Hillary Criticizes Troops' Armor

Two-faced Hillary Clinton is at it again.

Michelle Malkin's column in today's WorldNetDaily flays Hillary's latest campaign video attacking the President over the armoring of our troops in Iraq.

In her latest campaign video, Hillary attacks the Bush administration for sending soldiers off to battle unprotected: "Promises just aren't enough anymore. After almost four years, longer than we were in World War II, our troops still don't have all the body armor and armored vehicles and other equipment they need. It's a disgrace."

Whenever leftists need to show they really, really do care more about the troops than their political opponents, they pull out this armor card. A Rumsfeld-bashing reporter bragged about coaching a soldier into spotlighting the armor gap two years ago. And last year, ignoring rank-and-file soldiers' own observations about the trade-offs between weight and mobility, Hillary excoriated the Bush administration as "incompetent" for not weighing down the troops with extra body armor. Now, the Army is being pummeled again by vultures and opportunists with no clue about the complexities of military logistics.

But the Army reminds its critics that it began the war on terror "with equipment shortages totaling $56 billion from previous decades. In the last several years, the Army has transformed itself more than any other military in history and rapidly acquires ever-improving equipment on a scale not seen since World War II." In Iraq alone, officials report, "the Army has gone from a low of 400 up-armored Humvees to nearly 15,000 up-armored Humvees patrolling neighborhoods, protecting troops and mitigating risk from most types of enemy munitions. As of this date, the Army has produced enough Frag Kit No. 5 Retrofit kits to outfit every Humvee in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thousands of these kits are being flown into theater every month and they are being installed in theater, 24 hours a day, seven days a week to ensure soldiers have the best protection available."

T.F. Boggs, a sergeant in the Army Reserves who recently returned from his second deployment to Iraq, summed it up: "We have come so far since the early days of the war that the armor issue is a joke. Only those who don't have a clue about the reality of the war in Iraq make it an issue."

But what Michelle Malkin didn't mention was Hillary's statement last week. Reuters reported Saturday that Hillary called for a 90-day deadline for starting a withdrawal from Iraq.

"Now it's time to say the redeployment should start in 90 days or the Congress will revoke authorization for this war," the New York senator said in a video on her campaign Web site, repeating a point included in a bill she introduced on Friday.

To put it politely, Hillary is giving mixed signals. Really, what's the point of up-armoring the troops in Iraq, if they're going to be leaving in 90 days? And how will the military pay for all that new armor that Hillary wants, if Congress cuts off funding for the war? It doesn't make sense.

But that isn't news to anyone who's been paying attention. The Far Left (which Hillary is pandering to) isn't about sense, or logic, or thoughts of future consequences. Those people are about feelings. "Our children in Iraq don't have enough armor. Awwww. Give them armor." As if our troops are underage and not grown adults. "Bring them home. Real soon."

Trying to make sense of what Hillary Clinton has to say about the war is too painful. I'd rather try to memorize the properties of salts in the human body, or understand the effects of buffers on pH levels. These things are hard, but unlike Hillary, understanding them is at least possible.