I am taking a slightly different approach to the Obama weapons story.

If you didn’t know, this was a product of the debate the other night, where Obama said:

You know, I’ve heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.

And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.

Now, that’s a consequence of bad judgment. And you know, the question is, on the critical issues that we face right now, who’s going to show the judgment to lead? And I think that on every critical issue that we’ve seen in foreign policy over the last several years — going into Iraq originally, I didn’t just oppose it for the sake of opposing it.

OK, aside from the body armor rumors a few years ago, and the factual complaint that there are not enough armored Humvees to go around, this is really the first serious accusation of underfunding I have heard.

The Pentagon, of course denies it:

Pentagon doubts Obama account of equipment problem

The Pentagon on Friday cast doubt on an account of military equipment shortages mentioned by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama during a debate with rival Hillary Clinton.

…

“I find that account pretty hard to imagine,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

So is it true?  Yes and no.  What it seems to boil down to is a nuanced account of one platoon in Afghanistan.

Obama took several anecdotes and merged them into a single tale which made it sound worse than it was.  He deliberately spun this make it appear that our troops were struggling for survival armed with Swiss Army knives and rocks, and only the availability of captured weapons gave them any hope of survival.