Moving the goalposts at the Weekly Standard

11:25 AM -The Weekly Standard

So for starters, Obama betrays a woeful ignorance of military organization and the chain of command. Then he remarks that the platoon was under-strength because 15 of its men had been “sent to Iraq.” Sorry, the Army doesn’t work that way. Platoons are organic units, consisting of three rifle squads, a heavy weapons squad, and a headquarters section. You can’t break it up. It is the smallest building block in the infantry that can conduct fire-and-movement tactics.

So, no matter what, if the Army needed to shift men from Afghanistan to Iraq, it would have done so either by detaching the whole platoon, or, more likely, an entire company from its parent battalion, because a company is an administrative as well as a tactical unit, and believe me, the Army would sooner fight with one hand tied behind its back than create administrative hassles for itself.

As all know, both ABC and NBC confirmed the story. Now read as Stuart Koehl picks up the goalposts and blithely hauls ‘em out of the stadium:

7:42 PM - The Weekly Standard

The actual story is more prosaic and typical of Army practice in most conflicts, including World War II. Over a period of some months, individuals in his platoon were transferred (not detached) to other units, probably based on immediate operational requirements; e.g., a unit about to deploy to Iraq was short of MOS-11B (Combat Infantryman), and the unit was fleshed out with drafts from other units. Happens all the time, has always happened. In World War II, it was not uncommon for units still in training, or newly arrived in a theater of operation, to be poached for troops to round out another unit about to go into battle.

In only eight hours, Stuart goes from “The Army doesn’t work that way; you can’t break up a platoon, the Army’s smallest organic unit. If the Army needed men in Iraq, it would have detached the whole platoon” to “Individuals in his platoon were transferred to Iraq; it happens all the time.”

You can’t reason with people like this. They are certifiable.

Trackbacks & Pings

  1. Balloon Juice on 24 Feb 2008 at 1:55 am

    […] And the mind-meld continues. […]

Comments

  1. Grim wrote:

    It is true that individuals can be transferred in and out of a platoon, or any other unit, without “breaking up” the unit in question. In the comments to a post at my place, I was writing just today about a soldier transferred from his HQ unit to 3-101 BCT, as a replacement. That didn’t break up his unit or relieve it of its normal responsibilities. They just had to cover for him until his replacement arrived; but 3-101 was going out on air assaults, so HQ just has to get by.

    What you can’t do is take 15 guys out of a platoon and send them somewhere else, and expect the remnant of the platoon to cover down on the responsibilities a platoon would normally be assigned. You’d have to do something else with the remnant; perhaps use them as replacements elsewhere. (It is a sad fact that an army at war is always in need of more replacements.)

    Posted 23 Feb 2008 at 9:58 am

  2. Stephen wrote:

    Grim,

    You say:

    What you can’t do is take 15 guys out of a platoon and send them somewhere else, and expect the remnant of the platoon to cover down on the responsibilities a platoon would normally be assigned.

    per Jake Tapper, the Captain said:

    Prior to deployment the Captain — then a Lieutenant — took command of a rifle platoon at Fort Drum. When he took command, the platoon had 39 members, but — in ones and twos — 15 members of the platoon were re-assigned to other units. He knows of 10 of those 15 for sure who went to Iraq, and he suspects the other five did as well.

    The platoon was sent to Afghanistan with 24 men.

    Part of this is Koehl’s deliberate attempt to throw sand. Obama said “sent” .. “15 guys in the platoon had been SENT elsewhere.” To ’send’ is a general word.

    Koehl initially freaked out with “no, no, no the Army does not detach parts of a platoon.” He, Koehl, not Obama, decided to frame “send” as “detach” (or “send as a group”).

    Then, he sought refuge in a distinction entirely of his own making, “Well, of course, they do TRANSFER individuals.”

    It is deliberate obfuscation.

    15 of 39 soldiers in the platoon were SENT elsewhere; at least 10 to Iraq. Whether they were detached as a group or transferred individually makes no difference. Such a distinction exists only in Koehl’s own words, not in Obama’s.

    Posted 23 Feb 2008 at 10:08 am

  3. David C. wrote:

    Whether they were detached as a group or transferred individually makes no difference. Such a distinction exists only in Koehl’s own words, not in Obama’s.

    I agree. People are reading way too much into a few lines in a debate, and parsing every phrase. You don’t have to agree with Obama’s position in order to accept that his comments are a reasonable interpretation of what he was told by the Captain.

    I don’t like defending Obama but there really seems to be nothing here. People pounced on his words because they thought he was either making something up, or at the very least twisting the Captain’s words. But he wasn’t.

    Posted 23 Feb 2008 at 11:30 am

  4. Pigilito wrote:

    Platoons are organic units, consisting of three rifle squads, a heavy weapons squad, and a headquarters section.

    Since when does an infantry platoon have a HQ section? I was an infantryman some 25 years ago and don’t recall any such thing. HQs are found at company level. Have I forgotten so much? *shudder*

    Posted 23 Feb 2008 at 12:24 pm

  5. canuckistani wrote:

    Everyone knows platoons don’t get broken up for replacements. You can confirm this by comparing values of complete GI Joe action figure sets with the values of individual figures.
    Thanks Stephen and John for the comedy gold. If Basil Fawlty were online today, he’d be a right-wing warblogger.
    And thanks to the right wing guys here for not pushing the bullshit. It makes me want to admit that Castro was a bad man and I would never travel to Cuba. :-)

    Posted 23 Feb 2008 at 12:28 pm

  6. Grim wrote:

    Fair enough.

    By the same token, expectations should be reasonable. I won’t hold it against Obama if he isn’t a military expert, honestly; why would he be? He hasn’t served in the military, and is only just now a Senator, having previously been involved in local government and activism.

    One wouldn’t expect him to have a deeply informed working knowledge of the military. Nothing against him; just that it’s a very complicated topic, and only a fairly large amount of experience will let you put it all together conceptually. Even if he had gotten a detail wrong in relaying an anecdote from a third party, I wouldn’t think it was disqualifying.

    Posted 24 Feb 2008 at 1:22 am

  7. MAX HATS wrote:

    This whole event pretty much epitomizes how the right wing thinks their political affiliation somehow gives them magical powers of military knowledge and credibility. Yes, most military members are conservative. The converse, however, is hardly the case.

    Posted 24 Feb 2008 at 7:24 am

  8. jvill wrote:

    MAX HATS wrote:

    “This whole event pretty much epitomizes how the right wing thinks their political affiliation somehow gives them magical powers of military knowledge and credibility. Yes, most military members are conservative. The converse, however, is hardly the case.”

    I’ll admit I don’t have many friends or family who are closely connected to the military, but my co-worker is one, a retired Marine infantryman from Gulf War I (and a heck of a designer). When he told me he was voting for Obama in the NY primary I asked about the argument that Democrats were weaker on national security. He told me that, “After Bush, political party matters a lot less.” I asked if this belief was uncommon amongst his veteran friends.

    “No.”

    All I heard in the senator’s words was a guy trying to support an overburdened military, and to express long-known socialist ideas like resources planning, personnel staffing, and the execution of competent logistics.

    This particular hit is just an attempt by the right-wing machine to sound out some flier smears, gettin’ warmed up for the general against the likely candidate. Besides, they’ve already got Hillary down to a tee.

    Posted 24 Feb 2008 at 1:54 pm

  9. Frank wrote:

    When my son went to Iraq for the first time (he’s in Afghanistan now), he was not only detached from his platoon, he was detached from his division.

    I suspect that whoever wrote the column you quoted in the original post doesn’t know anyone who has children overseas in the uniform of the United States of America.

    Posted 24 Feb 2008 at 5:51 pm

  10. John E. wrote:

    Rifle squads from the 10th Mountain Division were sent from their platoons from FT Drum to Iraq to serve with members of Special Operations Command to beef up the 75th Rangers and Special Forces. Happens all of the time.

    Read COBRA 2…its all in there.

    Posted 25 Feb 2008 at 4:32 pm

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