GIs Lack Armor, Radios, Bullets

What About The Troops, Asks 60 Minute's Steve Kroft

(CBS)  A group of Army reservists in Iraq refused a direct order last October to go on a dangerous operation to re-supply another unit with jet fuel.

Without helicopter gunships to escort them over a treacherous stretch of highway, and lacking armored vehicles, soldiers from the 343rd Quartermaster Company called it a suicide mission.

The Army called it an isolated incident, a temporary breakdown in discipline, and an investigation is under way.

But the 343rd isn't the first outfit to be put in harm's way without proper equipment, and commanders in Iraq acknowledged that the unit's concerns were legitimate, even if their mutiny was not.

With a $400 billion defense budget you might think U.S. troops have everything they need to fight the war, but that's not always the case.

Last fall, Correspondent Steve Kroft talked to a general, soldiers in Iraq, and their families at home about a lack of armored vehicles, field radios, night vision goggles, and even ammunition, especially for the National Guard and reserve units that now make up more than 40 percent of U.S. troops.

Kroft also talked to Sen. John McCain about how pork-barrel politics have shortchanged troops on the ground.

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Every couple of weeks Karen Preston gets a telephone call from her son Ryan who is serving in Iraq with the Oregon National Guard.

But Karen Preston has been worrying a lot ever since last summer when Ryan returned home on leave and showed her photos of the unarmored vehicles his unit was using for convoy duty in Iraq.

Lacking the proper steel plating to protect soldiers from enemy mines and rocket-propelled grenades, they had been jerry-rigged with plywood and sandbags.

"They were called cardboard coffins," Preston says.

There have been more than 10,000 U.S. casualties in Iraq so far, more than 9,000 of them wounded and more than 1,700 killed. Nearly half of those casualties are the result of roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices or IEDs in military jargon. Yet the U.S. military still lacks thousands of fully armored vehicles that could save American lives.

Spc. Ronald Pepin, who serves in Baghdad with the New York National Guard, says, "They have no ground plating. So if you hit something underneath you, then it's going to kill the whole crew, you know? And that's just something you have to live with."

Staff Sgt. Sean Davis from the Oregon National Guard was critically wounded in June 2004 when his unarmored Humvee hit an IED outside of Baghdad. He suffered shrapnel wounds, burns, and was unable to walk for six weeks.

Davis said his Humvee was armored with plywood, sandbags, and armor salvaged from old Iraqi tanks.

He considers himself lucky that he wasn't killed in the blast. His friend and fellow guardsman Eric McKinley, who was riding in the same vehicle, wasn't so fortunate. The 24-year-old Army specialist died of his wounds. His father, Tom, said his son was supposed to have been discharged from the Oregon National Guard a few months before his death, but was held over because of the war.

McKinley says his son would have stood a lot better chance of surviving, had his vehicle been fully armored.

"Our troops need to be protected over there to the best ability that we can protect them and it's not being done," he says.

The Department of Defense denied a 60 Minutes request for an on-camera interview to explain the situation. But responding to a written question about vehicles traveling dangerous routes in Iraq being armored with plywood and sandbags, the Army told us, "As long as the Army has a single vehicle without armor, we expect that our soldiers will continue to find ways to increase their level of protection."

60 Minutes went to a man more familiar with the problems facing the Oregon National Guard than anyone else: its commanding general, Ray Byrne. Gen. Byrne was somewhat reluctant to talk when 60 Minutes showed him pictures of his men's Humvees and trucks, armored with plywood and sandbags.

"If you have nothing then that's better than nothing. The question becomes then again when – when are they going to receive the full-up armored Humvees? And I don't have that answer," says Gen. Byrne.

"It distresses me greatly that they do not have the equipment. I don't have control over it. The soldiers don't have control over it. The question becomes, 'When is it going to be available? When is it going to be available? When will they have it?'"