Editorial: Troops deserve better

Friday, Dec. 10, 2004 | 9:02 a.m.

It's extremely rare for U.S. soldiers to disobey orders, but a group of Army reservists in Iraq did just that in October. They refused to supply another unit because it meant driving their vehicles along a highway where they knew the enemy was waiting for them. They called their orders a "suicide mission" because their vehicles were not sufficiently armored.

Soldiers, Marines and their commanders on the ground in Iraq had been complaining about this severe shortage of armored vehicles since at least April, when it became clear that enemy fighters were committed to a sustained insurgency. Roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades take a terrible toll on troops riding in lightly armored Humvees and trucks.

No one in the Pentagon had foreseen the war taking this direction and therefore our troops had been sent to Iraq without the heavily armored vehicles appropriate for patrolling city streets and rural roads. Even now, months after the direction of the war became obvious, many of our troops on patrol or in transport vehicles are still trying to shield themselves with plywood and sandbags.

In Kuwait this week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fielded a tough question from a soldier about to join a convoy heading north into Iraq. "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?" It was an excellent question and Rumsfeld could only reply, callously, "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have."

Armored vehicles are being sent to Iraq, but in nowhere near the quantity the turn in the war demands. With our enemies in Iraq gathering force, it's time we started building the Army our troops deserve to have.