Report: U.S. Troops Short on Equipment in Iraq, AfghanistanSupport our troops? Now there’s an idea. But according to a new Defense Department report, that’s one thing the administration isn’t doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even as the president orders more troops to Iraq, the soldiers already serving there and in Afghanistan lack necessary body armor, communications equipment and other equipment, according to a report summary by the Pentagon’s Inspector General made public today.
Unfortunately, it’s anything but a complete accounting of the problem, thanks to restrictions by senior officers in the field.
Commanders put limitations on which soldiers could talk to inspectors and when they could be available, according to the summary, citing “scheduled operational missions, safety concerns, and availability of transportation.” So inspectors talked to “available Service members” who were approved by their superiors to speak — 1,100 of them. Furthermore, paperwork needed to confirm equipment issues wasn’t always provided to the auditors. “We were not able to validate testimonial evidence against documentation that either did not exist or was incomplete,” the reports says. You can read it here (pdf).
As a result, just how many and which troops are lacking the equipment isn’t clear from the summary, which was declassified and sent to Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) yesterday. The report remains classified. A spokesman for Slaughter said that she “intends to be briefed on the classified version of the report in the near future.”
The IG found that soldiers missing equipment and vehicles sometimes resorted to bartering — “informal procedures,” the report calls them — among themselves to get what they needed.
Business Week first reported the general findings of the summary yesterday.