Last night, Obama relayed an anecdote about how the Army in Afghanistan is being short changed to fight the war in Iraq:
OBAMA: You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a
rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up
being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been
sent to Iraq.
And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition,
they didn't have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban
weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for
them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.
It checks out.
Right wing blogs were up in arms and using this as evidence that Obama isn't fit to be commander in chief if he didn't know that Captains generally don't command platoons.
It turns out that Jake Tapper spoke with the source:
Prior to deployment the Captain -- then a Lieutenant -- took command of a rifle platoon at Fort Drum. When he took command, the platoon had 39 members, but -- in ones and twos -- 15 members of the platoon were re-assigned to other units. He knows of 10 of those 15 for sure who went to Iraq, and he suspects the other five did as well.
The platoon was sent to Afghanistan with 24 men.
snip
"We should have had 4 up-armored humvees," he said. "We were supposed to. But at most we had three operable humvees, and it was usually just two."
So what did they do? "To get the rest of the platoon to the fight," he says, "we would use Toyota Hilux pickup trucks or unarmored flatbed humvees." Sometimes with sandbags, sometimes without.
snip
... but on occasion they used Taliban weapons. Sometimes AK-47s, and they also mounted a Soviet-model DShK (or "Dishka") on one of their humvees instead of their 50 cal.
Now, Obama is not angling to be Platoon leader in chief, or even Company commander in chief, but just plain old Commander in Chief. He shouldn't be getting down in the weeds like that. He doesn't have the personal experience nor does he need it to wield executive power effectively. I hope for now on he stays away from in the weeds topics like this.
But, I also agree with Tapper's summation:
I might suggest those on the blogosphere upset about this story would be better suited directing their ire at those responsible for this problem, which is certainly not new. That is, if they actually care about the men and women bravely serving our country at home and abroad.
Update 1630 EDT: CNN is about to interview the Captain who made the claims.
Update 2 1750 EDT: CNN talks to the anonymous source and the source says that the gist of the anecdote is right but a few details were wrong. For instance, the 15 soldiers in the platoon were lost to normal rotations and weren't sent enmasse to Iraq. Also, the events in this anecdote took place in the summer of 2003. Interesting side story: when General Abazaid visited the anonymous Captain's unit in Afghanistan, the Captain had the Russian machine gun that he had mounted on a HMMWV replaced with a "broken American machine gun". And yes, the officer reports still being very bitter about the experience.