Mutinous Rabble

[Gary Sisco]

Now, it begins.

Inquiry Opens After Reservists Balk in Baghdad
>
> By NEELA BANERJEE and ARIEL HART
>
> he Army is investigating members of a Reserve unit in Iraq who refused
> to deliver a fuel shipment north of Baghdad under conditions they
> considered unsafe, the Pentagon and relatives of the soldiers said
> Friday. Several soldiers called it a "suicide mission," relatives > said.
>
> Some 18 members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company, based in Rock
> Hill, S.C., were detained at gunpoint for nearly two days after
> disobeying orders to drive trucks that they said had not been serviced
> and were not being escorted by armed vehicles to Taji, about 15 miles
> north of Baghdad, relatives said after speaking to some of the
> soldiers.
>
> Jackie Butler of Jackson, Miss., the wife of Staff Sgt. Michael
> Butler, 44, said she was awakened about 5:30 or 6 a.m. Thursday by a
> call from an officer from Iraq. He told her "that my husband was being
> detained for disobeying a direct order," Ms. Butler said, "and he went
> on to tell me that it was a bogus charge that they got against him and
> some of those soldiers over there, because what they was doing was
> sending them into a suicide mission, and they refused to go."
>
> A senior Army officer said that 19 soldiers from the unit had been
> assembled Wednesday morning to deliver fuel but that some had refused
> to go. He denied they had been held under guard.
>
> The officer said the soldiers raised "some valid concerns."
>
> "Unfortunately it appears that a small number of the soldiers involved
> chose to express their concerns in an inappropriate manner," said the
> officer, who discussed the preliminary findings only on the condition
> of anonymity. Insubordination in wartime is a grave offense, and an
> inquiry is under way, the officer said, to determine if the Uniform
> Code of Military Justice was violated and whether disciplinary
> measures were warranted.
>
> It is unclear if this is the first time a group of soldiers in Iraq
> has refused to carry out orders, and the military is playing down the
> incident as an isolated event. But the small rebellion suggests that
> problems linger with outfitting soldiers with adequate equipment in an
> increasingly dangerous country.
>
> "I know soldiers are deeply concerned and have been deeply concerned
> about the equipment shortages," said Paul Rieckhoff, who was an Army
> lieutenant in Iraq for almost a year, until February this year, and is
> now executive director of Operation Truth, a New York advocacy group
> working to draw attention to the needs of soldiers in Iraq and
> returning veterans.
>
> "When you don't have proper equipment, you feel vulnerable," Mr.
> Rieckhoff said. "We haven't evolved quickly enough to meet the enemy
> threat, which is rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs."
>
> On average, American soldiers were attacked 87 times a day in August,
> the latest figures available, a sharp increase from a year earlier. In
> September, 41 soldiers died from rocket attacks and gunfire, up from
> 11 a year earlier.
>
> The incident, which was first reported in The Clarion-Ledger in
> Jackson, Miss., where several of the soldiers live, apparently began
> after the company tried to deliver a shipment of fuel to a base, but
> was turned away because the fuel was unusable, according to family
> members.
>
> According to relatives and the Army officer, they returned to their
> base in Tallil, where they were told to deliver the fuel to Taji. The
> group refused, citing the poor condition of their vehicles and the
> lack of an armed escort, family members said. American convoys, which
> are usually accompanied by armored cars and sometimes by aircraft, are
> often attacked by insurgents.
>
> "Yesterday we refused to go on a convoy to Taji," Specialist Amber
> McClenny, 21, said in a message she left on the answering machine of
> her mother, Teresa Hill, in Dothan, Ala. "We had broken-down trucks,
> nonarmored vehicles. We were carrying contaminated fuel."
>
> After the soldiers were released, Specialist McClenny called her
> mother again and explained that the jet fuel the convoy had to carry
> had been contaminated with diesel, and that because it had been
> rejected by one base, it would likely be rejected by the Taji base.
>
> Taji is in the volatile Sunni-dominated swath of Iraq, and Ms. Hill
> said her daughter felt "that if you go there, it's a 99 percent chance
> you will be ambushed or fired upon."
>
> "They had not slept, the trucks had not been maintained, they were
> going without armed guards, it was just a bad deal," Ms. Hill said.
> "And that's when the whole unit said no." She said their defense is
> "cease action on an unsafe order."
>
> Relatives said that prior to the incident, soldiers had complained to
> them that their equipment was shoddy and put them in greater danger.
> The relatives said they did not know if such complaints were made to
> the unit's command.
>
> Patricia McCook of Jackson, Miss., said her husband, Sgt. Larry O.
> McCook, 41, had told her "that these vehicles were unsafe."
>
> "He said, we go out on these missions, you know, he was afraid they
> were going to break down, that they were no good, they were just
> piecemealing something together, and set up for people to come
> ambushing you," she added.
>
> The senior Army officer said the military was investigating the issue
> of vehicle maintenance.
>
> Phillip Carter, a former Army captain and expert on legal and military
> affairs, said the kind of insubordination the unit showed had been
> more common during World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, when the
> draft was still in place and the average conscript's goal was
> survival. The formation of an all-volunteer Army was supposed to
> address these problems, Mr. Carter said.
>
> But the continually shifting war in Iraq is testing the preparation of
> the military, especially the Reserve and the National Guard, military
> experts said. Since last year, Reserve and National Guard units have
> complained about lack of proper equipment and training. Those in rear
> service units, like cooks and truck drivers, often had minimal combat
> training. The Army has moved to change that, but experts like Mr.
> Carter call the effort inadequate.
>
> "The paradigm shift that's happening is that a truck driver is just as
> likely to see combat as soldiers in infantry unit," he said. "There's
> better training now of support units now as they go out. They've
> gotten better about equipping support units, but those moves have
> still been incremental moves. There hasn't been a wholesale push to
> change the Army to face the kind of the threat it faces in Iraq today.
> There are no rear units in Iraq any more."
>
> The Army officer who discussed the case said service records of the
> 343rd indicated that it has performed well for the nearly nine months
> it has served in Iraq.
>
> Though the soldiers have been released from detention, they could face
> anything from reprimands to courts-martial.
>
> Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington for this article,
> and Norimitsu Onishi from Baghdad.
>
>
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