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MY LAI VET SAYS: HERE IT
COMES AGAIN IN IRAQ
Tony Swindell
recalls "Butcher's Brigade" in '69; says "gooks"
have now become "ragheads", every adult male is an
"insurgent" ... atrocities against Iraqi civilians
are soon going to explode in America's face; US Government's courtroom jihads against terror
stumble. Alexander Cockburn on Lodi case where Feds paid $250,000
to man who "saw" world's three top terrorists at mosque.
As neocons
and Israel lobby howl for US to bomb Teheran, an Iranian outlines
simple path to peace. CounterPunch
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On December 10, 2003, two Strykers,
the Army's newest armored personnel carrier, were patrolling
near Balad, Iraq, when the embankment beneath them collapsed
and the vehicles plunged into a rain-swollen river. Three soldiers
died and another was severely injured. Three days later, another
Stryker rolled over a roadside bomb south of Baghdad. The explosion
left one soldier injured and the vehicle in flames.
It was an inglorious combat
debut for the Army's first new personnel carrier in thirty years.
But it confirmed the worst fears of some of the Stryker's critics
that the vehicle is unsafe and its crews untrained for using
it in combat conditions. One former Pentagon analyst described
the 8-wheeled vehicle as "riding in a dune buggy armored
in tinfoil."
The Stryker Interim Armored
Vehicle is billed as the Pentagon's latest weapon in its new
high-tech Army, a fast moving carrier designed for the urban
battlefield and unconventional wars. This fall the Army deployed
300 Stryker vehicles and 3,500 soldiers to Iraq's notorious Sunni
Triangle, the Iowa-sized area in central Iraq where the most
intense guerrilla fighting is taking place.
But new documents reveal that
Pentagon weapons testers had expressed serious reservations about
whether the Strykers were ready for battle. The Pentagon's chief
weapons tester, Tom Christie, warned in a classified letter to
the Secretary of the Defense that the Stryker is especially vulnerable
to rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices.
These are, of course, precisely the kinds of threats faced by
the Stryker brigades now in Iraq.
Advertised as rapid deployment
vehicles, the Stryker brigades could in theory be rushed anywhere
in the world within 96 hours by C-130 transport planes. But numerous
internal studies have questioned whether the Stryker can be deployed
by C-130s at all. Moreover, a newly released Government Accounting
Office report scolded the Pentagon for a host of other problems
with the carrier, which was meant to replace the much-maligned
Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The GAO report points to serious problems
with the Stryker's design and maintenance and discloses deficiencies
in training for its use.
Even Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld wanted to delay funding of additional Stryker brigades
until more testing and training could be completed. But congress,
ever an anxious to spread the pork around to as many districts
as possible, didn't heed the warning and approved the additional
purchases.
The Stryker is a joint venture
of two of the mightiest industrial corporations in America: General
Dynamics and General Motors. These companies waged a fierce two-year
long lobbying battle, stretching from Capitol Hill to the halls
of the Pentagon, to win the $4 billion contract to build 2,131
Strykers, which was awarded in November 2000.
The first Strykers, which cost
$3 million a piece, more than 50% above projections, rolled
off the assembly line in April 2002. Presiding over the ceremony
at the Stryker rollout in Alabama was former Army Chief of Staff
Eric Shinseki. The Stryker was a key component in Shinseki's
plan to upgrade the Army, a scheme he outlined in a 1999 paper
titled "Army Vision." In that report, Shinseki called
for the development of an interim armored brigade featuring "all-wheel
formation". This was a thinly veiled hint that the contract
would be awarded to General Dynamics. The Stryker is a wheeled
carrier, as opposed to the tank-like vehicles built by United
Defense which run on tracks.
During Shinseki's speech in
Alabama, he pointedly singled out for special thanks David K.
Heebner. Heebner, a former Army Lt. General, had been one of
Shinseki's top aides, serving as Assistant Vice Chief of Staff
for the Army. As such, he played a key role in pushing for funding
for Shinseki's projects, including the Stryker. In November 1999,
General Dynamics issued a press release announcing that they
had hired Heebner as an executive at the company. The announcement
came a full month before Heebner's official retirement date of
December 31, 1999. The timing of the announcement is curious
for several reasons. Most glaringly, it's clear that the Army
was leaning toward handing a multi-billion dollar contract to
General Dynamics at the very time Heebner may have been in negotiations
with the company for a high-paying executive position.
Federal conflict of interest
laws prohibit government employees from being engaged "personally
or substantially in a particular matter in which an organization
they are negotiating with, or have an agreement with for future
employment, has a financial interest." It's not clear if
Heebner recused himself from the negotiations with General Dynamics
over the Stryker contract.
However, it's very clear that
the Stryker deal, despite the reservations raised by Pentagon
weapons testers and the GAO, proved to be very lucrative for
both Heebner and General Dynamics. Off the strength of the Stryker
deal, Heebner quickly rose to the rank of Senior Vice-President
for Planning and Development for General Dynamics, the conduit
between the nation's number two defense contractor and the Pentagon.
By the end of last year, Heebner amassed more than 13,600 shares
of General Dynamics stock valued at more than $1.2 million. "Based
on the circumstances surrounding General Heebner's hiring and
compensation, and internal Pentagon warnings about the Stryker's
vulnerability, further investigation of the Stryker program is
required," says Eric Miller, a senior defense investigator
at the Project on Government Oversight.
This article is excerpted from
Jeffrey St. Clair's new book, Grand
Theft Pentagon.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
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