Rummy met with troops at Camp Buehring, named for Chad Buehring, an
Army colonel who died last year when insurgents in Baghdad launched a
rocket-propelled grenade into Al Rasheed, a Green Zone hotel [a
reminder that] security in Iraq is relentlessly deteriorating.
Rummy, however, did not hesitate to give the back of his hand to
soldiers about to go risk their lives someplace he didn't trouble to go.
He treated Thomas Wilson - the gutsy guardsman from Tennessee who asked
why soldiers had "to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap
metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles, and why
don't we have those resources readily available to us?" - as if he were
a pesky Pentagon reporter. The defense chief used the same coldly
cantankerous tone and squint he displays in press briefings, an
attitude that long ago wore thin.
In one of his glib "Nothing's perfect," "Freedom's untidy" and "Stuff
happens" maxims, Rummy told the soldier: "As you know, you go to war
with the Army you have."
Carl Luna calls the Rumsfeld record of incompetence and negligence.... Political Lunacy!
Just a passing thought. Back in 1993, following the infamous
“Blackhawk Down “ disaster in Somalia, Clinton’s Secretary of Defense
Les Aspin resigned amidst allegations that he had failed to provide the
troops in Somalia with the armored support they needed to do their
mission. House and Senate Republicans, including several who hold
majority leadership positions today, were in the forefront calling for
Aspin’s ouster.
Why then aren’t these same voices calling for the resignation of
Donald “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not
the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” Rumsfeld’s apparent failure to insure proper armor
protection for US troops has already, to date, resulted in more lives
lost or maimed than happened in Somalia. Rumsfeld?
Aspin’s Somalian botch resulted in the deaths of 18 US servicemen and
the wounding of 75.
Meanwhile Rumsfeld’s off the cuff musings that, "If you think about
it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be
blown up,” has to rank as one of the great non-sequiturs of any modern
Defense Secretary. Does this mean you might as well go into combat
naked, painted blue with beards tarred like the Celtic warriors of old?
I thought the goal was to produce tanks that blew up the other side
before they blew up you and armored vehicles that kept soldiers from
dying at the hands of low-grade homemade bombs? Rumsfeld’s job is to
make sure the troops go into combat with everything they need to
minimize loses. That he should have done so and hasn’t is indicative of
incompetence, if not outright criminal negligence.That he makes light
of it by essentially telling the troops “Life’s not fair – tough
cookies—borders on reckless endangerment. For Republican members of
Congress not to call for his head, they way they did with Democrat Les
Aspin a decade ago, is partisan hypocrisy of the most brazen and
dangerous kind.
Support the Troops-- Dump Rumsfeld!
After all the uproar and TV reports, maybe there ismore the US can do for our troops in Iraq:
Under
fire from troops who complain they are being sent to war in Iraq with
inadequate gear, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld promised on Thursday
that more would be done to protect forces.
Yesterday Rumsfeld essentially called our troops, laboring under impossible conditions in Iraq, girly men for demanding better equipment and armor.
Stung by the negative attention his insensitive comments generated,
he's now being forced to admit that "more is being done". But check
this out:
Teams in Washington have been working for months on how to protect forces from roadside bombs and similar explosives, he said.
Months????
Our troops have been getting killed by IEDs for years, and it's just recently that the Pentagon has started researching countermeasures?
And Bush has rewarded Rummy for this incompetence with a second four-year stint.
Rummy met with troops at Camp Buehring, named for Chad Buehring, an
Army colonel who died last year when insurgents in Baghdad launched a
rocket-propelled grenade into Al Rasheed, a Green Zone hotel [a
reminder that] security in Iraq is relentlessly deteriorating.
