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Back before the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq, when I was still hanging out at The Daily Kos, I posted a few letters from someone I dubbed "Officer X."

Officer X is a military scholar of some distinction, known particularly for his studies of command and leadership in the modern Army. Although still on active duty, he was not involved in waging Gulf War II. He did, however, share his thoughts on the conduct of the war with a small group of like-minded officers, Pentagon analysts and journalists -- one of whom passed his comments along to me.

After the fall of Baghdad, Officer X went dark for awhile, but he recently resurfaced, to comment on a wire story he'd seen about the rotation of officers in the Iraq. First the story:

With heavy hearts, officers rotate
away from their combat commands

HABANIYAH, Iraq — Capt. Chris Carter stood on an Iraqi soccer field as the sun peaked over the horizon Friday morning and prepared himself to hand over command of the infantry company he led into combat . . .

. . . A dozen senior officers and colleagues looked on from bleachers during a ceremony in which the company flag was handed to the new commander, Capt. Mark Miller . . . .

Carter’s ceremony with Attack Company has been repeated dozens of times across Iraq in recent weeks as the 3rd Infantry Division rotates its officers. Within the division’s 2nd Brigade, almost every commanding officer at every level will have been replaced by the end of the month.

Summer is normally change-of-command season — allowing officers with families to move on to their next assignment without disrupting their children’s school year. But with the 3rd Infantry still in Iraq, the changes have been especially difficult for the officers and men who fought together and desperately wanted to return home together.

And Officer X's comment:

Imagine what the soldiers really feel as they see the officer flying back home; while they are standing there in 100 degree Iraq heat with possible (enemy) contact?

We have not learned anything from Vietnam.

I am not saying it is Carter's fault -- (it is) the Army's obsession with career progression rather than adapting to changing environments. But, it is more important in this Army to sustain career progression, than combat effectiveness and cohesion!

Now here I need to insert my usual disclaimer about not being in any conceivable sense of the word a military expert. But I've heard it said, and not just by Officer X, that the disintegration of the American Army in the last years of the Vietnam War was aggravated, if not caused, by the frequent rotation of both men and officers, which tended to destroy unit cohesion and morale.

Since most field armies are held together by junior officers and senior non-coms, the nonstop shuttling of lieutenants and captains into and out of line commands -- the "ticket punching" that qualified them for promotion and staff assignments -- was especially harmful. Or so I've heard it said.

And yet it seems this was not one of the lessons learned during the Army's legendary post-Vietnam soul-searching.

Nor, to judge from some of the letters being sent home, has the Army weaned itself away from the kind of behavior historian Stephen Ambrose often mentioned in his books about World War II -- the tendency of higher-ranking officers, particularly higher-ranking staff officers, to appropriate the good things of life for themselves, while staying as far away as possible from the filth and misery of the front line.

Call it the Enron style of warfare.

Some samples of these letters have been collected by ex-warrior (and relentless self-promoter) Col. David Hackworth, and posted on the web site Soldiers for the Truth. Some excerpts:

From "Senior NCO" in 3rd Infantry Division, dated June 19:

It is absolutely true that the logistical portion of the campaign was the biggest downfall both in planning and execution. The biggest travesty is, while there was an obvious miscalculation of what it would take to support us on the battlefield, there was little to no evident planning for sustaining the soldiers upon completion of the main war effort . . .

The supply lines have yet to come into fruition and simplicities such as bottled water have yet to make their appearance on a consistent basis. We have had no potable ice since our arrival. I have personally been forced to buy ice from the Iraqis so that my soldiers were not drinking hot water day in and day out.

. . . you can bet your next paycheck that anyone who is of any rank that allows them to work on a brigade or higher level staff position hasn't had to drink warm sanitized water lately.

As a matter of fact, I have witnessed several "higher ups" in my particular unit with private shower facilities, private porta-johns, and ice chests full of bottled water and potable ice in their immediate work areas while their subordinates (meaning the soldiers) are struggling every day to get a cold bottle of water.

These very same senior soldiers are living in an air conditioned room while their soldiers are trying, in vain, to keep mosquitoes from consuming them nightly, and using hoses from an Iraqi latrine stall to get water enough to maintain their hygienic needs.

From "Infantry Captain", dated June 11:

I believe that the Army logistics system here was broken from the start. We have been here for 40 days and haven't received a single part to fix broken vehicles . . . The Army supply system has given us MREs and water, but nothing else . . .

Our [divisional] HQ occupied a palace complex in Tikrit complete with swimming pool, man-made lake and 8 different palaces with air conditioning for all the soldiers. All the units located with the DIV HQ have posted operating hours! The finance unit doesn't even work on Sundays!

I have a hard time understanding why our senior ranking officers are not taking care of all the units and are so focused on taking care of themselves. I'm just not impressed. The [commanding general] came to see us once for 15 minutes and never came back . . .

My overall impression is that the [colonels] and above only care about themselves and making sure that they are living well. I believe that they think if they are living well, then everyone else is living well, because they never leave their cushy palaces to see the real fighters and killers.

From "Pissed Off Army Officer":

While the Army did a great in winning the war, what is not being covered is how broke the Army logistics system is and the damage it is doing to the long term readiness and moral of the Army . . .

Units all over the Army came to Iraq without basic things necessary for life support in the field. I am talking about portable shitters with cans that you can burn. You can't live somewhere and have everyone shitting in cat holes for weeks at time.

Units came here without tents. The 855th MP Company, a guard company from Arizona was allowed to mobilize without any tents. They lived on the ground in the most God awful piece desert you have ever seen for over two weeks.

Units came here without proper heaters for the water in their MKTs, so that when they started serving T rats, they didn't cook them enough and didn't clean the serving trays properly and everyone who ate from there got sick. If it's not a life or limb issue, its nearly impossible to get medical care . . .

Division staff sits around in their air conditioned vans watching satellite AFN goofing off on the internet and just don't give a shit about anyone else . Meanwhile, soldiers are living in the dirt, with no mail, no phone, no contact with home, and no break from the daily monotony at all.

I went to a division rear in May and practically got in a fist fight with this Captain up there over letting my private, who hadn't contacted home since we left the U.S., send an e-mail over his office's internet. This clown spends his days sending flowers to his wife and surfing the net and he won't let my private send an e-mail to her husband. Fucking disgraceful and all too typical of today's army.

Granted, bitching about such things has always been a soldier's lot -- and probably always will. But the bitching out of Iraq is taking on the particular venomous tone of an army that doesn't know why it is doing what it is doing, and is beginning to believe the guys in charge don't know what they're doing, either. Here's how "Senior NCO" sees it:

When does it end? Do we continue to keep the liberators of Iraq here so they can continue to lose soldiers periodically to snipers and ambushes? My unit has been here since September and they have no light at the end of the tunnel. How many of my soldiers need to die before they realize that we have hit a wall? We are ordered to stay and ordered to continue the mission, but at what cost? Doesn't the soldier count for anything?

To be fair, not everyone is as unhappy as Senior NCO.

From a U.S. Army Major, the deputy division engineer of the 4th Infantry Division:

The news you watch on TV is exaggerated, sensationalized and selective. Good news doesn't sell.

And how is the Major himself doing?

I'm living in a "guest palace" on a 500-acre palace compound with 20 palaces with like facilities built in half a dozen towns all over Iraq that were built for one man.

War may be hell -- but more so for some than for others.

Or, to quote "Infantry Captain:"

I continue to believe that once an officer makes the rank of Major, he receives a frontal lobotomy courtesy of the Army.

Does any of this matter? I don't mean from the viewpoint of the troops; we know what they think -- but from the perspective of our imperial war planners. Why should they give a damn if the grunts are miserable? The guerrilla war may be annoying, and deadly, but it is also, the brass tells us, militarily insignificant. And these are military professionals, not draftees. They volunteered to live in filth. So the risk of a Vietnam-style collapse would seem to be minimal.

Ah, but a volunteer army can vote with its feet. These guys may be pros, but how much more can they be expected to take? Maybe not enough to sustain the neocons' grand imperial design for the Middle East. "Pissed Off Army Officer" offers this warning:

I can tell you right now, a lot of good people are going to get the hell out over this deployment. The good soldiers won't put up with this crap. They will get out and get good jobs on the outside. We are breaking the Army and the reserve corps with this deployment needlessly.

Could that be a draft I feel coming on?