American Marines in Iraq going hungry

I found this through Shakespeare's Sister, and I am completely floored by it.  I knew that our military was facing shortages of body armor, night vision equipment, and armed Humvees--but a shortage of food?

This is from The Providence Journal:

The Iraq war has been the war fought on the cheap _ not enough body armor, not enough armor on vehicles, not enough night vision equipment.

So Nick Andoscia went to Iraq. And hunger soon followed.

"I got a letter," says [his mother] Karen. "And he had called me before that. He said, 'Send lots of tuna.' "

Nick told his mother that he and the men in his unit [the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Marines] were all about 10 pounds lighter in their first few weeks in Iraq. They were pulling 22-hour patrol shifts. They were getting two meals a day and they were not meals to remember.

"He told me the two meals just weren't cutting it. He said the Iraqi food was usually better. They were going to the Iraqis and basically saying, 'feed me.' "

Read the entire article.

I honestly don't know what to say about this.  We now have an occupation army in Iraq that is being so cheaply supplied by everything, that they are unable to perform their mission.  You can't effectively fight on an empty stomach, and that is what we're telling these Marines to do.

But it gets worst. How are these Marines coping with this hunger? Continuing with the article:

Karen started packing in that wartime tradition as old as mothers and sons. She packed a lot of the packaged tuna, not the canned.

She happened to mention her hungry son to people she works with at Greenwood Credit Union, where she is a teller and has worked for 30 years.

Pounds and pounds of food started showing up amid the daily business of loans and deposits and withdrawals. Marianne Barao, the branch manager, said it could be done, the credit union could become the place where people help feed hungry Marines who are risking their lives on a skimpy diet.

"We sent out 51 pounds this week," says Karen. "There are customers coming in saying, 'What do you need?' "

The credit union is paying the cost of packing and shipping.

Any packaged food is welcome. So are baby wipes because showers are even rarer than a full meal. And foot powder.

How is it that, within the richest country in the world, American citizens are forced to put out donation baskets to credit unions so they can collect food to send back to American soldiers?  Don't criticize me for saying that what Karen is doing for her son Nick is wrong--I think it is incredible that Karen is helping her son and his fellow marines with this food drive.  But I'm outraged that we have a military that is incapable of feeding its own troops, that our soldiers are now being forced to rely on these canned food drives from ordinary American citizens. I'm outraged that we have a Pentagon willing to hand out billions in no-bid contracts to Haliburton, while Nick Andoscia and his fellow Marines are asking Iraqi citizens for food.  I'm outraged that Karen is forced to make sacrifices so her son Nick can stay alive in Iraq, and hopefully come home, while at the same time our incompetent President and the Republican Congress happily hands out $70 billion in tax cuts to their corporate benefactors and rich elites. How many other American Marines and Army soldiers are also in this same situation, but who don't have family members or loved ones able to send food to Iraq?

I don't know about you, but $70 billion can buy a lot of food and equipment for the troops in Iraq.