Soldiers 'given 5 bullets for Iraq war'

[DuctapeFatwa]

A serving soldier has risked his career by speaking out over equipment shortages in the Gulf conflict.

Just five bullets each were issued to him and his men, who were serving along frontlines in southern Iraq, the unnamed soldier told Channel 4 News.

"The magazine held 30 separate bullets but I was issued with five separate bullets to last the entire hostilities of the war. We came under fire in Um Qasr three or four times.

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon came under mounting pressure when Sgt Roberts' widow Samantha revealed he was ordered to hand body armour to a colleague, shortly before he was shot and killed.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/PA_NEWPOLITICSIraqTue19Fivebull?source=

[Mari333]

1. sigh...and civil war is about to break out

but the news wont cover it. In the meantime, my stepson has been assigned to guard a prison in Baghdad, we just found out.
God I hope he keeps his vest on and his head down. Please god.

[UpInArms]

7. he's in my prayers for you

Mari333

[MsDemeander]

33. Mari333 or kin are in the British military?

Trick news story. Leads one to believe the US would short its soldiers ammo. Dirty trick.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

41. Our illustrious NeoCon Junta has shorted soldiers in Iraq on...

...body armor, food and water. They have also supplied them with humvees that have little or no armor at all...making them a primary target for remotely controlled roadside explosives.

Additionally, wounded troops brought back to the States have been neglected and/or poorly treated.

Furthermore, based on the above, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn at a later date that our soldiers had been sent into the field short on ammo.

[MsDemeander]

44. Sure but this story is about the British Military shorting ammo

Do you have a link to the US military shorting our troops their needed ammo?

[Columbia]

48. I'd agree with you on body armor and humvees

I had the needed body armor, but I knew some people who did not. However, there was plenty of ammo, food, and water - not sure where you are getting those reports from.

[rockymountaindem]

2. What is this?

The Soviet Union 1941? I thought our soldiers were at least supposed to have guns and ammo.

[demsrule4life]

12. Our soldiers?

You could tell from that story that it was American soldiers?

[willat]

28. It's misleading

[Streetdoc270]

3. Heard a NPR report on this last week

Talking about how the military is running out of ammo because there is only one factory that makes it.

[TrogL]

5. One would hope that the military uses NATO standard rounds

7.62mm rifle and 9mm sub-machine gun rounds are manufactured around the world.

What does the US military use?

[jayfish]

9. I Believe The M-16 Chambers .223 -NT-

Jay

[mobuto]

11. The US uses 5.56 mm

for M-4 and M-16 rifles. This article is about the UK, however. And the British, well they use 5.56 too.

[demsrule4life]

15. Nato standard rifle ammo is 5.56 mm

[TrogL]

22. When did it change?

Isn't that about .22 calibre?? You're supposed to stop what with that?

[jayfish]

23. It's The Same As .223cal. The Stopping Power...

come from the fact that it is a LR shell and begins to tumble almost immediately after leaving the barrel. The tumbling round does enormous damage to soft tissues.

Jay

[NickB79]

38. Tumbling bullet is a myth

The bullet doesn't tumble when it leaves the barrel; if it did it would be horribly inaccurate. The bullet tumbles when it hits a person, not in the air. The old 55-gr load would tumble, break in half and then fragment even more, but the newer 62-gr load just seems to pencil through most of the time, causing less damage.

[jayfish]

51. Thanks For The Correction. -NT-

Jay

[mobuto]

24. It changed when they started using the M-16

Isn't that about .22 calibre?? You're supposed to stop what with that?


.223
It seems to work.

[DS1]

34. Its intentions are to create battlefield casualties over instant kills

Kill a man and he can be left there in the heat of battle, wound him and his buddies get tied up providing covering fire and medical assistance while he spits blood and cries for his momma. That's the theory behind it anyway.

If you're comparing it to a typical kids .22 rimfire, you're way off, it's more of a scaled down 30.06.

[NickB79]

36. 5.56x45/.223 Rem was adopted with the M16 in Vietnam

5.56x45 is the military designation for .223 Remington caliber here in the US. Still a few rifles in use that use 7.62x51 ammo, such as the M60 machine gun, but even that has been largely replaced by the SAW rifle, also chambered in 5.56mm.

Despite being only .22 caliber, the round itself wasn't so bad as a man-stopper when first introduced and used at moderate ranges (400 yds or so). The original load fired a 55-gr bullet at 3300 fps, and the bullet tumbled on impact and fragmented, causing a lot of internal damage. In the 80's, they upgraded to a tougher 62-gr steel-core penetrator round to get better armor piercing capabilities, but this made the bullet much harder to tumble and fragment. Since the fragmenting capability was what made the original round so effective, it lost a lot of punch downrange.

[Ilsa]

32. What happened? Did we outsource all the rest

and they quit making it in protest of our foreign policy?

Hey, it could happen.

[UpInArms]

4. I guess that

the lack of ammunition was supported by the validation of the claims of only flowers and sweets being the appropriate things thrown at the soldiers who went/are in Iraq. /sarcasm

[GregW]

6. I'm sorry - I flat out do not believe this

Ammo is not is short supply. I can go to a myriad of gun shops in my area and buy anything. Whatever they don't have, I can get online.

[htuttle]

8. It's not Ammo that is in short supply

The ammo is available. It's the fucked up privatized military supply lines that are the problem. But ask Halliburton about that...

They had problems getting water to them the first month or two. There is no critical water shortage either -- at least not that would affect the troops getting water.


If Rumsfeld gets his way, there will be far MORE privitization, you can bet on that. It's part of his 'revolution in military affairs'...

[Streetdoc270]

16. link

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1645844

The ammo is in short supply.

[htuttle]

17. Apparently you are right

They're actually running out of bullets.

!

[MsDemeander]

35. Wow! Rumsfeld now runs the British military?

The things one learns on the internet.

[Tracer]

10. 'Scuse me, but aren't they talking about British soldiers?

And British arms factories?

[RamboLiberal]

13. Exactly - this is British Military

But I read a month or two ago about U.S. military running short of ammo, including small arms ammo. I posted it here. I'll have to see if I can dig it up. Col. Hackworth may have reported on it.

I remember story stating Aussies who were doing training exercises with U.S. military were astonished that our soldiers didn't have ammo and were having to play like kids shouting "Bang, bang".

On edit it was Hackworth - reported first week January:

I posted a "help wanted" ad on my hackworth.com Web page, and within 24 hours had received more than 500 messages from serving Army troops in the United States preparing for deployment to hot battlefields like Iraq or Afghanistan, as well as from warriors all over the world, confirming that our soldiers don't have sufficient stocks of live or blank training ammo to prepare adequately for combat.

<snip>

Weber, recently back from Iraq – where he served with the spearhead unit that took Baghdad – insisted that the "Army has adequate ammo for training and deployed units." But he did admit that there was a lot of ground truth in the reports I'd received from the troops.

<snip>

Tallman assured me that small-arms-training ammunition is now the No. 1 single line item for procurement dollars for the 2004 budget. "The Army will spend just over $1 billion, ahead of Stryker, upgrades for Apache, Abrams, CH-47, MLRS, procurement of communications systems and procurement of medium and heavy tactical vehicles," he said.

West Point-trained Lt. Col. Carlson – coincidentally the daughter of retired Col. Jerry Carlson, who served with great distinction alongside of me in Korea and Vietnam – said that our Lake City ammo plant in Missouri "has gone to three shifts."

Sources say that Lake City – both the largest Army ammo facility in the world and the producer of all the Pentagon's small-arms ammo – has reached "capacity" and "units in the field still don't have the right stuff to do the job."

A regular Army major just back from Iraq says: "President Bush told the armed forces, 'Help is on the way.' But in Iraq and now in the training business, I've seen very little help, but a whole lot of pork."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36465

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

20. Yeah - here's the Channel 4 story:

http://www.channel4.com/news/2004/02/week_4/24_soldier.html

They interviewed two solderis speaking out about lack of equiptment (which has been a recurring problem with our troops)

(from above link):

"They called us The Borrowers. Er, it was pretty much widespread. When I worked over in Basra and I worked alongside Seventh Armoured and the Yanks were using the same phrase there. And the Seventh Armoured lads were talking about that to us."

Other soldiers have told us things got so bad British soldiers routinely stole equipment from the Americans whenever, wherever they could.

[renegade000]

14. yeah

but i think the main issue is that soldiers have been forced to acquire their equipment through their own means. we have the best militaries in the world, yet we can't provide them with adequate supplies through the system. i think this is testament to the results of the growing privatization of the military.

[underpants]

18. On average US soldiers are spending ~$2K of their own money

That was in TIme a couple of months ago. Just last week ABC WNT reported on a guard unit in KAnsas that(with money raised by the community) bought steel to armor their humvees and trucks. They had been told if they could take it so.....they didn't ask, they said they would box it up and take it with them. Oh a local machine shop cut/welded it to size for them for free.

Nice.

[underpants]

19. Yikes!!!!!! sounds like "Enemy at the Gates"

That's scary.

[BiggJawn]

21. Shades of the 1930's!

The US Army trained with solid-wood toy rifles and trucks that had "TANK" painted on the side of them, the Navy held gunnery practice with these "sub-caliber" lash-ups that strapped to the barrels of the big 14 and 16-inch guns, and had to leave most of the fleet at dockside because they couldn't afford the coal to head out to sea.

The Army haggled price with Boeing over the B-17 to the point of almost losing the aircraft, even though by war's end they were saying "More! We don't care how much!"

Sure, they won't blame it on "Dirty Deeds done CHEAP" Rumsferatu, they'll blame a certain part of someone else's anatomy....

[MsDemeander]

37. What does that have to do with the British military shorting their troops?

And what does rummy or clinton have to do with this story of a British Military SNAFU?

[Supormom]

25. Also reported on MSNBC

<http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusintl/reuters02-24-123552.asp?reg=europe&vts=22420041328>

"The soldier's claims are likely to be used by critics to up the pressure on British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon who has been lambasted over previous revelations of equipment shortages.
The most serious concerned Sergeant Steven Roberts, shot dead near Basra on March 23, who had been asked to hand in his body armour because it was in short supply.
His widow Samantha and the opposition Conservative Party said Hoon should have resigned over that case alone."

[chromotone]

26. Yeah, well, Barney Fife only had ONE bullet...

and managed to keep the peace in Mayberry!

Seriously, folks, this is why you don't send a boy to do a President's job! :grr:

[Mozam]

27. Total Hogwash

My son tells me he has more than enough ammunition.

[Columbia]

29. Hmm..

I was issued 180+ rds over there with resupply available as well...

[Mozam]

30. MREs

are what get old...

[Columbia]

31. No kidding

I jumped at the chance to eat some traditional Iraqi grub. That first kebab sure was good... not too sure what kind of meat it was though... come to think of it, the follow-on diarrhea wasn't the best either...

[MsDemeander]

39. How honest of you to not explain it was the British military

Reading below I see quite a few knee-jerk reactions assuming it was the US military short changing our fighting men and women. Was that the intended effect?

[Name removed]

40. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

46. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

49. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

42. Read my post #41...

...now who's being dishonest?

[MsDemeander]

47. You are.

I deal in facts not hijacking threads for some undefined agenda to smear the US military.

[maxrandb]

50. No-one is hijacking this thread

to "smear" the US Military! I happen to be active duty military, and observing and commenting on how the civilian leaders are running things is a valid issue.

I also deal in facts, and the fact that this is a story about our allies, the Brits, is very obvious. It seems to me that you are constantly and immediately critical of anything that might paint this mis-administration in a negative light. I've been forced for years to dig through the minutia that hate radio and faux news spews to find the actual truth. It is part and parcel of the whole neo-con echo chamber. By the time you find the real truth buried on page 7 of the story, it is too late. That is why, at one point, 60% of Americans believed that Saddam and Osama were partners, and that any minute now, an Iraqi drone was going to drop anthrax on NY.

In the meantime, might I suggest that since life must be wonderful for our troops over in Iraq that you visit your local recruiting station. There are plenty of slots open, and you could see for yourself what it is like. After all, you want the facts, what better way than to put on your boots and join the fight.

[leanings]

43. I knew platoon leaders

who were buying ammo at WalMart when I went in 8 years ago. This is nothing new in the US military, and I'm not surprised the Brits are experiencing it too.

[mac2]

45. Did they have "Kill for Bush/Blair oil" printed on them?

Or "let's take over the whole ME for World Union bank" profits?

It's so sad. American/British people how can you sit back and think this is OK? This is what we have to do? This is patriotism. Dying on foreign soil (so the elite profit) without proper equipment is unacceptable.

Mother Jones had an article showing young men without legs, some blinded, etc. Their whole lives before them effected. These guys won't even get a good education or medical care like the previous war vets.

They do come home...and many changed forever. How can we live with this knowing it was all a lie?

We passed the Freedom of Information Act (after Vietnam and Iran Contra) so we could catch them lying to us. Bush comes along and ignores and even repeals it. Whose the criminal?

[Moderator]

52. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to lock this thread

It is a bit confusing when you post this article without the clarification that they are British soldiers. A more appropriate title would have been:

(British) Soldiers 'given 5 bullets for Iraq war

We normally like to stick to the letter of the headline rule but in this case it really doesn't work out. Feel free to repost.