And I Believed You»

Brandon Friedman from VetVoice jumped on a DOD blogger roundtable yesterday about the Ft. Bragg disgrace. Here’s his write-up. Brandon pronounces himself impressed with the off-the-bat admission of responsibility from the official responsible for maintaining Army installations:

BG DENNIS ROGERS: I’ll tell you right now before we even start: I assume responsibility for the shortfalls in barracks maintenance which were referenced in the video by Mr. Frawley. We let our soldiers down. And I note that a number of you are veterans, or most of you are veterans, and you served. So you know that there is no excuse for that. We let our soldiers down.

Then Brandon pressed further. Debra Strickland, the command sergeant major for installations, fielded his question.

So I understand that the Rear Detachment, working in conjunction with installation authorities, was working feverishly to fix the barracks three days prior to the arrival of the unit from Afghanistan. I also get the fact that the unit tasked with upkeep had a number of higher priorities. But that brings up another question. Let’s go back to one thing CSM Strickland said about what that unit was doing:

They didn’t really, I think, turn their full attention to it until they realized they had a shortfall in time–because they had ownership for several other barracks and they were in worse condition.

(Sound of screeching brakes)
Other barracks in worse condition? This is a larger issue and it’s a point I think we need to make: As General Rogers said, there is no excuse for this.

We Trusted You»

On the Fort Bragg disgrace, Raf says it way better than I could:

I wrote earlier about how so many returning soldiers (including me, and I’m five years removed from Iraq and a year removed from service) are angry and saddened. This — watching men that put their lives on the line have to deal with, literally, crap — is part of what I’m talking about.

Sure, there’ll be some outrage expressed, and, sure, these soldiers will, eventually be cared for. That’s not the point; the point is that there’s a whole generation of men and women for whom this kind of existence, in ways both metaphoric and literal, is all too common. An existence we experience every day, led there by a tissue of lies, and maintained by a latticework of fiction.

Don’t hold back, man.

It is that moral abdication and avoidance of responsibility that is really reflected in that video below — any responsible person would have seen to it that returning soldiers would have been housed in a clean barracks, instead of a septic tank masquerading as one. And the fact that there are one, two, many Fort Bragg’s is a stain upon our national character. Let’s not dare to say we “support” the troops until we actually support the troops with something more than a hood ornament and a pack of empty words.

Only In Return We Get A Stabbing In The Back»

These are the conditions at Fort Bragg. Just absolutely disgraceful. The following video, shot by the father of a sergeant who just returned from Afghanistan — via Brandon Friedman of VetVoice — shows a barracks that “should be condemned. … There are times when sewage water backs up into the sinks of the lower floors of these barracks.”

Brandon: “America has three-quarters of a billion dollars to spend on the embassy in Baghdad, but our troops have to live like this.”