questioning Rummy

[ubertar]

Troops Put Tough Questions to Rumsfeld

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait - Disgruntled U.S. soldiers complained to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumself on Wednesday about the lack of armor for their vehicles and long deployments, drawing a blunt retort from the Pentagon (news - web sites) chief.

"You go to war with the Army you have," he said in a rare public airing of rank-and-file concerns among the troops.

In his prepared remarks earlier, Rumsfeld had urged the troops ? mostly National Guard and Reserve soldiers ? to discount critics of the war in Iraq (news - web sites) and to help "win the test of wills" with the insurgents.

Some of soldiers, however, had criticisms of their own ? not of the war itself but of how it is being fought.

Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, for example, of the 278th Regimental Combat Team that is comprised mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee Army National Guard, asked Rumsfeld in a question-and-answer session why vehicle armor is still in short supply, nearly two years after the start of the war that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.

Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.

"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson said after asking again.

Rumsfeld replied that troops should make the best of the conditions they face and said the Army was pushing manufacturers of vehicle armor to produce it as fast as humanly possible.

And, the defense chief added, armor is not always a savior in the kind of combat U.S. troops face in Iraq, where the insurgents' weapon of choice is the roadside bomb, or improvised explosive device that has killed and maimed hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops since the summer of 2003.

"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up," Rumsfeld said.

Asked later about Wilson's complaint, the deputy commanding general of U.S. forces in Kuwait, Maj. Gen. Gary Speer, said in an interview that as far as he knows, every vehicle that is deploying to Iraq from Camp Buehring in Kuwait has at least "Level 3" armor. That means it at least has locally fabricated armor for its side panels, but not necessarily bulletproof windows or protection against explosions that penetrate the floorboard.

Speer said he was not aware that soldiers were searching landfills for scrap metal and used bulletproof glass.

During the question-and-answer session, another soldier complained that active-duty Army units sometimes get priority over the National Guard and Reserve units for the best equipment 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 against the National Guard and Reserve in terms of providing equipment, Rumsfeld said.

Yet another soldier asked, without putting it to Rumsfeld as a direct criticism, how much longer the Army will continue using its "stop loss" power to prevent soldiers from leaving the service who are otherwise eligible to retire or quit.

Rumsfeld said that this condition was simply a fact of life for soldiers at time of 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."

In his opening remarks, Rumsfeld stressed that soldiers who are heading to Iraq should not believe those who say the insurgents cannot be defeated or who otherwise doubt the will of the military to win.

"They say we can't prevail. I see that violence and say we must win," Rumsfeld said.

[kcrusher]

Go Troops!

[Mr PC]

It's great to live in a country where a soldier would have the chance to question the Secretary of Defense and feel comfortable enough to ask a gutsy, critical question, and then that incident would be shown all over the media.

Maybe some day societies in all parts of the world will be liberally-natured enough for such a thing to happen.

Mr. PC

[andrew embassy]

I'm trying to read your subtext there, MR PC - should I hear sarcasm there? I think it's great that the troops are holding Rumsfeld accountable- his and wolfowitz' miscalculations have made their current job infinitely harder...

[kcrusher]

It's great to live in a country where a soldier would have the chance to question the Secretary of Defense and feel comfortable enough to ask a gutsy, critical question, and then that incident would be shown all over the media.

Maybe some day societies in all parts of the world will be liberally-natured enough for such a thing to happen.

Mr. PC

Yeah, it would be great to be in a country where the soldier was provided for well enough that he didn't have to ask that question in the first place.

[kcrusher]

You'd think will all the billions upon billions of dollars congress has given for the 'war effort' the soldiers would be provided for....

Guess Halliburton must be slacking again - seems they've 'lost' over a hundred million dollars in gear so far, from news reports...

[Mr PC]

There is not a bit of sarcasm in what I wrote. Though I am making a point in seeing the positive side of it. In the reporting I saw the military was doing all it could to remedy the armor problem, but they can't make the stuff fast enough.

The Defense Dept. can't plan for every eventuality in a war. It's not like throwing a dinner party.

PC

[andrew embassy]

Okay, good, that's what I figured

[robotboy75]

The Defense Dept. can't plan for every eventuality in a war. It's not like throwing a dinner party.

Also, having an ill-equipped, underprepared and overworked military helps to prevent all of the problems with "big government" in Iraq. Smaller government is an important issue to the people of Iraq. They even have a flat tax. I'm not even joking about that last bit.

[Piotr]

Iraq faces descent into chaos, says CIA chief

Report leaked as 1,000th US soldier dies in action

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Wednesday December 8, 2004
The Guardian

The Bush administration's robust assertions that the situation in Iraq would improve with next month's elections were badly shaken yesterday with the leak of a gloomy end-of-tour cable from the departing CIA station chief in Baghdad.
The bleak assessment, reported in yesterday's New York Times, warned that Iraq would descend even deeper into violent chaos unless the government was able to assert its authority and deliver concrete economic improvements.

It arrived on a day when US forces recorded the death of the 1,000th soldier to be killed in combat since the beginning of the war.

In all, 1,275 US service personnel have died since the invasion on March 20 last year. This figure includes accidents, suicides and other deaths not classed as killed in action. A total of 9,765 US troops have been wounded.

No official totals of Iraqi deaths are available. Estimates range from 14,000 to tens of thousands of civilians and around 5,000 troops.

The classified assessment was sent to CIA headquarters in Virginia late last month as the officer ended a year-long tour in Iraq. It was bolstered by a similar assessment from a second CIA officer, Michael Kostiw, who serves as a senior adviser to the agency chief, Porter Goss.

The outlook offered by the station chief echoes several similar warnings from officials in Washington and Baghdad. An intelligence estimate prepared for the White House last August said that Iraq's security situation could remain tenuous at best until the end of 2005, and warned the country was at risk of civil war.

But the latest warning is particularly ill-timed for the White House, which has been focused on assuring Americans that the situation in Iraq would improve with the coming elections. It is also a personal embarrassment for Mr Goss, a former Republican congressman who had made it his mission to stem the flow of embarrassing leaks from the agency.

In a memo last month, Mr Goss wrote that the agency had a dual task - to provide intelligence, and to support administration policies. "As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies," the memo said.

As station chief, the unnamed CIA official supervised more than 300 operatives, the largest intelligence operation since the Vietnam war, and their assessment carries authority.

While the senior US military commander in Iraq, General George Casey Jr, initially raised no objections to the CIA assessment, the New York Times reported that the US ambassador, John Negroponte, had filed a lengthy message of dissent in which he argued that the US had made considerable progress in controlling the insurgency.

Mr Bush did not directly comment on the CIA report yesterday, but in a speech to US marines in Camp Pendle ton, California, he described the war in Iraq as part of the global struggle against terrorism and warned: "As election day approaches, we can expect further violence from the terrorists.

"You see, the terrorists understand what is at stake. They know they have no future in a free Iraq, because free people will never choose their own enslavement. They know democracy will give Iraqis a stake in the future of their country."

Throughout the speech, Mr Bush referred to the insurgents, who are largely Iraqis opposed to the US occupation, as terrorists.

In conversations with reporters about the assessment yesterday, agency officials admitted that efforts to train local Iraqi security forces were not keeping pace with the growth of an increasingly violent insurgency. So far, the official strength of the Iraqi security forces is put at 83,000 although only 47,000 have been fully armed and trained.

The new Iraqi government could also expect a new wave of violence if the elections are boycotted by the Sunni minority.

[Mr PC]

Oh no, not a critical assessment of the war from the Guardian!!!!

It's doomed for sure, now.



The effort in Iraq could surely worsen and could fail, but I can't believe what I read in the NY Times these days concerning Iraq. The news section is so relentlessly anti-war, yet another negative story about Iraq doesn't mean much to me. Again, the bad assessments could surely pan out, but I'm not going to trust the NY Times to tell me about it.


PC

[Piotr]

Actually, it's from the CIA...

[robotboy75]

Again, the bad assessments could surely pan out, but I'm not going to trust the NY Times to tell me about it.

I only trust the Washington Times. Once the New York Times is owned by a megalomaniacal cult leader who is a convicted felon and makes statements openly hostile to the US Constiition, then it will be a newspaper worth my time. Until then, I'm going to be suspicious of their liberal bias.

http://iapprovethismessiah.com/

[jamoo]

It's great to live in a country where a soldier would have the chance to question the Secretary of Defense and feel comfortable enough to ask a gutsy, critical question, and then that incident would be shown all over the media.

Maybe some day societies in all parts of the world will be liberally-natured enough for such a thing to happen.

Mr. PC

Let's bomb them all 'til it happens.

No seriously, don't forget the camera ban in the wake Abu Gharib. They might be realizing that they've reached the limits of hypocrisy, and even their mind-numb supporters need a few bones thown their way.

[high tek]

It's great to live in a country where a soldier would have the chance to question the Secretary of Defense and feel comfortable enough to ask a gutsy, critical question, and then that incident would be shown all over the media.

Mr. PC

its BETTER to live in a country where a government doesnt purposely allow terrorist attacks to happen so he then in turn can attack any country for oil and have his peoples support on the basis of fear.

its better to be in a country where the leader doesnt change the constitution, turning the country into a police state where people dont even have a right to a lawyer, open trial, and require evidence to proove one guilty.

its better to be in a country where the leader DOES NOT raise the threat of terrorism by attacking anyone he wants premptively, and ultimately starting WW3.

its better to have a leader that doesnt ruin the economy and destroy the environment.

its also better to have the person in charge to have an IQ higher than 12.
seriously.
shit on a stick would be better leader.

welcome to colombia 2

==========================

regarding this whole topic of soldiers giving rumsfeld 'tough' questions.

please.

who fuckin cares.

their objective is to kill more people......who cares that they dont have the right tools to do it.
or that they 'spoke up' to rummy about it.

big deal.

its almost as if this issue is there just to keep our minds OFF THE REAL ISSUE .......that this war is totally illegal.

anyone that feels any less for the innocent civilians that died in this war than the soldiers that died... is plainly racist.