Supporting the troops

I wrote the last post on a lying wanna-be politician before his Web page, getting clobbered by the demand, would load on my computer. There's a great excerpt from the page:

It was called the "Voices of Soldiers" Truth Tour and it gave our troops the opportunity to report back to home exactly what was taking place in Iraq.

The stories told by our troops about the progress they are making in Iraq runs absolutely counter to what you see the old-line media report.

Funny how he has to lie on his truth tour.

Anyway, that name brings back to mind the old "Soldiers For The Truth" campaign run by the now-late David Hackworth, who often ran counter to military protocol to do what was right for his soldiers ... or what he thought was right ... or what he said he thought was right. Either way, Hackworth was an advocate, and just as a politician lies to present a "truth" I'm thinking the guy's rolling over in his grave over a GAO report described by Stars & Stripes:

The GAO found that the Army decided in November 2003 troops would need at least 3,780 truck armor kits to upgrade lightly protected vehicles in Iraq.

Those kits weren’t delivered until 2005, and they weren’t all installed until 18 months after the need was identified.

Maybe other people have different ways of supporting the troops. This seems like a great place to start. Whether you support the fact or the conduct of the war in Iraq, few Americans want to see American troops die needlessly.

Edit: Some objective facts about Iraq are found in the Brookings Institution's excellent Iraq Index. The reader is free to make his/her own conclusions. Note the document is broken into three major sections.