Posted on 12/10/2004 9:38:24 AM PST by stylin_geek
"Plus I didn't like Wilson's rendition of having to go through the dumps to find the material. I thought it sounded exaggerated and false."
Why? During WWII soldiers used sandbags and anything else they could get their hands on to increase the armor protection of their Sherman tanks. If you were in Iraq you would likely be doing the same thing. There is no such thing as too much armor. More is always better.
Thanks, their contributors are excellent.
No, it didn't. Here's the very first thing Rumsfeld said when giving his lengthy answer. Yes, he asked for the question to be repeated--as in "I missed the first part of your question"---and it is my opinion if he was taken aback at all it was because the "first part" of the question said we'd been in Iraq coming up on *three* years. Anyhoo, Rumsfeld went on and on and on and didn't seem the least surprised since he'd JUST been discussing the issue as one can see here:
SEC. RUMSFELD: I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they’re not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I’m told that they are being – the Army is – I think it’s something like 400 a month are being done. And it’s essentially a matter of physics. It isn’t a matter of money. It isn’t a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it.
~snip~
he went on from there.
Why?
Because there are mechanical divisions in Iraq. I'm assuming they haul any vehicles that have been hit by IEDs to the mechanics location. I would assume that the military would used these vehicles to get parts/armour off of instead of going to dumps.
I think the soldier was giving a sob story before his "pre-planned" question to Rumsfield. I think the sob story came from the reporter's suggestion.
You "assume" I am wrong.
GEN. WHITCOMB: Ma'am, no I have not spoken with Specialist Wilson, and purposely I didn't. The point is not whether he was going through a landfill -- and I'll tell you how we do things -- the point is he brought up a question on up-armored vehicles.
What I think Specialist Wilson was probably talking about is going through a facility that we've got that takes vehicles of two types; one, it takes vehicles that have been hit in combat and can't be fixed in Iraq and we bring them back here into Kuwait and we either fix them or we take parts off them that we can use. And some of those parts may, in fact, be the level-three armor, the steel plating that we either take off and put into stacks that we'll reuse, or that my suspicion -- and it's a suspicion only -- is that Specialist Wilson and his crew came in and found a vehicle or found some of that stuff and was taking it to add on to their vehicles. It's counterproductive to go try and track the specialist down. He had a concern for the armoring for his vehicles, as we all do, and he brought that up and we addressed that. I don't think -- well, I just don't know whether he was in a landfill. We don't normally throw things that we can use back into a trash bin or a landfill-type thing.
I wonder if this Pitts is any relation to William Rivers Pitts?.....
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