WELDON'S WHACKY WORLD PART II: WHAT'S A DIVISION?

By Larry Johnson

by
Larry C Johnson

Representative Curt Weldon's performance on Meet the Press yesterday underscores how off base this guy can be. He is on the House Armed Services Committee, which means he is supposed to oversee the US Military. However, he does not even know the difference between a Division and a Battalion. Where is Radar O'Reilly when we need him?

Here's the exchange with Russert:

REP. CURT WELDON, (R-PA): Well, Senator Biden and I and the six-member delegation I took with us to Iraq were concerned because the level of training of the Iraqi troops has been represented to the American people as being much more competent than it is today. Senator Biden and I probed this issue aggressively with our generals and they agree with us that you have to define what the level of training, in fact, is. And if you look at those troops that have a level one capability, which mean they can operate totally on their own without backup of U.S. support, it's not the size the numbers that are being reported back home here in America.

MR. RUSSERT: How many would you say it is?

REP. WELDON: I think it's around three divisions.

MR. RUSSERT: Which is?

REP. WELDON: Was it 80,000, Joe?

SEN. BIDEN: No, it's much less. It's three battalions.

REP. WELDON: Oh, three battalions.

SEN. BIDEN: Three battalions. You're talking about thousands, Tim. Not tens of thousands.

My good friend and mentor, Colonel Patrick Lang offered the following insights into Weldon's mindnumbing foolishness:

Weldon and Senator Biden "probed this issue aggressively with our generals" and somehow the Vice hairman of the House Armed Services Committee didn't get the distinction between 3 battalions of troops (maybe 3000 men at most) and 3 divisions which according to the Iraqi table of organization quoted in the NY Times today would be about 42,000, not 80,000.

And then there was the famous Weldon portable nuclear device depicted as a mock up. Congressman Weldon showed this thing to a group I was with a while back. Someone in the group who had been trained as a nuclear weapons targeting officer asked how much it weighed. Weldon had no idea. The mock up weighed less than ten pounds. The aluminum foil that represents a dense shielding material like lead weighs little. The real thing would be very heavy. The Special Atomic Demolitions Munition (SADM) that the Army had made for Special Forces to use in blowing up bridges and such behind Soviet lines was the size of a foot locker and weighed about a hundred pounds if memeory serves. It really took two men to carry it any distance.

The ex targeting officer also asked Weldon what he thought the rate of irradiation of the person carrying the bomb would be. No idea there either. I would hazard the guess that if there were enough plutonium in that gun device to achieve critical mass, then the bearer would be receiving a lethal dose with sufficient speed that living long enough to get to the target would be a real issue. Maybe terrorists could be lined up in relays.....

Oh, well. As usual there is perception and then there is reality.

Thanks Pat. Could not have said it better myself.

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