GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - This is COMPLETE BULLSHIT!

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/15/politics/15armor.html

Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio has asked the Army to grant clemency to two officers who were convicted of theft and destroying government property in Kuwait and Iraq after they commandeered several Army trucks they believed to have been abandoned to make up for what they said was a shortage in their own units.

The two officers, Maj. Cathy Kaus and Chief Warrant Officer Darrell Birt, are among six Army reservists who were found guilty in court-martial proceedings earlier this year. Both were sentenced to six-month prison terms and given dishonorable discharges. The others were given lesser sentences.

The main facts in the case are undisputed. Soldiers from the 656th Transportation Company arrived in Kuwait in March 2003, were quickly ordered to Iraq and found themselves without enough trucks to carry their equipment. They took two Army trucks and two trailers they believed to have been abandoned by units that had already moved into Iraq, loaded them with equipment and drove them to their base near the Iraqi town of Tikrit.

Several weeks later, they found what appeared to be an abandoned Army truck along an Iraqi highway, towed it to their base and stripped it for spare parts.

Mr. Birt said in a telephone interview that without those parts, his unit, which had 60 fuel-hauling trucks, would have been unable to complete its mission of delivering fuel to American bases throughout central Iraq.

"The choice was either to find parts where we could, or do the mission halfway and expose our people to danger, or refuse to go," he said. "We felt we needed this stuff for mission sustainment."

Another soldier in the unit, Specialist Robert Chalmers, said that its repeated efforts to obtain spare parts, both before it was deployed to Iraq and afterward, were unsuccessful.

"We ordered parts, but they never came," Specialist Chalmers said. "Once we were in Iraq and had a truck designated for parts, we stripped it to the frame. Hoses, engines, transmissions, wheels, door handles, anything salvageable or usable, we took it and recycled it."

Mr. Birt, 45, who served in the Marine Corps for 11 years before joining the Army Reserve, said the trucking company where he used to work in Ohio had dismissed him.

"They said it was because I was convicted of theft and dishonorably discharged," he said. "I know we broke rules, but I never thought the Army would do this to me or others in my unit."