[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 57 (Wednesday, May 4, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H2937-H2939]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS LETTING OUR TROOPS DOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, this past Sunday, May 1, marked the 2-year 
anniversary of President Bush's aircraft carrier news event in which he 
declared ``Mission Accomplished'' in Iraq. Two years later, our troops 
are still facing a strong insurgence that shows no sign of slowing 
down.
  Our troops are doing valiant work, but that sadly is not always 
enough. I will include for the Congressional Record a New York Times 
investigative report from April 25 titled, ``Bloodied Marines Sound Off 
About Want for Armor and Men.'' The article should be required reading 
for every Member of this House, as well as the high-ranking military 
and civilian personnel at the Department of Defense.
  Times reporter Michael Moss interviewed Marines from Company E who 
served a 6-month stint in Iraq last year. During that time, Company E 
endured the highest casualty rate of any marine company in the war. 
According to the Times, ``More than one-third of the unit's 185 troops 
were killed or wounded during that time.''
  Several months after the beginning of the war as Congress was 
debating its first emergency supplemental, we were all alerted to the 
fact that our troops did not have the equipment they needed to 
adequately do their job and to protect themselves from extreme harm or 
death. We heard they did not have the body armor they needed, nor did 
the Humvees come with the necessary protective steel armor to protect 
them from being easy targets of insurgents.

                              {time}  1615

  The situation became so dire for our troops that one brave National 
Guardsman last year asked Secretary Rumsfeld when the troops would have 
the protective gear they had already been promised. Secretary Rumsfeld 
could not give the Guardsman an adequate response at the time. As the 
press began to question the Bush administration about this outrageous 
neglect of our troops, President Bush came out and stated, ``The 
concerns expressed are being addressed, and that is we expect our 
troops to have the best possible equipment and I have told many 
families I met with, `We're doing everything we possibly can to protect 
your loved ones in a mission which is vital and important.' ''
  The New York Times report clearly shows that the Bush administration 
has not done enough to protect our troops. As the House prepares to 
vote tomorrow on another $82 billion supplemental to fund the war, 
bringing the total cost to $300 billion, it is hard to believe that the 
Bush administration, particularly Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, has not 
made protecting our troops in Iraq a main priority.
  Mr. Speaker, we have now lost more than 1,600 troops in Iraq, but the 
Defense Department has no idea how many of these troops have died 
because they did not receive the proper supplies from the leaders that 
sent them into harm's way. Would you believe that we do not have those 
numbers because the Defense Department chooses only to list casualties 
as ``killed in combat''?
  However, the New York Times story gives a grim report on how the lack 
of protection affected Company 13. According to the Times, ``The 
biggest danger the men faced came in traveling to and from camp; 13 of 
the 21 men who were killed had been riding in Humvees that failed to 
deflect bullets or bombs.'' I repeat, 13 of 21, or almost two-thirds of 
the men, were killed as a direct result of them not having access to 
armed Humvees. Again, this is last year. This is not 2 years ago at the 
beginning of the war.
  Mr. Speaker, where is the Bush administration, particularly Secretary 
Rumsfeld, spending the billions of dollars this Congress has given 
them? The Pentagon says it will not have every Humvee suitably armed 
until the end of this year. That is simply unacceptable. Our brave 
troops should not have to wait another 8 months to have the proper 
protection they need to do their job. Sergeant James King, a member of 
Company E who lost one of his legs when he was blown out of a Humvee, 
said it best to the New York Times: ``As Marines, we are always taught 
that we do more with less and get the job done no matter what it 
takes.''
  You would expect nothing less from our troops. They have not let us 
down. But, unfortunately, our troops have clearly been let down by the 
Bush administration.

                [From the New York Times, Apr. 25, 2005]

         Bloodied Marines Sound Off About Want of Armor and Men

                           (By Michael Moss)


                          CORRECTION APPENDED

       A chart on April 25 with an article about a company of 
     marines who fought in Iraq misstated the type of munition 
     that the armor installed on their Humvees is capable of 
     withstanding. It is a four-pound land mine, not a 155-
     millimeter howitzer round.


                  CORRECTED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES Wed 
                              May 04 2005

       On May 29, 2004, a station wagon that Iraqi insurgents had 
     packed with C-4 explosives

[[Page H2938]]

     blew up on a highway in Ramadi, killing four American marines 
     who died for lack of a few inches of steel.
       The four were returning to camp in an unarmored Humvee that 
     their unit had rigged with scrap metal, but the makeshift 
     shields rose only as high as their shoulders, photographs of 
     the Humvee show, and the shrapnel from the bomb shot over the 
     top.
       ``The steel was not high enough,'' said Staff Sgt. Jose S. 
     Valerio, their motor transport chief, who along with the 
     unit's commanding officers said the men would have lived had 
     their vehicle been properly armored. ``Most of the shrapnel 
     wounds were to their heads.''
       Among those killed were Rafael Reynosa, a 28-year-old lance 
     corporal from Santa Ana, Calif., whose wife was expecting 
     twins, and Cody S. Calavan, a 19-year-old private first class 
     from Lake Stevens, Wash., who had the Marine Corps motto, 
     Semper Fidelis, tattooed across his back.
       They were not the only losses for Company E during its six-
     month stint last year in Ramadi. In all, more than one-third 
     of the unit's 185 troops were killed or wounded, the highest 
     casualty rate of any company in the war, Marine Corps 
     officials say.
       In returning home, the leaders and Marine infantrymen have 
     chosen to break an institutional code of silence and tell 
     their story, one they say was punctuated not only by a lack 
     of armor, but also by a shortage of men and planning that 
     further hampered their efforts in battle, destroyed morale 
     and ruined the careers of some of their fiercest warriors.
       The saga of Company E, part of a lionized battalion 
     nicknamed the Magnificent Bastards, is also one of fortitude 
     and ingenuity. The marines, based at Camp Pendleton in 
     southern California, had been asked to rid the provincial 
     capital of one of the most persistent insurgencies, and in 
     enduring 26 firefights, 90 mortar attacks and more than 90 
     homemade bombs, they shipped their dead home and powered on. 
     Their tour has become legendary among other Marine units now 
     serving in Iraq and facing some of the same problems.
       ``As marines, we are always taught that we do more with 
     less,'' said Sgt. James S. King, a platoon sergeant who lost 
     his left leg when he was blown out of the Humvee that 
     Saturday afternoon last May. ``And get the job done no matter 
     what it takes.''
       The experiences of Company E's marines, pieced together 
     through interviews at Camp Pendleton and by phone, company 
     records and dozens of photographs taken by the marines, show 
     they often did just that. The unit had less than half the 
     troops who are now doing its job in Ramadi, and resorted to 
     making dummy marines from cardboard cutouts and camouflage 
     shirts to place in observation posts on the highway when it 
     ran out of men. During one of its deadliest firefights, it 
     came up short on both vehicles and troops. Marines who were 
     stranded at their camp tried in vain to hot-wire a dump truck 
     to help rescue their falling brothers. That day, 10 men in 
     the unit died.
       Sergeant Valerio and others had to scrounge for metal 
     scraps to strengthen the Humvees they inherited from the 
     National Guard, which occupied Ramadi before the marines 
     arrived. Among other problems, the armor the marines 
     slapped together included heavier doors that could not be 
     latched, so they ``chicken winged it'' by holding them 
     shut with their arms as they traveled.
       ``We were sitting out in the open, an easy target for 
     everybody,'' Cpl. Toby G. Winn of Centerville, Tex., said of 
     the shortages. ``We complained about it every day, to anybody 
     we could. They told us they were listening, but we didn't see 
     it.''
       The company leaders say it is impossible to know how many 
     lives may have been saved through better protection, since 
     the insurgents became adept at overcoming improved defenses 
     with more powerful weapons. Likewise, Pentagon officials say 
     they do not know how many of the more than 1,500 American 
     troops who have died in the war had insufficient protective 
     gear.
       But while most of Company E's work in fighting insurgents 
     was on foot, the biggest danger the men faced came in 
     traveling to and from camp: 13 of the 21 men who were killed 
     had been riding in Humvees that failed to deflect bullets or 
     bombs.
       Toward the end of their tour when half of their fleet had 
     become factory-armored, the armor's worth became starkly 
     clear. A car bomb that the unit's commander, Capt. Kelly D. 
     Royer, said was at least as powerful as the one on May 29 
     showered a fully armored Humvee with shrapnel, photographs 
     show. The marines inside were left nearly unscathed.
       Captain Royer, from Orangevale, Calif., would not accompany 
     his troops home. He was removed from his post six days before 
     they began leaving Ramadi, accused by his superiors of being 
     dictatorial, records show. His defenders counter that his 
     commanding style was a necessary response to the extreme 
     circumstances of his unit's deployment.
       Company E's experiences still resonate today both in Iraq, 
     where two more marines were killed last week in Ramadi by the 
     continuing insurgency, and in Washington, where Congress is 
     still struggling to solve the Humvee problem. Just on 
     Thursday, the Senate voted to spend an extra $213 million to 
     buy more fully armored Humvees. The Army's procurement 
     system, which also supplies the Marines, has come under 
     fierce criticism for underperforming in the war, and to this 
     day it has only one small contractor in Ohio armoring new 
     Humvees.
       Marine Corps officials disclosed last month in 
     Congressional hearings that they were now going their own way 
     and had undertaken a crash program to equip all of their more 
     than 2,800 Humvees in Iraq with stronger armor. The effort 
     went into production in November and is to be completed at 
     the end of this year.
       Defense Department officials acknowledged that Company E 
     lacked enough equipment and men, but said that those were 
     problems experienced by many troops when the insurgency 
     intensified last year, and that vigorous efforts had been 
     made to improve their circumstances.
       Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis of Richland, Wash., who commanded 
     the First Marine Division to which Company E belongs, said he 
     had taken every possible step to support Company E. He added 
     that they had received more factory-armored Humvees than any 
     other unit in Iraq.
       ``We could not encase men in sufficiently strong armor to 
     deny any enemy success,'' General Mattis said. ``The tragic 
     loss of our men does not necessarily indicate failure--it is 
     war.''


                         Trouble From the Start

       Company E's troubles began at Camp Pendleton when, just 
     seven days before the unit left for Iraq, it lost its first 
     commander. The captain who led them through training was 
     relieved for reasons his supervisor declined to discuss.
       ``That was like losing your quarterback on game day,'' said 
     First Sgt. Curtis E. Winfree.
       In Kuwait, where the unit stopped over, an 18-year-old 
     private committed suicide in a chapel. Then en route to 
     Ramadi, they lost the few armored plates they had earmarked 
     for their vehicles when the steel was borrowed by another 
     unit that failed to return it. Company E tracked the steel 
     down and took it back.
       Even at that, the armor was mostly just scrap and thin, and 
     they needed more for the unarmored Humvees they inherited 
     from the Florida National Guard.
       ``It was pitiful,'' said Capt. Chae J. Han, a member of a 
     Pentagon team that surveyed the Marine camps in Iraq last 
     year to document their condition. ``Everything was just 
     slapped on armor, just homemade, not armor that was given to 
     us through the normal logistical system.''
       The report they produced was classified, but Captain Royer, 
     who took over command of the unit, and other Company E 
     marines say they had to build barriers at the camp--a former 
     junkyard--to block suicide drivers, improve the fencing and 
     move the toilets under a thick roof to avoid the insurgent 
     shelling.
       Even some maps they were given to plan raids were several 
     years old, showing farmland where in fact there were homes, 
     said a company intelligence expert, Cpl. Charles V. 
     Lauersdorf, who later went to work for the Defense 
     Intelligence Agency. There, he discovered up-to-date imagery 
     that had not found its way to the front lines.
       Ramadi had been quiet under the National Guard, but the 
     Marines had orders to root out an insurgency that was using 
     the provincial capital as a way station to Falluja and 
     Baghdad, said Lt. Col. Paul J. Kennedy, who oversaw Company E 
     as the commander of its Second Battalion, Fourth Marine 
     Regiment.
       Before the company's first month was up, Lance Cpl. William 
     J. Wiscowiche of Victorville, Calif., lay dead on the main 
     highway as its first casualty. The Marine Corps issued a 
     statement saying only that he had died in action. But for 
     Company E, it was the first reality check on the constraints 
     that would mark their tour.


                           Sweeping for Bombs

       A British officer had taught them to sweep the roads for 
     bombs by boxing off sections and fanning out troops into 
     adjoining neighborhoods in hopes of scaring away insurgents 
     poised to set off the bombs. ``We didn't have the time to do 
     that,'' said Sgt. Charles R. Sheldon of Solana Beach, Calif. 
     ``We had to clear this long section of highway, and it 
     usually took us all day.''
       Now and then a Humvee would speed through equipped with an 
     electronic device intended to block detonation of makeshift 
     bombs. The battalion, which had five companies in its fold, 
     had only a handful of the devices, Colonel Kennedy said.
       Company E had none, even though sweeping roads for bombs 
     was one of its main duties. So many of the marines, like 
     Corporal Wiscowiche, had to rely on their eyes. On duty on 
     March 30, 2004, the 20-year-old lance corporal did not spot 
     the telltale three-inch wires sticking out of the dust until 
     he was a few feet away, the company's leaders say. He died 
     when the bomb was set off.
       ``We had just left the base,'' Corporal Winn said. ``He was 
     walking in the middle of the road, and all I remember is 
     hearing a big explosion and seeing a big cloud of smoke.''
       The endless task of walking the highways for newly hidden 
     I.E.D.'s, or improvised explosive devices, ``was nerve 
     wracking,'' Corporal Winn said, and the company began using 
     binoculars and the scopes on their rifles to spot the bombs 
     after Corporal Wiscowiche was killed.
       ``Halfway through the deployment marines began getting good 
     at spotting little things,'' Sergeant Sheldon added. ``We had 
     marines riding down the road at 60 miles an hour, and they 
     would spot a copper filament sticking out of a block of 
     cement.''
       General Mattis said troops in the area now have hundreds of 
     the electronic devices to foil the I.E.D.'s.

[[Page H2939]]

       In parceling out Ramadi, the Marine Corps leadership gave 
     Company E more than 10 square miles to control, far more than 
     the battalion's other companies. Captain Royer said he had 
     informally asked for an extra platoon, or 44 marines, and had 
     been told the battalion was seeking an extra company. The 
     battalion's operations officer, Maj. John D. Harrill, said 
     the battalion had received sporadic assistance from the Army 
     and had given Company E extra help. General Mattis says he 
     could not pull marines from another part of Iraq because 
     ``there were tough fights going on everywhere.''
       Colonel Kennedy said Company E's area was less dense, but 
     the pressure it put on the marines came to a boil on April 6, 
     2004, when the company had to empty its camp--leaving the 
     cooks to guard the gates--to deal with three firefights.
       Ten of its troops were killed that day, including eight who 
     died when the Humvee they were riding in was ambushed en 
     route to assist other marines under fire. That Humvee lacked 
     even the improvised steel on the back where most of the 
     marines sat, Company E leaders say.
       ``All I saw was sandbags, blood and dead bodies,'' Sergeant 
     Valerio said. ``There was no protection in the back.''
       Captain Royer said more armor would not have even helped. 
     The insurgents had a .50-caliber machine gun that punched 
     huge holes through its windshield. Only a heavier combat 
     vehicle could have withstood the barrage, he said, but the 
     unit had none. Defense Department officials have said they 
     favored Humvees over tanks in Iraq because they were less 
     imposing to civilians.
       The Humvee that trailed behind that day, which did have 
     improvised armor, was hit with less powerful munitions, and 
     the marines riding in it survived by hunkering down. ``The 
     rounds were pinging,'' Sergeant Sheldon said. ``Then in a 
     lull they returned fire and got out.''
       Captain Royer said that he photographed the Humvees in 
     which his men died to show to any official who asked about 
     the condition of their armor, but that no one ever did.
       Sergeant Valerio redoubled his effort to fortify the 
     Humvees by begging other branches of the military for scraps. 
     ``How am I going to leave those kids out there in those 
     Humvees,'' he recalled asking himself.
       The company of 185 marines had only two Humvees and three 
     trucks when it arrived, so just getting them into his shop 
     was a logistical chore, Sergeant Valerio said. He also 
     worried that the steel could come loose in a blast and become 
     deadly shrapnel.
       For the gunners who rode atop, Sergeant Valerio stitched 
     together bulletproof shoulder pads into chaps to protect 
     their legs.
       ``That guy was amazing,'' First Sgt. Bernard Coleman said. 
     ``He was under a vehicle when a mortar landed, and he caught 
     some in the leg. When the mortar fire stopped, he went right 
     back to work.''


                            A Captain's Fate

       Lt. Sean J. Schickel remembers Captain Royer asking a high-
     ranking Marine Corps visitor whether the company would be 
     getting more factory-armored Humvees. The official said they 
     had not been requested and that there were production 
     constraints, Lieutenant Schickel said.
       Recalls Captain Royer: ``I'm thinking we have our most 
     precious resource engaged in combat, and certainly the wealth 
     of our nation can provide young, selfless men with what they 
     need to accomplish their mission. That's an erudite way of 
     putting it. I have a much more guttural response that I won't 
     give you.''
       Captain Royer was later relieved of command. General Mattis 
     and Colonel Kennedy declined to discuss the matter. His first 
     fitness report, issued on May 31, 2004, after the company's 
     deadliest firefights, concluded, ``He has single-handedly 
     reshaped a company in sore need of a leader; succeeded in 
     forming a cohesive fighting force that is battle-tested and 
     worthy.''
       The second, on Sept. 1, 2004, gave him opposite marks for 
     leadership. ``He has been described on numerous occasions as 
     `dictatorial,''' it said. ``There is no morale or motivation 
     in his marines.'' His defenders say he drove his troops as 
     hard as he drove himself, but was wrongly blamed for problems 
     like armor. ``Captain Royer was a decent man that was used 
     for a dirty job and thrown away by his chain of command,'' 
     Sergeant Sheldon said.
       Today, Captain Royer is at Camp Pendleton contesting his 
     fitness report, which could force him to retire. Company E is 
     awaiting deployment to Okinawa, Japan. Some members have 
     moved to other units, or are leaving the Marines altogether.
       ``I'm checking out,'' Corporal Winn said. ``When I started, 
     I wanted to make it my career. I've had enough.''

                          ____________________