Rahul Mahajan puts his finger on the central issue of the Iraq occupation which makes the mutiny over the "suicide mission" an important story.
Apparently, an Army Reserve platoon, part of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, South Carolina, is under arrest for refusing to obey orders to go on what they considered a suicide mission.
Stationed at Tallil Air Base south of Nasiriyah, they were ordered to do a fuel resupply run up to Taji, north of Baghdad. Fuel convoys in the "Sunni Triangle" nearly always come under fire; one soldier reportedly claimed that the chance of being attacked was "99 percent."
The platoon considered their trucks to be extremely unsafe; some were not able to go more than 40 mph, and would be sitting ducks. They ordinarily get an escort of armed Humvees and helicopters, but an escort was not available for the mission.
This actually points to the difficulty the United States would face if it tried to put in significantly larger numbers of troops, as John Kerry seems to want (he doesn't say he'll send more troops to Iraq; he says more troops are needed to do the job, that he intends to do the job, and that he'll increase the combat forces by 40,000 -- you do the math). It's already difficult to find enough escorts for resupply operations; that difficulty will be compounded the more combat troops are put in (because the need for fuel will increase along with the number of troops in the field).
You could increase the number of logistical and supply troops proportionately, maybe, but then you have more and more people to be easily killed by the resistance.
To put what happened in some perspective, consider that one very successful strategy of the resistance has been to target the American logistic structure, which relied heavily on Jordanian and Turkish truckers for resupply. Those who have kept up with the news out of Iraq know that the victims of the Iraqi guerillas have overwhelmingly been collaborators, with an
emphasis on
truckers. Kidnapped
Jordanians and Turks don't make for big news stories in the American press, but these are the people who were
trucking in supplies to the US military, and their ranks have been decimated by the guerillas. With the near elimination of any trucking firms either willing or able to resupply the US, the job has only recently fallen to the US military to drive their own convoys.
As Rajul points out above, more troops means more supplies that must be trucked in to Iraq. Even without an increase in troops, more of the US military is on the road in Iraq. The fact that the US now has few to no outside contractors driving the convoys means further overstretch and exposure to attack as soldiers take up the positions abandoned by contractors. Now, instead of military escorts of convoys driven by contractors, the military must drive and escort its own convoys, as well as use its own vehicles. It seems reasonable to assume that this is provoking a crisis in US military operations, partially evidenced by the request for British troops. This is precisely the goal of the Iraqi guerillas, as I pointed out here and as Zarqawi has allegedly announced today.
Today, 5 more US soldiers were killed in car bomb attacks. Yesterday's attacks killed 6 in two separate bombings. Are the US troops more exposed due to the lack of contractors willing to brave insurgent attacks to resupply the US military? Undoubtedly, they are. Look for more troops, increasingly demoralized by their realization that their presence in Iraq is pointless, to refuse more suicide missions.
