Posted on 05/24/2004 5:38:47 PM PDT by Cannoneer No. 4
The 150-member 1221st Transportation Company has been reassigned from its hauling duties to providing security for convoys operated by defense contractor Kellogg Brown & Root.
(Excerpt) Read more at columbiatribune.com ...
Give all of the drivers an M9 and a shotgun with slugs.
Sounds like they have a very, valid point. These companies are making megabucks over there. They should provide their own private security guards. How about Halliburton with their overcharges to the military? Sounds like a legitmate operating expense and IRS deduction. IMHO.
ping
Sgt. Donald Curttright of Claycomo said the orders have members of the 1221st worried they’ll be spread so thin that they could be outgunned in a firefight.
(snip snip)
"There might be 30 trucks, and we’ll have six or seven of us riding shotgun armed with M-16s," Curttright said. "If we’re attacked, we’re expected to protect the whole thing. I don’t know how we’re supposed to do it."
(snip snip)
Curttright said riding shotgun for the contractor was more dangerous than hauling supplies as a military unit. When traveling as the 1221st, each truck has a driver and an assistant driver armed with M-16s, he said.
(snip snip)
Maj. Richard Spiegel, a spokesman for the 13th Corps Support Command in Iraq, downplayed the controversy. He said only a small number of soldiers had been assigned three or four times to ride in the contractor’s trucks.
(snip snip)
About half of the trucks have additional armor on the doors to stop shrapnel or weapons fire, he said, and the trucks are accompanied by gun trucks mounted with a .50-caliber machine gun.
(snip snip)
Some guardsmen also are bitter that they’re protecting KBR drivers who make up to $80,000 a year - significantly more than the troops are paid for doing the same job.
What about the other half?????
I've seen a lot of ridiculous accusations of such, so perhaps I've overlooked some legitimate ones...do you have a citation?
No they didn't, but with few exceptions they operated in convoys protected my military escorts.
There was a posting or two on FR about them (i think, it was one of the large contractors) not being able to prove that they actually did anything to warrant about 50 Million in charges. I THINK it was for some sort of food contract, but my connection to FR keeps timing out and I am unable to get search to work so I could be miles off.
Outsourcing makes good business sense for private companies as well as the military.
Would you prefer to replace B&R with a thousand more guardsmen and hundreds of government trucks? The B&R drivers may be laid off in six months. Guardsmen require expensive training and decades of military pay, benefits and retirement.
What a bunch of modern day American whiners. 30 trucks, 15 with armor, 6 Guardsmen. Guess which trucks they ride in? What's this outright BS that, "They have to protect the WHOLE convoy? Bull. Lie. As to pay, tough. You signed, you serve. You take the Kings coin, you do his bidding.
Holden said his complaint was prompted by the concerns of a relative of a soldier in the National Guard's 1221st Transportation Company
But Republican state Rep. Jim Avery, stationed in Baghdad as a combat engineer for the Guard's 1140th Engineering Battalion, said Holden's criticism is off-base.
``It was a necessary thing for them to do,'' Avery said. ``That's what made me so mad. (Holden) just didn't know what he was talking about.''
National Guard politics. Somebody whined, and Holden politicized it.
"This security can be through military vehicles escorting trucks, or the placing of coalition troops within the cabs of civilian trucks to provide additional firepower," Swan said.
You're on to something! Hey, why don't we just contract out the entire conflict? < /sarcasm >
An interesting story, but I'll be damned if I'm going to be suckered into second-guessing our commanders in Iraq. I worry that I may already have done too much of that already.
If Sgt. Curttright is so damned worried about the way he's being deployed, I'm sure his commanding officer is in a better position to do something about it than a reporter for the Associated Press.
He might also want to refer to his standing orders and the UCMJ about revealing operational details to the press, and through them, the enemy. I hope his chain of command has been reading all this and can counsel this moron appropriately.
I'm sure the insurgents appreciate his dutiful reporting on details of convoy security and the tactics the 1221st Transportation Company is currently using. Nice going, jackass.
As for the money, maybe Al Qaeda can pay this loose-lipped miscreant a bounty for every member of his company they kill based on his reports.
This business of bitching to the press stinks, and it needs to stop.
I sure hope that they've worked out some better backup commo plans, and have CAS on call in the event of another April 9 type major bushwhacking.
Doesn't matter where you go, you can find a complainer.
(It has been said that a bitchin' sailor is a happy sailor. I can't speak for the other services.)
There it is in a nutshell. What the hell is going on with this? I have never seen such a lack OPSEC. This is pi** poor. Why are these troops talking to these reporters? Why are these reporters allowed to post their stories with this intel revealed? This stinks.
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