http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=28242288

See Feb. 26 update. This matter is closed at this blog.

Last I checked, whatever MSNBC and ABC supposedly found hasn’t caused the Pentagon to backtrack. Therefore the italicized statement was true, and it’s still true. The Pentagon at that moment said that Obama doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Even if the Pentagon is proven wrong, which it hasn’t been, and acknowledges it someday, which it hasn’t, the sentence was framed as it was to avoid getting into the inevitable noisemaking to follow.

The lesson is not to get distracted from the post’s purpose by a baiting commenter.

Starting now. Lesson learned. See ya.

Tom, if “the brass” has claimed that a unit is never split up, please link us to that. I know the right-wing milbloggers made that claim, but the ABC and MSNBC reporting quickly debunked them. The unit in question deployed to Afghanistan short-handed, Tom.

Is it possible that you just joined the echo chamber in when you shouldn’t have?

The soldier says he didn’t have what he needed; the brass says he does, and did. I tend to believe the brass, esp because the milbloggers don’t hesitate to call out the brass when they’re wrong.

The soldier says his unit was split up; the brass, along with milbloggers and others in a position to know, says it doesn’t ever happen. Again, I tend to believe the brass, esp because the milbloggers don’t hesitate to call out the brass when they’re wrong.

The regret I have about wasting my time on these comments is that the post was about the author’s misuse of a staged event 4 years ago. It wasn’t about defending or not defending Tapper, though most of what he wrote isn’t.

It “checks out” in the sense that the soldier does exist (a major step for a story uttered by a Dem), but most if not all of what the soldier says doesn’t (sorry, pal).

The other fundamentally dishonest point largely missed is that BOOHOO’s vid (just re-read) makes no reference to what year he is talking about. The viewer is left to infer that this is a current problem, not a hangover from 2004. That’s probably the greatest deception of them all.

Why do you think they sometimes used the Taliban weapons they captured, Tom? Could it be they weren’t properly equipped without them? What do you think the Captain meant when he said, “It was very difficult to get any parts in theater, because parts are prioritized to the theater where they were needed most — so they were going to Iraq not Afghanistan?”

And what do you suppose Jake Tapper meant when he wrote, “I find that Obama’s anecdote checks out?”

“The purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons,” he said, but on occasion they used Taliban weapons.”

That directly contradicts Obama, who said they HAD to get Tban weapons to be properly equipped. Basically, after that, nothing else is important. You could directly contradict everything else (I’m not conceding at all that you have), and it wouldn’t matter to me.

The original point of the post was to refer back to trumped-up garbage from 2004, and that point stands.

You’re “right” in one sense. This proven misrepresentation is by no means the biggest or greatest gaffe or mistake of his campaign so far. BOOHOO and his wife have at least a half dozen stacked up already, and it’s only February.

Try really reading this, from Jake Tapper, quoting and paraphrasing the Captain:

>>They also didn’t have the humvees they were supposed to have both before deployment and once they were in Afghanistan, the Captain says.

“We should have had 4 up-armored humvees,” he said. “We were supposed to. But at most we had three operable humvees, and it was usually just two.”

So what did they do? “To get the rest of the platoon to the fight,” he says, “we would use Toyota Hilux pickup trucks or unarmored flatbed humvees.” Sometimes with sandbags, sometimes without.

Also in Afghanistan they had issues getting parts for their MK-19s and their 50-cals. Getting parts or ammunition for their standard rifles was not a problem.

“It was very difficult to get any parts in theater,” he says, “because parts are prioritized to the theater where they were needed most — so they were going to Iraq not Afghanistan.”

“The purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons,” he said, but on occasion they used Taliban weapons. Sometimes AK-47s, and they also mounted a Soviet-model DShK (or “Dishka”) on one of their humvees instead of their 50 cal.<<

++++++++++++++++++++++

“I heard from a(n) Army captain, who was a member of a rifle platoon. You’re supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. (He) 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.”

++++++++++++++++++++

The second para, the claim that they had to proactively scrounge around and capture Taliban weapons in order to be properly equipped (stuff captured from the Taliban would not be “proper equipment”), has been shown to be false, and no amount of shouting that it’s true will change that.

Please only respond if you have something to add. If you don’t have anything to add, it won’t be added here.

#7 and #10 added nothing.

Scrapiron, what are you talking about? Please provide us with a link to that quote.

They didn’t buy those Taliban weapons on eBay, so of course they were captured.

Confederate Yankee is no better at acknowledging mistakes than you are.

++++++++++++++++

The left wishes to reduce Obama’s statement to the uncontroversial assertion that supply in theater is difficult. But that’s not what he said. He claimed that US soldiers were actually forced to capture enemy weaponry for lack of their own, and that soldiers were plucked out of his unit for deployment in Iraq. The first isn’t true by the Captain’s own admission and the latter seems extremely doubtful.

++++++++++++++++

“HOW DID OBAMA LIE?” You’re still asking?

If you’re not embarrassed yet, you should be, and it doesn’t have a bleeping thing to do with “party.”

++++++++++++++++++

Obama’s most crucial, explosive claim, that “: 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” remains utterly and completely false.

And that part, it seems, he made up by himself.

++++++++++++++++++

….. don’t you understand?

Obama shared what he’d heard from an Army Captain. ABC and now NBC have confirmed that this Captain exists, and that he told Obama exactly what Obama reported. How did Obama lie? You guys blew this one, but once again are unable to acknowledge it.