More strange statistics from the Department of Defense

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Robert Lee <robertslee () verizon net>
Date: July 5, 2005 11:37:54 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: More strange statistics from the Department of Defense
Reply-To: robertslee () verizon net


For IP, if not too caustic.


http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx? 
type=politicsNews&storyID=2005-07-05T213209Z_01_N05155078_RTRIDST_0_POLI 
TICS-SECURITY-USA-WARS-DC.XML



Military brass rethinking two war strategy.  In supporting possible  
need to rethink they state:


“A senior Army officer noted that many of the more than 1,700 U.S.  
troops who lost their lives in Iraq died because the military had not  
anticipated the need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on  
armor to protect military vehicles against improvised explosive  
devices.”


These are the armor kits that caused Rumsfeld to embarrass himself.   
A reporter asked why the Humvees were not armored and Rumsfeld, who  
never fought in a war, said, “We fight with the army we have, not  
with the army we want.” He then went on to say that the government  
was having them made as fast as they could but that there was a  
bottleneck at production.  Rumsfeld reported that in this great  
nation we could source only 200 per month.


The very next day the manufacturers of the armor said there was no  
bottleneck, the Department of Defense was simply refusing to buy them  
as fast as they could be made.  Which, of course, passed the smell  
test.  After all, the soldiers themselves, in their off hours, were  
making several dozen of them each month out of scrap.


In the article below the general tries to say that armoring these  
humvees costs “hundreds of millions of dollars”.  Let’s examine this  
just a tad.  Let’s say that “hundreds of millions of dollars is more  
than one hundred million and less than five hundred million.  How  
about three hundred million?  Now if we had 300 hundred million  
Humvees every armor set would cost $1.  If we had 3 million each  
would cost $100.  If we had 1 million each one would cost $300.  Do  
we have 1 million humvees there?  No.  We do not have 1 million  
people there.  We have about 150,000 people there.  So if everyone  
has a humvee then the armor kits cost $2,000.  But we do not have  
150,000 humvees there.  If we had 15,000 then each set would cost  
$20,000.  But we do not have 15,000 humvees there and $20,000 per set  
of cold rolled seems a tad high already.  Do we have 1,500?  Then  
each set costs $200,000 (more than the humvee).


All of which begs the question, did the army truly think that as in  
Belgium at the end of WWII beautiful women would dance out of  
doorways and stuff roses down the barrels of the guns?  That is what  
Rumsfeld said.  Did he mean it?


Oh well, best not to go further and risk not being a patriot.






Robert Lee




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