If there’s any doubt that the Bush administration values loyalty over competence, look to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. No post-invasion plan for Iraq, Abu Graib, and now a complete lack of regard for the troops he’s sending to a war zone.
One soldier, identified by The Associated Press as Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, asked Rumsfeld why more military combat vehicles were not reinforced for battle conditions.
“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?” he asked, prompting cheers from other soldiers attending the event.
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In April, the Pentagon said it was spending $400 million to replace the Army’s thin-skinned Humvees in Iraq with the so-called “uparmored” reinforced versions.
“As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want,” Rumsfeld said.
He added, “You can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and it can [still] be blown up.”
These aren’t American soldiers to Rumsfeld; they’re fodder, numbers on a balance sheet. I don’t care if the Pentagon is spending money to uparmor its gear: that’s the type of thing that should happen before we send troops into combat. What, did they think there would be no opposition?
Well, yes, that seems to be exactly what they thought. Idiots. You can have the most highly-trained, technically-savvy combat force in the world, but it’s dumbasses like Rumsfeld who get our soldiers killed.
(Keep that in mind, 18-year-old males; instead of thinking, “The war will be over by the time a draft begins,” the reality is going to be, “They might have enough body armor available by the time I get sent over.” What’s that you say? The president said there’d be no draft? I predict call-ups by late 2005, though of course the administration will invent some new term that doesn’t make it seem like a draft.)
Jeff Carlson | Never Enough Coffee Creations 