Monday, February 27, 2006
Heavy Lifting, Army Style
This is the kind of article on the things going on downrange that I have been looking for.
Ralph Peters is a writer for the New York Post living in Kuwait with the troops he is writing about.
This article of his focuses on the troops of CFLCC (Pronounced "sea-flick", read the article, if you want to know what it stands for). These are the folks in the "rear" in Kuwait who provide all the support for the troops in Iraq.
Some of these same people ran the close quarters marksmanship training I went through before going into Iraq.
They are great.
Peters highlighted some of the things that they have done over the last 16 months. (Keep in these are not the only people in that theater of operations that have ran convoys, moved cargo and troops, washed vehicles, or served meals. They are just the ones who do it from Kuwait.)
His list includes:
* 590,000 troops moved in and out of Iraq.
* 100,000,000 (yes, 100 million) miles driven by nearly 50,000 convoys.
* 160,000 major pieces of equipment and 25,000,000 tons of cargo processed in and out of Kuwait.
* 140,000,000 (yes, million) meals served.
* 66,000 vehicles power-washed (Our troops have to make sure that no germs or contaminants are carried back to the United States — you bet that today's military operations are more complex than amateurs imagine).
* 20,000 allied troops from 27 countries also had CFLCC's support as they moved into Iraq to support Coalition operations.
This outfit, alone, has driven 50,000 convoys in the last 16 months, and they are by no means the only ones running convoys.
If you think every convoy gets hit by the insurgents and it shows up on CNN, then you have no idea what you are talking about.
Great things are happening, and have happened in Iraq. It's part of what leads Peters to lead off his article with this statement:
The scale of our military's effort to support our troops in Iraq is a great American success story. And it's ignored. Not only by critics, but even by those who keep faith with our struggle.
Ralph Peters is a writer for the New York Post living in Kuwait with the troops he is writing about.
This article of his focuses on the troops of CFLCC (Pronounced "sea-flick", read the article, if you want to know what it stands for). These are the folks in the "rear" in Kuwait who provide all the support for the troops in Iraq.
Some of these same people ran the close quarters marksmanship training I went through before going into Iraq.
They are great.
Peters highlighted some of the things that they have done over the last 16 months. (Keep in these are not the only people in that theater of operations that have ran convoys, moved cargo and troops, washed vehicles, or served meals. They are just the ones who do it from Kuwait.)
His list includes:
* 590,000 troops moved in and out of Iraq.
* 100,000,000 (yes, 100 million) miles driven by nearly 50,000 convoys.
* 160,000 major pieces of equipment and 25,000,000 tons of cargo processed in and out of Kuwait.
* 140,000,000 (yes, million) meals served.
* 66,000 vehicles power-washed (Our troops have to make sure that no germs or contaminants are carried back to the United States — you bet that today's military operations are more complex than amateurs imagine).
* 20,000 allied troops from 27 countries also had CFLCC's support as they moved into Iraq to support Coalition operations.
This outfit, alone, has driven 50,000 convoys in the last 16 months, and they are by no means the only ones running convoys.
If you think every convoy gets hit by the insurgents and it shows up on CNN, then you have no idea what you are talking about.
Great things are happening, and have happened in Iraq. It's part of what leads Peters to lead off his article with this statement:
The scale of our military's effort to support our troops in Iraq is a great American success story. And it's ignored. Not only by critics, but even by those who keep faith with our struggle.
