and what anyone faced with having to fight on the cheap a modern super-power military would do. Guess what? They’ve been doing it. So, knowing what the enemy would have to do and are now doing, and equipped with a military almost entirely equipped with vehicles designed for off-the-road travel, we cleverly planned to do most of our travel on the roads – and into the “improvised explosive devices” we knew we would encounter.

History, I predict, will dub this Rummie planning.

And, of course, the war in Iraq has gone downhill from there. The triumphant celebratory parades we planned – you know, where they strew rose petals in front of you – somehow didn’t materialize. What did materialize was those damned “I.E.D.s” When all the lights went out, the oil wells stopped, and the country’s infrastructure froze, we somehow accepted the idea that it was all expected. Planning, you know.

Remember how the war would be paid for with Iraqi oil? Planning.

If that weren’t enough, we were – somehow, again – able to accept the Bush League administration’s insistence that tribalist and factionalist rebellions – we argued for a couple of weeks over whether all the people shooting at us constituted rebellion, insurrection, or insurgence. Important to the planning, I suppose. Finally, we started attacking here, there, and everywhere – that’s were the enemy was. All according to plan, of course.

As the death toll after “mission accomplished” mounted, the public – unpatriotic ingrates that they are – began to ask stupid questions. At first, things like “how come, if we thought we’d be up against bio-chemical attack, the troops didn’t have gas masks and the like?” “How come – knowing what everybody whose every fired a damned pistol since World War One knows, that the Colt. .45 stops what it hits – our troops are being killed because they’re armed with that pip-squeak, candy-assed damned .38 caliber Beretta?” “How come Mexican television could show pictures of burning Abrams tanks, but we’re still being told there weren’t any Abrams lost?” “In the land of the free press, how come we aren’t shown the flagged-draped coffins?” And so on.

And so on, and so on . . . you tell me to what. Now this. The up-armored Humvees are in Kuwait. Some of them. There still aren’t enough, and the troops who were supposed to have been home two years ago are still in harm’s very definite war with second or third rate armor. Why is that? Well, the new ones have radios the troops weren’t trained to use. I know, if I say the word “planning” again, you’ll barf. But I’ve got to ask. Why in the hell would you put radios the troops don’t know how to use in vehicles you know they HAVE to use, and right away?

Yeah, I know, pl - Oops!

Notice how no one mentioned, by the way, the fact that the troops originally – that’s when the other guys started doing what every damned fool knew they would do – had to scrounge in dumps for anything they could put between them and one of those “I.E.D.” mines? Yeah. The “P” word.

So this carefully planned war goes on. The Perfumed Prince Panjandrums (“P” words, you know) now plan for us to occupy Iraq for twenty or thirty years. Don’t plan on it, folks. If you think young US citizens are stupid enough, after having watched last night’s logomachy called a hearing, to subject themselves to any more of your planning, you’re planning about the way you did for invasion.

One more thing, a question I will, in the manner of Scipio Africanus, ask with every piece I write from now on: when will the military industrial complex, and all those corporations like Halliburton, make their contribution to the “war on terror” effort? When will they forego, in other words, all their profit?

I’ll bet nobody planned for THAT.