Rumsfeld vs. the American Soldier. Rumsfeld paused, asked Wilson to repeat the question, then finally replied, "You go to war with the army you have." Besides, he added, "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can be blown up."
Such a leader of men.
Rumsfeld's answer was, first, unforgivably glib, reminiscent of his shrugged line about the looting in the days after Saddam's fall ("Stuff happens"), but more shocking because here he was addressing American soldiers who are still fighting and dying, 20 months after Baghdad's fall, as a result of Rumsfeld's decisions.
More than that, his answer was wrong. If you're attacked by surprise, you go to war with the army you have. But if you've planned the war a year in advance and you initiate the attack, you have the opportunity䴊and obligation䴊to equip your soldiers with what they'll need. Yes, some soldiers will get killed no matter the precautions, but the idea is to heighten their odds䴊or at least not diminish them䴊as they're thrust into battle.
So here stands the secretary of defense, long and widely despised by officers for rejecting their advice before the war and now openly criticized by the grunts for failing to give them proper cover as the war rages on all around them.
And yet Rumsfeld is the one Cabinet secretary who has received explicit assurances that he will keep his job, with President Bush's full confidence, into the second term. (link)
This isn't the first time there's been a scandal about the troops not having enough equipment. In this case, the primary manufacturer of armor is ready and waiting for an order from the Army for more equipment.
But we all know that "support the troops" doesn't really mean "help out the ordinary soldiers", it means "support whatever Bush says". [Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs]
Rumsfeld's reply sounds an awful lot like the military equivalent of "let them eat cake."
4:09:24 PM 
|
|
