McQ makes an excellent point [1] about the Democrat debate the other night, and a line that Obama offered up:
In last night’s debate, Barack Obama, apparently wanting to get in the swing of sounding like the Commander-in-Chief, threw this little beauty out there:
You know, I’ve heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon-supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.
And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.
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First some simple facts. Captains don’t command rifle platoons. Lieutenants do. Mostly 2nd LTs. And if they’re not available, the Platoon Sergeant is in charge.
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Secondly, you don’t split platoons like that, except, perhaps within a company and only during operations when you want to reinforce another platoon or the like.But sending part to Afghanistan and part to Iraq?
No way, no how is that happening.
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But here’s the important point – he didn’t know any better. He had no understanding that it was all nonsense. That should terrify you.
What annoys me more than anything about this particular story is the idea that nobody in the audience or in the press has questioned him on the matter.
There’s no question in my mind that this is part and parcel of the “Easy time” Obama has been getting from the press of late. That he offers up regurgitated crap should be a surprise to nobody. He’s a Democrat. Far more dangerous, however, is that the news people whose job it is to question such matters, instead simply re-regurgitate it.
Obama is playing the game. I understand this. He’s playing the game quite well. But it is clear to me that he does not know what he’s talking about. Then he has not investigated such stories as he’s being fed suggests to me that he really doesn’t care all that much about the status of our military. Perhaps more importantly, he is simply regurgitating what he thinks those whose votes he wants want to hear.
In a world with an active Al Qaeda still in it, this strikes me as an extremely dangerous man to turn loose in the Oval Office.