Power Line catches Minnesota’s Senator Mark Drayton inventing a new “problem” in Iraq–not enough sand(!):
On March 26, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on the death of Cpl. Travis Bruce of Rochester, an MP who was killed by shrapnel while he was standing guard on the roof of a police station in Baghdad. Bruce’s aunt says he was proud to be a soldier and was considering becoming a military recruiter when his active duty ended. But here is what Senator Dayton had to say about his death:
Nearly three weeks ago, Cpl. Travis Bruce of Rochester was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade while standing watch on the roof of a Baghdad police station.
On Tuesday, Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., sent a letter to President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld questioning the circumstances that led to Bruce’s death.
In the letter, Dayton said that the day before his death Bruce told his girlfriend in a telephone call that he had been unable to obtain enough sandbags to fortify his position adequately.
“He gave his life heroically and importantly, but it’s immoral for our command not to provide our soldiers with absolutely everything they need to give them maximum protection: body armor, armored vehicles, sandbags. … It’s immoral if our soldiers are left in any way unequipped and unprotected,” Dayton said in an interview.
First it was body armor, then armored vehicles. Now it’s “immoral” that our soldiers don’t have enough sandbags. Am I missing something, or is this ludicrous on its face? I can understand a soldier in Iraq being short of armor. But sand? Sand is something Iraq has in abundance; it’s not exactly a commodity that the Army airlifts there from the Mojave desert.
Meanwhile, another Senator (and erstwhile former Winter Soldier), John Kerry is treating soldiers in Iraq as victims–which Will Collier of VodkaPundit has understandably harsh words about.
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