Time for Rumsfeld to go.

Complete agreement there, woiyo.

Ditto. He's got to stop passing the buck.

but he has given us a leaner meaner deader military. Powell was just naive.

Rumsfeld has always been glib. I guess the soldiers weren't amused...

Wo, you get points for your non-partisan outrage. Too many conservatives would sacrifice our soldiers in order to not rock the boat.

Partisanship has nothing to do with common sense. I also doubt that any sound thinking conservative or liberal would agree with your statement.

As far as I am concerned, I would not sacrifice even a HANGNAIL by a US/Coalition soldier for an Iraqi citizen who has not demonstrated the desire or ability to fight for THEIR freedom.

As I have said time and again, once we stopped looking for WMD AND removed the Saddam regime, our mission was accomplished and our/coalition troops should have been sent home.

I do not need some old fool telling our troops that "We fight with the "stuff" we have". I expect the Defense Secretary to demonstrate to our troops that this nation is using and will use every weapon in our arsenal to protect our troops and give them the best chance of winning.

Yup yup yup.

I do think that we're at a point where we can't just up and leave -- we need to fix the mess we made, if minimally (i.e. not that we have to make everything perfect, but get things to the point where it won't be utter chaos if we leave.)

But completely agreed about doing what it takes to get the troops the resources they need.

In light of woiyo's first post, it's interesting that .

one of many links

Well, since the Post article was dated the 4th, Rumsfelds speech on the 8th, maybe GW will sit the old boy down and reconsider.

That's what I expect.

I'd like that as well, woiyo.

My concern is that his comments may be a signal indicator - "we're going this way".

I agree with woiyo, and think it's outrageous that the troops are needing to retrofit their vehicles with spare armor parts to try and provide some protection from the road-side bombs. All vehicles that are transporting our soldiers over there should have full armor, including protection against "explosions that penetrate the floorboard." Rumsfeld's comment that "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up," was inappropriate and immaterial. Our soldiers need all the protection we can give them over there.

There sometimes seem to be two wars going on. The one being fought by US troops in Iraq, and the one we hear about from the gov't and the military brass. The event in Kuwait involving Rumsfeld and those soldiers is an occasion when the two wars intersected...

When I lived in Germany, there were APC's all over the place. I wonder what happened to those. Think they were all junked or sold off?

One would think that GW should reconsider but they seem to share the same attitude. They echo each other with generic platitudes, "We must win" and "Win the test of wills" "We will prevail," etc.

As a Vet also I was especially dismayed to hear his reply to the issue of not having the proper armored vehicles when he said, "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up." I thought that remark was dismissive and irrelevant as Ticomaya said but like ehBeth stated is an indicator of "we're going this way" attitude, regardless if our troops are properly equipped.

It's appalling and unacceptable for soldiers to be rummaging through landfills for scrap metal to uparmor their vehicles. It's just like when soldier's families had to mail them body armor. "You go to war with the Army you have." Easy for him to say, he's on the next thing smoking outta there back to his condo in Georgetown.

Rumsfeld is starting to feel the heat from the boots on the ground. Instead of solutions they are getting excuses. Rumsfeld said the Army was pushing manufacturers of vehicle armor to produce it as fast as humanly possible. Way to pass the buck Don. I suspect it will be a very long while before he has another Q&A with soldiers.

How did the army end up with a bunch of unarmored vehicles anyway?

Well, the Humvee was a replacement for the Jeep, which was hardly considered armored.

I just went to get a cup of hot water - CNN's on in the lounge - saw the clip of the question being asked and Rumsfeld's response.

<cringe>

It was worse watching it than it was reading it - and that wasn't good.

I respect and admire the troops, and worry about them more everyday.

So the idea of armoring them came about only after deployment?

A good friend of mine was in Desert Storm. He said that the upside of the Jeep was that just about anyone can do Jeep maintenance, whereas each Humvee needed its own mechanic - and needed to be fully serviced after each trip out. He said the Humvees were out of service more than they were in service.

Now, one fella's report isn't the be-all and end-all, but my neighbour's Humvee is just about that fussy.

At least you're pretty sure that you're getting into a working vehicle when you jump into a Jeep.