[Cannoneer No. 4]

Tauscher is a Democrat and on the House Armed Services Committee. She is from the Bay area in California. She was in Iraq three months ago. She has listened to constituents who are crazy with worry that their son or daughter is being exposed to even more harm in a war zone because clerks in the Pentagon are too busy fighting their petty turf battles to get enough items like Interceptor vests and armored Humvees to units engaged daily in battle.

"Too many of the Humvees have plastic flaps instead of armored doors," Tauscher said. "We've passed two emergency appropriations for this war - one in April, the second in October - giving the President $166billion. We appropriated $900 million to find weapons of mass destruction but when we tried to take $300 million out of that $900 million and earmark it specifically for equipment for the National Guard and reservists in Iraq, the Republicans voted it down."

"It's difficult to believe that planning for the war failed to anticipate the need for better protective vests and more effective armor on Humvees," Kennedy said. "No soldier or Marine should have to serve in Iraq without it."ABC News quoted Kennedy, "It is inconceivable with our manufacturing capability that we cannot produce that kind of a vehicle more rapidly and replace it."

Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, said such armor wasn't included in the Bush administration's $87 billion spending request for the Iraq war, nor in a $25 billion supplemental request.

"They didn't request the armor for the Humvees," she said. "We should not send our men and women into harm's way without the proper equipment that they need."

"They have consistently underestimated the need for this kind of protection for our troops," [Sen. Evan] Bayh [,D-Ind.] said. "Unfortunately, soldiers have been killed because of that."

[House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan] HUNTER[, R-CA]: . . .we put in $240 million in a supplemental budget, which was line item, to pay for up armored Humvees. My colleague voted against the supplemental appropriation. My colleague voted against such supplemental appropriation so we in Congress bear some of the fault for not moving quickly enough to get this armor between our troops and those explosions in the road. You don't get those things for free. The answer is we have to do a lot more, I think we're going to have to go to bigger systems than Humvees. My recommendation is to use 5 and 7-ton trucks and Stryker vehicles on these heavy convoy operations instead of using what we have now, which is a Jeep.

[Rep. Jan] SCHAKOWSKY [(D), IL]: Well, you know, the $87 billion -- one of the reasons that I voted no is that I thought we can't trust this administration to spend this money well without a plan in Iraq.

This memo [General Ellis' 30 MAR memo]is just the latest example of this Administration's continuing disregard for the men and women who put their lives on the line every day in Iraq. The Bush White House went to war without being prepared and it has got to devote itself to making sure that the troops in Iraq have the equipment they need to win the peace. John Kerry knows what it is like to fight in war and will make sure American soldiers are protected as much as possible when they go into battle. The American military’s men and women deserve nothing less when they are in harm’s way.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

ping

[Atchafalaya]

The last sentence needs an alert.