Cardboard Dummies On Duty

Let me just be blunt. This is a goddamn shame!

"US marines who suffered the highest casualty rate of any unit in Iraq have revealed that they were so short of soldiers that they used cardboard dummies to fool insurgents into believing that they faced more men.

Company E of the First Marine Division dressed the cutouts in camouflage shirts and placed them in observation posts to trick Iraqi rebels into thinking that they were manned.

More than one third of the unit's 185 troops were killed or wounded during its six-month tour last year in Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold west of Fallujah, during which it was targeted by 26 firefights, 90 mortar attacks and nearly 100 home-made bombs.

The deception was revealed yesterday when the marines broke the corp's code of silence to detail the shortages of equipment and manpower that they blame for many of their comrades' deaths."

So what's Rumsfeld's response going to be about this? "You go to war with the cardboard you have" ... ?