Posted on 01/11/2006 6:52:08 AM PST by Mia T
HILLARY'S ARMOR: A decades-old story...
Faster than you can say "quagmire," Hillary landed on ABC's "Good Morning America" to lambaste the Bush administration as "incompetent" and its failure to provide more armor "unforgivable."
"We perhaps could have avoided so many of these fatalities with the right body armor," concluded Brig. Gen. Clinton, who immediately dashed off letters to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee; and Francis J. Harvey, Secretary of the Army. Smarter-than-thou Clinton is, of course, demanding an investigation (highly recommended by image consultants to boost one's pro-military posturing).
Hillary bashed President Bush and Vice President Cheney for callously letting troops die and said she was "just bewildered as to how this president and this vice president continue to isolate themselves from different points of view."
Well, I am bewildered, too. Bewildered at how such a supposedly brilliant and savvy woman -- who is supposedly in tune with American troops -- can so blithely ignore the grave trade-offs involved in this matter.
You want different points of view? Listen to soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade, who must don some 40 pounds of protection and gear while fighting in the desert heat. Capt. Jamey Turner, 35, of Baton Rouge, La., a commander in the 1st Squadron, 33rd Cavalry Regiment bluntly reminded the Associated Press: "You've got to sacrifice some protection for mobility. If you cover your entire body in ceramic plates, you're just not going to be able to move."
Second Lt. Josh Suthoff, 23, of Jefferson City, Mo., said: "I'd go out with less body armor if I could."
There is a legitimate debate to be had about the Army's supply system, military procurement, and contracting squabbles over body armor. However, challenging the leaked study's premises, Spc. Robert Reid, 21, of Atlanta, commented: "It's the Army's responsibility to get soldiers the armor they need. But that doesn't mean those deaths could have been prevented."
A military blogger at Baghdad Guy (web site) who serves in the U.S. Army, 101st Airborne Division, 506th Infantry, sums it up:
"Body armor has saved numerous lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and it will continue to do so, especially as it is modified to better meet the threat we face.
However, there are limitations as to how much armor you can add onto an individual and maintain his effectiveness as a soldier: when I step out the gate I am wearing on my person body armor, a kevlar helmet, my M4 rifle with a few hundred rounds of ammunition, my M9 sidearm with another hundred rounds of ammunition, 2-3 quarts of water, a portable radio, night vision equipment, and numerous other odds and ends ...
" ... Too much weight means a soldier moves slower, tires more easily, [maneuvers] less stealthily and spends more time feeling sorry for himself instead of focusing on the mission. And then there's the bulkiness that becomes an issue as you move through tight space and wedge into the seats of military vehicles that were not designed with comfort and/or legroom in mind. All these tradeoffs must be addressed before you make the decision to add armor, it must be determined that the armor will be effective, and then it must be designed in a way that minimizes impact on our ability to do our job."
Alas, fund-raising, spotlight-grabbing, 2008-planning Hillary isn't interested in sober analysis of trade-offs on the battlefield.
She is too busy playing dress-up to listen to the troops she says she cares so much about now.
Hillary Wraps Herself In Armor
G. K. Chesterton
... While America appears not to be ready for a female president under any circumstances, the post-9/11 realities pose special problems for a female presidential candidate. Add to these the problems unique to missus clinton. The reviews make the mistake of focusing on the problems of the generic female presidential candidate running during ordinary times.
These are not ordinary times. America is waging the global War on Terror; the uncharted territory of asymmetric netherworlds is the battlefield; the enemy is brutal, subhuman; the threat of global conflagration is real.
Defeating the enemy isn't sufficient. For America to prevail, she must also defeat a retrograde, misogynous, troglodyte mindset. To successfully prosecute the War on Terror, it is essential that the collective patriarchal islamic culture perceives America as politically and militarily strong. Condi Rice excepted, this requirement presents an insurmountable hurdle for any female presidential candidate, and especially missus clinton, historically antimilitary, forever the pitiful victim, and, according to Dick Morris, "the biggest dove in the clinton administration."
It is ironic that had the clintons not failed utterly to fight terrorism... not failed to take bin Laden from Sudan... not failed repeatedly to decapitate a nascent, still stoppable al Qaeda... the generic female president as a construct would still be viable... missus clinton's obstacles would be limited largely to standard-issue clintonisms: corruption, abuse, malpractice, malfeasance, megalomania, rape and treason... and, in spite of Juanita Broaddrick, or perhaps because of her, Rod Lurie would be reduced to perversely hawking the "First Gentleman" instead of the "Commander-in-Chief."
Mia T, 10.02.05
She's pitching nanotech uniforms... and with as much geeky hawk as she can muster.
Edward Klein
hillary's figurative armor:
The clintons, as is their wont, are now taking this proxy scheme to even more outrageous extremes. The latest: an actual hillary clinton proxy presidency, populated on both sides of the camera by assorted rodham and clinton ex-staffers, sycophants and should-be felons, witness the latest hire.
'Commander-in-Chief,' a show that sets out to crown a 'queen,' instead exposes the kitschy simplemindedness of Hollywood fantasy and the special sway and shortsightedness of the pathologic ego.
hillary dumps Geena for Maggie,1 and when that doesn't fly,2 she dumps Maggie for bill. Without missing a beat.
It's the old Dick Morris Hail Mary pass, (when in trouble, triangulate3), the once trusty play that for eight years kept two clumsy kleptocrats4 in the Oval Office and out of the slammer (even as it placed America and Americans in ever-increasing peril.)5
That missus clinton has managed, thereby, to stake out Iraqi territory occupied apparently by no one6 seems to have escaped her notice. Nonetheless, this constituency of zero is the least of her troubles.
IMPERIOUS HILLARY Having failed to snare the Nobel Peace Prize by ignoring terrorism, clinton has apparently decided to intensify his America-bashing on foreign soil, the method employed by Jimmy Carter to great (if somewhat belated) effect: Carter received his 1978 Peace Prize in 2002.
Meanwhile, back in the Senate, the missus, the other half of the clinton construct, maintains her hawkish pose (though not without bird problems of another sort).
Yet another example of the clinton conflation ploy, (see SCHEMA PINOCCHIO: how the clintons are handling the hillary dud factor), this variant allows "clinton, the construct" to hold two mutually exclusive positions simultaneously, thereby enabling the missus to avoid in '08 the trap that repeatedly ensnared the ever 'nuanced' Kerry in '04.
Do you now understand how stupid the clintons think you are?
A CALL TO IMPEACH CLINTON IN ABSENTIA December 7, 1941+64
Hillary Clinton's revisionist tome notwithstanding, 'living history' begets a certain symmetry. It is in that light that I make this not-so-modest proposal on this day, exactly 64 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The context of our concern today--regardless of political affiliation--is Iraq and The War on Terror, but the larger fear is that our democracy may not survive.
We have the requisite machines, power and know-how to defeat the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere, but do we have the will?
In particular, do we have the will to identify and defeat the enemy in our midst?
Answerable to no one, heir apparent in her own mind, self-serving in the extreme, Hillary Clinton incarnates this insidious new threat to our survival.
What we decide to do about Missus Clinton will tell us much about what awaits us in these perilous new times.
COMPLETE LETTER
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006
Last week, a group called Soldiers for the Truth leaked results of an unpublished Pentagon study that reportedly found that as many as 80 percent of a random sample of Marines killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. On Friday, the New York Times seized on the study.
GOP USA | 01-11-06 | Michelle Malkin
HILLARY'S COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF PROBLEM
(see descriptor morphs)
issus clinton has worn literal and figurative armor for decades, to hide her incompetence, her corruption, her dysfunction and her repulsiveness.
As for her recent interest in armor for the military, did you know hillary is reprising and updating for the 21st century the clintons' "school uniforms" shtick?
hillary's literal armor:
The Truth about Hillary:
What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President
by Mia T, 10.6.05
Mia T, 10.27.05
THE DANGER OF RUNNING VICARIOUSLY
Bill O'Reilly chews up and spits out the hillary clinton candidacy
(clip included)
(THE REPORTS OF HER DEATH ARE GREATLY UNDERSTATED)
by Mia T, 12.05.05
Mia T, 11.17.05
AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRORE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton
Dear Concerned Americans,
December 7, 1941+64
Mia T
AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRO
RE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2005
IMPERIOUS HILLARY
(THE REPORTS OF HER DEATH ARE GREATLY UNDERSTATED)
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Mia T. bump.
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Does anyone have that photo?
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We had the old flak vests, steel pots, canned food, lots of ammo, grenades,claymores,etc etc all this plus for some a PRC-25 radio ,M60 Machine gun or medical supplies.
Add extra body armor or other goodies her heinousness suggests will not end death in war..
My guys in RVN faced IEDs in our time we simply called them booby traps or command detonated booby traps..
They could be as simple as fragmentation grenades in empty cans whose pins were attached to fishing line trip wires or 155 arty round strung up in trees and detonated by 12 yr old kids hiding in the brush.
From what I understand our guys are facing explosives sometimes 100X more powerful.
Extra body armor is nice but there will be a price to pay.
Less mobility,flexibility,heat exhaustion & heat stroke
Men too tired to pay the kind of attention needed to close, kill and survive or simply avoid enemy ambushes.
There are no easy answers on how to keep our guys from getting hurt in wartime.
Only jerk off selfish egocentric arrogant politicians who will do anything, say anything to amass power or to stay in power...they could give a rats ass about young men and women getting killed or wounded
I say this based upon all the great speeches I have heard from both parties regarding their 'high regard' for our nations veterans
Meanwhile while the speeches were being made they were cutting funds to the VA medical centers where these same highly regarded wounded veterans were in desperate need for the care these politicians were promising but would never deliver
The Clintons..among others....were foremost in the neglect of our nations veterans
I saw the negative changes Bill Clinton made in the VAMCs...
Other than a few unfortunate Arkansas women..I'd have to say that imo Bill Clinton screwed Veterans more than any other president in my lifetime and I'm pushin' 60.
Thank you for your service, joesnuffy. :)
An excellent analysis bump!
I hope the Bush people refute her demagoguery... and fast. And not politely. For the safety of this country, they must expose her as the self-serving moron that she is.
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This is like saying that a random sample of people dying from falling out of trees would have survived if trees had guard rails. This doesn't prove that all trees need guard rails. Only fools would cite this as a definitive study
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Attacking from the other side, wasn't the left complaining only recently about how modern technology had 'unfairly' lowered the death rate for 'Bush's War'??!
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