Mareseatoatsanddoeseatoatsbutlittlelambseativy.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Troop Strength divided by 3 equals troop strength

I recall visiting Tevia's, a restaurant owned by my
friend Shelly and his brother Murray on, ummm, can't remember the street,in San Franciso. Small place, bar, a dozen booths. How many people work here, I asked, figuring like 3 or 4. Nope. 19. 19???
Well, there's the bar and the kitchen and bussing and then there's lunch and dinner and we are open every day.
Ah.
So when you deploy 150K troops, how many have you really got working at any one time: maybe a third. Probably way way less. Because somebody also has to cook, to order shit, to build stuff, to answer the phone. So, how many are actually on duty, soldiers, armed, protecting, defending? Like, ummm, try 3am in the morning.... very very very few.
Oh, yeah, and then there better be a few just hanging around while the other guys are sleeping, brushing teeth, recovering from the flu, (well, OK, malaria)...
Maybe its more like divided by 5? 10? So, you send 150K troops and you get maybe 10K at any one time. And how many in Bahgdad? Fallugah? etc.... you know something: there is nobody home!
Oh, by the way: no live footage of what is going on in Iraq. Nothing on "air strikes": just what does that mean? helicopter, wart hog? high level bombers? fighter jets?
I sure as hell do not know. We get lots of footage about Israel bulldozing Palestine, but bombs in Iraq: nothing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You might need to adjust your numbers slightly.

"Because somebody also has to cook, to order shit, to build stuff, to answer the phone."

That's what we are overpaying KBR to do.