Turns out, he thought he was delivering a pep talk but seemed to forget soldiers have souls!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Oh... you've heard that one?
Let me get more specific then. So, Rummy's visiting a base in Kuwait and clearly thinks that USGIs are brainwashed to think that he is Jesus and his boss, George, is God. In other words, he wasn't expecting any tough questions from our boys and girls in uniform. Well, it turns out he got exactly that. Check out this excerpt from an article from The AP and brought to us by the folks at MyWay.com :
In a rare public airing of grievances, disgruntled soldiers complained to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday about long deployments and a lack of armored vehicles and other equipment.
"You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld replied, "not the Army you might want or wish to have."
Spc. Thomas Wilson had asked the defense secretary, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?" Shouts of approval and applause arose from the estimated 2,300 soldiers who had assembled to see Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.
Rumsfeld said the Army was sparing no expense or effort to acquire as many Humvees and other vehicles with extra armor as it can. What is more, he said, armor is not the savior some think it is.
"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can (still) be blown up," he said.
To stand there and to the faces of 2000+ men and women who volunteered to serve and say "hey, no armor is perfect" is identical to saying "we don't care." Why the hell isn't it perfect? Or at least closer to perfect? If a tank can still be blown up, shouldn't that mean that we build a better tank? I mean, for Christ's sake--TheUSGov spends $400 billion a year on defense and we can't keep our men and women safe inside a TANK??
Why the hell even call them "tanks" then??
If Rummy's rudeness wasn't enough, Drudge posted a "flash" (no, not a flash cartoon) about a Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter called Edward Lee Pitts who apparently emailed his entire staff of the paper regarding his own great job in coaching the USGI mentioned above and another one to ask these 'hard' questions of Rummy D. Who does that? I mean, I'm all for tooting one's own horn (can't expect others to do it) but emailing everyone on the staff of your paper to brag? This stinks of disinfo. Disinformation is when a story is planted in TheMedia to counteract the effects of another story. Remember when Fahrenheit 911 came out and came in first in the box office for its opening weekend? Well, the Monday after there was a huge terrorist warning from the DoHS (Department of Homeland Security) that obviously resulted in no terrorist attack. This seems to be sort of like that. There was no chance that there was going to be a terrorist attack days after Michael Moore's movie came out and likewise, this guy didn't coach the two soldiers to read Rummy the riot act. Even if he did--who cares? Both questions were met with cheers from the audience--the audience filled with other USGIs. This shows us that coaching or no, these questions needed to be asked.
Sadly, Rumsfeld's answers remind us how the Bush 43 Admin can be described in a way that they describe "the evil doers"--they have no respect for human life.
From The AP and MyWay.com :
U.S. GIs Hit Rumsfeld With Hard Questions
Dec 8, 8:01 PM (ET)
By ROBERT BURNS
CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait (AP) - In a rare public airing of grievances, disgruntled soldiers complained to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday about long deployments and a lack of armored vehicles and other equipment.
"You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld replied, "not the Army you might want or wish to have."
Spc. Thomas Wilson had asked the defense secretary, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?" Shouts of approval and applause arose from the estimated 2,300 soldiers who had assembled to see Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.
"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson, 31, of Nashville, Tenn., concluded after asking again.
Wilson, an airplane mechanic whose unit, the 278th Regimental Combat Team of the Tennessee Army National Guard, is about to drive north into Iraq for a one-year tour of duty, put his finger on a problem that has bedeviled the Pentagon for more than a year. Rarely, though, is it put so bluntly in a public forum.
Rumsfeld said the Army was sparing no expense or effort to acquire as many Humvees and other vehicles with extra armor as it can. What is more, he said, armor is not the savior some think it is.
"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can (still) be blown up," he said. The same applies to the much smaller Humvee utility vehicles that, without extra armor, are highly vulnerable to the insurgents' weapon of choice in Iraq, the improvised explosive device that is a roadside threat to Army convoys and patrols.
U.S. soldiers and Marines in Iraq are killed or maimed by roadside bombs almost daily. Adding armor protection to Humvees and other vehicles that normally are not used in direct combat has been a priority for the Army, but manufacturers have not been able to keep up with the demand.
Wilson's ex-wife, Regina, said she was not surprised he challenged Rumsfeld.
"It wouldn't matter if it was Bush himself standing there," she said. "He would have dissed him the same."
Wilson joined the National Guard in June 2003; previously, he had served about four years in the Air Force, beginning in 1994.
Rumsfeld dropped in to Camp Buehring - named for Lt. Col. Charles Buehring, who was killed in a rocket attack on a downtown Baghdad hotel in November 2003 - to thank the troops for their service and to give them a pep talk. Later he flew to New Delhi for meetings Thursday with Indian government officials.
In his prepared remarks in Kuwait, Rumsfeld urged the troops - mostly National Guard and Reserve soldiers - to discount critics of the war and to help "win the test of wills" with the insurgents.
Wilson and others, however, had criticisms of their own - not of the war but of how it was being fought.
During the question-and-answer session, another soldier complained that active-duty Army units seem to get priority over National Guard and Reserve units for the best equipment used in Iraq.
"There's no way I can prove it, but I am told the Army is breaking its neck to see that there is not" discrimination of that kind, Rumsfeld said.
Yet another soldier asked how much longer the Army would continue using its "stop loss" power to prevent soldiers from leaving the service who are otherwise eligible to retire or return to civilian life at the end of their enlistment.
Rumsfeld said this condition was simply a fact of life for soldiers in times of war. Critics, including some in Congress, say it's proof the Army has been stretched too thin by war.
"It's basically a sound principle, it's nothing new, it's been well understood" by soldiers, he said. "My guess is it will continue to be used as little as possible, but that it will continue to be used."
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., told Rumsfeld in a letter Wednesday that his response to the question about armored vehicles was "utterly unacceptable" and that it was the duty of the government to provide safety equipment.
"Mr. Secretary, our troops go to war with the Army that our nation's leaders provide," he wrote.
The deputy commanding general of U.S. forces in Kuwait, Maj. Gen. Gary Speer, said in an interview at Camp Buehring that as far as he knew, every vehicle deploying to Iraq from Kuwait had at least "Level 3" armor protection. That means it had locally fabricated armor for its side panels, but not bulletproof windows or reinforced floorboards.
Speer said he was unaware that soldiers were searching landfills for scrap metal and discarded glass.
However, Maj. Gen. Gus L. Hargett, the adjutant general of the Tennessee National Guard, disputed Speer's remarks. "I know that members of his staff were aware and assisted the 278th in obtaining these materials," he said.
At the Pentagon, spokesman Larry Di Rita said production of armored Humvees had increased from 15 to 450 a month since fall 2003, when commanders in Iraq started asking for them because of insurgents' heavy use of roadside explosives.
Overall, there are 19,000 armored Humvees in the Iraqi theater. Some were built with additional armor, others had it added on later. That's, 2,000 short of what commanders are asking for, Di Rita acknowledged.
Military policy is that troops driving into Iraq in Humvees drive only in armored ones, Di Rita said. Some $1.2 billion has been included in the defense budget to pay for armored vehicles, he said.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press
RUMSFELD SET UP; REPORTER PLANTED QUESTIONS WITH SOLIDER
Thu Dec 09 2004 11:49:38 ET
Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts is embedded with the 278th Regimental Combat Team, now in Kuwait preparing to enter Iraq, and is filing articles for his newspaper. Pitts claims in a purported email that he coached soldiers to ask Defense Secretary Rumsfeld questions!
When reached Thursday morning, various Chattanooga Times Free Press staffers offered 'no comment' on the development.
From: EDWARD LEE PITTS, MILITARY AFFAIRS
Sent: Wednesday, December 8, 2004 4:44 PM
To: Staffers
Subject: RE: Way to go
I just had one of my best days as a journalist today. As luck would have it, our journey North was delayed just long enough see I could attend a visit today here by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. I was told yesterday that only soldiers could ask questions so I brought two of them along with me as my escorts. Before hand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat have. While waiting for the VIP, I went and found the Sgt. in charge of the microphone for the question and answer session and made sure he knew to get my guys out of the crowd.
So during the Q&A session, one of my guys was the second person called on. When he asked Rumsfeld why after two years here soldiers are still having to dig through trash bins to find rusted scrap metal and cracked ballistic windows for their Humvees, the place erupted in cheers so loud that Rumsfeld had to ask the guy to repeat his question. Then Rumsfeld answered something about it being "not a lack of desire or money but a logistics/physics problem." He said he recently saw about 8 of the special up-armored Humvees guarding Washington, DC, and he promised that they would no longer be used for that and that he would send them over here. Then he asked a three star general standing behind him, the commander of all ground forces here, to also answer the question. The general said it was a problem he is working on.
The great part was that after the event was over the throng of national media following Rumsfeld- The New York Times, AP, all the major networks -- swarmed to the two soldiers I brought from the unit I am embedded with. Out of the 1,000 or so troops at the event there were only a handful of guys from my unit b/c the rest were too busy prepping for our trip north. The national media asked if they were the guys with the armor problem and then stuck cameras in their faces. The NY Times reporter asked me to email him the stories I had already done on it, but I said he could search for them himself on the Internet and he better not steal any of my lines. I have been trying to get this story out for weeks- as soon as I foud out I would be on an unarmored truck- and my paper published two stories on it. But it felt good to hand it off to the national press. I believe lives are at stake with so many soldiers going across the border riding with scrap metal as protection. It may be to late for the unit I am with, but hopefully not for those who come after.
The press officer in charge of my regiment, the 278th, came up to me afterwords and asked if my story would be positive. I replied that I would write the truth. Then I pointed at the horde of national media pointing cameras and mics at the 278th guys and said he had bigger problems on his hands than the Chattanooga Times Free Press. This is what this job is all about - people need to know. The solider who asked the question said he felt good b/c he took his complaints to the top. When he got back to his unit most of the guys patted him on the back but a few of the officers were upset b/c they thought it would make them look bad. From what I understand this is all over the news back home.
Thanks,
Lee
EDWARD LEE PITTS FILED STORY ABOUT THE TROOPS BEFORE THE POW-WOW WITH RUMSFELD
Developing...
"Pitts claims in a purported email that he coached soldiers to ask Defense Secretary Rumsfeld questions!"
"He DID? OMG! NO! What is everyone else class gonna say??"
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