Posted on 12/08/2004 10:33:55 PM PST by Zeroisanumber
CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait - In a rare public airing of grievances, disgruntled soldiers complained to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday about long deployments and a lack of armored vehicles and other equipment.
"You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld replied, "not the Army you might want or wish to have."
Spc. Thomas Wilson had asked the defense secretary, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?" Shouts of approval and applause arose from the estimated 2,300 soldiers who had assembled to see Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.
"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson, 31, of Nashville, Tenn., concluded after asking again.
Wilson, an airplane mechanic whose unit, the 278th Regimental Combat Team of the Tennessee Army National Guard, is about to drive north into Iraq (news - web sites) for a one-year tour of duty, put his finger on a problem that has bedeviled the Pentagon (news - web sites) for more than a year. Rarely, though, is it put so bluntly in a public forum.
Rumsfeld said the Army was sparing no expense or effort to acquire as many Humvees and other vehicles with extra armor as it can. What is more, he said, armor is not the savior some think it is.
"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can (still) be blown up," he said. The same applies to the much smaller Humvee utility vehicles that, without extra armor, are highly vulnerable to the insurgents' weapon of choice in Iraq, the improvised explosive device that is a roadside threat to Army convoys and patrols.
U.S. soldiers and Marines in Iraq are killed or maimed by roadside bombs almost daily. Adding armor protection to Humvees and other vehicles that normally are not used in direct combat has been a priority for the Army, but manufacturers have not been able to keep up with the demand.
Wilson's ex-wife, Regina, said she was not surprised he challenged Rumsfeld.
"It wouldn't matter if it was Bush himself standing there," she said. "He would have dissed him the same."
Wilson joined the National Guard in June 2003; previously, he had served about four years in the Air Force, beginning in 1994.
Rumsfeld dropped in to Camp Buehring — named for Lt. Col. Charles Buehring, who was killed in a rocket attack on a downtown Baghdad hotel in November 2003 — to thank the troops for their service and to give them a pep talk. Later he flew to New Delhi for meetings Thursday with Indian government officials.
In his prepared remarks in Kuwait, Rumsfeld urged the troops — mostly National Guard and Reserve soldiers — to discount critics of the war and to help "win the test of wills" with the insurgents.
Wilson and others, however, had criticisms of their own — not of the war but of how it was being fought.
During the question-and-answer session, another soldier complained that active-duty Army units seem to get priority over National Guard and Reserve units for the best equipment used 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 of that kind, Rumsfeld said.
Yet another soldier asked how much longer the Army would continue using its "stop loss" power to prevent soldiers from leaving the service who are otherwise eligible to retire or return to civilian life at the end of their enlistment.
Rumsfeld said this condition was simply a fact of life for soldiers in times of war. Critics, including some in Congress, say it's proof the Army has been stretched too thin by 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."
Sen. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record), D-Conn., told Rumsfeld in a letter Wednesday that his response to the question about armored vehicles was "utterly unacceptable" and that it was the duty of the government to provide safety equipment.
"Mr. Secretary, our troops go to war with the Army that our nation's leaders provide," he wrote.
The deputy commanding general of U.S. forces in Kuwait, Maj. Gen. Gary Speer, said in an interview at Camp Buehring that as far as he knew, every vehicle deploying to Iraq from Kuwait had at least "Level 3" armor protection. That means it had locally fabricated armor for its side panels, but not bulletproof windows or reinforced floorboards.
Speer said he was unaware that soldiers were searching landfills for scrap metal and discarded glass.
However, Maj. Gen. Gus L. Hargett, the adjutant general of the Tennessee National Guard, disputed Speer's remarks. "I know that members of his staff were aware and assisted the 278th in obtaining these materials," he said.
At the Pentagon, spokesman Larry Di Rita said production of armored Humvees had increased from 15 to 450 a month since fall 2003, when commanders in Iraq started asking for them because of insurgents' heavy use of roadside explosives.
Overall, there are 19,000 armored Humvees in the Iraqi theater. Some were built with additional armor, others had it added on later. That's, 2,000 short of what commanders are asking for, Di Rita acknowledged.
Military policy is that troops driving into Iraq in Humvees drive only in armored ones, Di Rita said. Some $1.2 billion has been included in the defense budget to pay for armored vehicles, he said.
OK, can I have a tank?
With or without armor?
WTF did people expect? Were we supposed to let the terrorists go on killing us until we were able to make everyone invincible?
I am so sick of this story.
The real story is that this guy KNEW he could ask Rumsfeld without being driven out of the service.
And he KNEW Rumsfeld would answer him.
Thumbs up to this guy, took a lot of balls to stand up and ask those questions. The higher ups sitting in there nice (safe) offices need to hear more than the sugar coated reports. It's the lower-middle class kid who didn't have the money or family connections to go to an ivy league school who joins the rank and file and has to bloody his hands fighting for the power structure. I know, I was once there.
Jeez, where have we heard that crap before....
I didn't hear it anywhere, I saw it first hand. That's the way it's always been and always will be. I never met a single guy that came from money, most of us joined cause it was the only real chance we had besides working some crappy job and living at home.
Not everything in life boils down to liberals versus conservatives. And just because somebody questions the actions of our precious defence secretary or
president, that doesn't make that person automatically wrong, bad, or un-American.
During these times, we're lucky to have the current administration in office. But they aren't perfect, and they need to hear from the folks. Besides, Rumsfeld is a civilian.
Did you volunteer or were you drafted? No draft these days, so that argument goes out the window. The government has forced no one to enlist in the military since 1973. And you were saying...?
Exactly where would there be?
It's WAR. It's reality. No room for Crybabies and Hate America Congress Pussies.
2. For years many of us "in the rear with the gear" combat support/combat service support types knew that the trucks we were given (usually variants of Dodge or GM civilian vehicles) lacked both the armor and the mobility to face a serious rear area threat, even the Soviet Special Operations Forces/SPETSNAZ threat we knew in Germany. But the trucks were cheap, so no one (and I mean Carter, Reagan, Bush '41, Clinton and Bush '42 Administrations alike) saw a need to up-armor the trucks.
3. If the specialist in question has spent any time at all on active duty, he knows that we have a very degraded capability to "surge" produce armor kits/armored support vehicles on demand. In Vietnam we used perforated steel plate and sand bags to up-armor our 2 1/2 ton "gun trucks" for convoy security.
4. Holding Rumsfeld responsible for a lack of common sense in the procurement side of the Army/Marines is like holding (WWII) Secretary of War Stimson responsible for not fielding a Tiger Tank equivalent during WWII. It may satisfy some folks agendas, but it's hardly fair.
I don't think anyone is holding Rumsfeld responsible, so much as they're bringing something to his attention. If they catch his ear, he's certainly the man who can get the ball rolling.
BTW, I was a chronic griper in 68 and 69.
Had to play hell to get rotor blades for choppers, or any parts at all. Forget even new boots, unless you could afford gook black market prices.
Anyhoo, I my Dad told me (he was in WWII) that griping was a noble tradition in the US military.
As for the troop and Rumsfeld, my guess is Rummy gets it.
Other than the fact that the media has led with the story all day, and I mean all news media, these were totally fair questions, and I don't have a problem with them.
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