Iraq - Adult Supervision Required

Just in case anyone is still unclear why it's necessary for the Congress to begin "micro-managing" the war in Iraq.

GAO Faults U.S. Military Over Munitions in Iraq
Report Says Insurgents Took Unsecured Explosives

By Ann Scott Tyson

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 23, 2007; Page A07

The U.S. military's faulty war plans and insufficient troops in Iraq left thousands and possibly millions of tons of conventional munitions unsecured or in the hands of insurgent groups after the 2003 invasion -- allowing widespread looting of weapons and explosives used to make roadside bombs that cause the bulk of U.S. casualties, according to a government report released yesterday. ...

... The GAO report pointed to several critical assumptions underlying U.S. military war plans in 2003 that proved invalid -- including expectations that Iraqi resistance was unlikely and that the Iraqi army would capitulate and continue to provide security.

As a result, widespread looting of munitions took place, including at the majority of Iraqi Republican Guard garrisons as well as 401 other sites, according to the GAO. ... (full article)

Although the GAO ever so politely calls it "the U.S. Military's faulty war plan", in reality it was and is the Bush Administrations war plan. The plans and advice of Military Officers have been over-ruled by Bush Administration civilians from the start. Lack of attention and shortage of personnel are the fault of Republican hacks appointed to positions of responsibility in the Pentagon and ultimately to George Bush and his advisers.

Not only is the Bush administration responsible for handing explosives to the insurgents in Iraq, they are also responsible for slowly grinding down the Army and Marine Corps:

Military not ready for other wars
Troops in US lack resources, government says

By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post | March 20, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Four years after the invasion of Iraq, the high and growing demand for US troops there and in Afghanistan has left ground forces in the United States short of the training, personnel, and equipment that would be vital to fight a major ground conflict elsewhere, senior US military and government officials acknowledge.

More troubling, the officials say, is that it will take years for the Army and Marine Corps to recover from what some officials privately have called a "death spiral," in which the ever-more-rapid pace of war-zone rotations has consumed 40 percent of their total gear, wearied troops, and left no time to train to fight anything other than the insurgencies now at hand.

The risk to the nation is serious and deepening, senior officers warn, because the US military now lacks a large strategic reserve of ground troops ready to respond quickly and decisively to potential foreign crises, whether the internal collapse of Pakistan, a conflict with Iran, or an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula. Air and naval power can only go so far in compensating for infantry, artillery, and other land forces, they said. An immediate concern is that critical Army overseas equipment stocks for use in another conflict have been depleted by the recent troop increases in Iraq, they said. ... (full article)