Posted on 12/12/2004 4:10:28 PM PST by M 91 u2 K
Rumsfeld's Wrong Answer Barry Farber Monday, Dec. 13, 2004 The gutsy Army specialist who opened verbal fire on Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and drew that breathtakingly diseased answer poses a test to the masculinity of every conservative commentator. (At least of every male conservative commentator.)
The temptation for us red-leaners is to think: “Thank God the election is over. Kerry can’t exploit that issue. It’s a bummer for our side, all right – an American fighting man complaining about having to poke through landfill looking for “hillbilly” armor to jerry-rig onto unarmed Humvees – but we’re saved by the bell; or at least by the calendar. As bad as that story is for the administration, its guts will be eaten up by the Happy Holidays. It’ll be done with by Christmas. And the bones will be cleared away and forgotten before New Year’s.”
Any conservative who succumbs to that temptation and fails to speak out, any conservative who does nothing but hope the specialist-versus-the-secretary confrontation blows away like an ungainly kitchen stench is, in my view, as gross a political villain as any we conservatives have lately lacerated and defeated.
The story comes to mind of the young Jewish man who strikes it rich, buys a big yacht, has a tailor design for him a uniform with epaulets and lots of gold braid, and then peacock-struts in uniform over to visit his mother.
“Look, Mom,” he exuberates, “I’m a captain!”
The under-impressed mother laconically says (try to dub in a Yiddish accent here): “Marvin, by you you’re a captain. By me you’re a captain. But tell me, Marvin – by a CAPTAIN are you a captain?”
In other words, if “by Kerry” our troops lack basic armor, yeah: expected political rhetoric. If “by those who hate George Bush” our troops lack basic armor, no big deal. But when “by an American fighting man about to head north into Iraq” our troops lack basic armor, then I expect every American armed with pen, pencil, pad, microphone, TV camera or word processor to head for the ramparts with a broken bourbon bottle to fix this unacceptable outrage even if those responsible are the very administration heroes we were so happy to see elected on November 2.
At this moment, I’m as disappointed by conservatives’ reaction to all this as they will surely be with me.
A question as bold as Spc. Wilson’s takes us right down to the burlap. The righteousness or bankruptcy of that question would be instantly revealed by the spontaneous reaction of the assembled troops, undoubtedly as startled as Secretary Rumsfeld himself. Did those troops boo the candid questioner? No. They clapped and cheered. Like a magnesium flare, that moment in American military history revealed something too vital to consign to that lower shelf labeled post-election partisan bickering.
It revealed an administration failure that goes far beyond “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” “Your families aren’t going to get their allotments on time,” “Your GI benefits are not quite all your recruiter promised,” and “Ha ha ha, we can call you back long after you think your military service is completed.” This failure was not only damaging to morale. It says, “We’re not really all that hell-bent upon improving your chances of battlefield survival.”
And it’s a failure that’s persisted over an unforgivably long time. How dare anyone in our “patriotic” wing of American media merely heave a sigh, throw out a little jab or two and then dance away!
Rumsfeld has always been my favorite. I’d pay for a video library of all of his early press conferences in which he took on the fiercest of the carping liberals and showed them one by one – slam-dunk style – where the bear sat in the buckwheat. In fact, I had fantasies of a President Rumsfeld to succeed President Bush!
His age, early 70s, was always offered as a disqualifier. I’d planned to argue that. After all, Rumsfeld was a champion wrestler in college. When you once get yourself in shape for college wrestling, you have to become almost a suicide bomber ever to get yourself OUT of shape. Not so for football players. You don’t have to be in anywhere near as good shape for football as for wrestling. In baseball, after an occasional burst of effort, you can rest. Basketball players THINK they’re in shape, until you get them on the wrestling mat for one uninterrupted minute. Wrestling is the most demanding of all sports. And Rumsfeld made sure he STAYED in shape long AFTER he left college.
Therefore, I was prepared to make the case that we should consider Donald Rumsfeld’s POLITICAL age as eight to ten years younger than his actual age.
In other words, I’m NOT a “Rummy hater.” I am, however, still rattling from the cosmic stupidity of his answer to Spc. Thomas Wilson: “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Let’s see. Maybe if a million Russian marines were to land near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and our tools to resist such a total surprise seemed lacking, maybe then a secretary of defense could get away with explaining that “You go to war with the army you have.” That statement, however, becomes your own grenade going off in your own face when applied to a war close to entering its third year – especially a war in which you yourself chose the time of attack. (I support our mission in Iraq.)
What has happened to America? During World War II – beginning in 1941 – we rallied from a devastating surprise attack (the Asian equivalent of Russian marines landing in South Carolina!) and overnight became the “Arsenal of Democracy.”
From sub-zero preparedness we arose.
If our military needed a base, the Seabees gave them a “city” in the jungle, the desert or the Arctic within days. Fifty thousand warplanes rolled into action from factories that were making fire trucks a few weeks earlier and blockbuster bombs from factories that used to make lamps. A can-do man named Henry Kaiser took over our shipping shortage and was soon launching one major ship per day. Britain and the Soviet Union received the American supply needle in their tired veins that enabled them to drive on to smashing victories over the Nazis.
And today? After the media quit cursing the fact that a “Gotcha!” this big came too late for the campaign, they lit up the horizon with it and right away it all got worse. The manufacturers reported that they had told the Pentagon they could produce more armored Humvees and the Pentagon gave them a “Don’t call us. We’ll call you,” but no orders for more armored Humvees. Now we hear there’s only one factory than can manufacture armored Humvees! Hold it. Another news channel reported there are two. Nobody explained whatever happened to the limitless number of American manufacturers who used to manufacture American factories.
Embattled administration spinners may have thought a whiff of comeback was in the air on Friday, December 10, with the “startling” revelation that Spc. Wilson was “fed” the question by an embedded reporter from Tennessee. Is there any way to make short shrift even shorter? I wish I could give that wet firecracker zero words, but at least I can give it zero weight. Complaining that the soldier was fed the question by a reporter is rather like a knocked-out boxer later complaining that the punch that lost the fight for him was not the idea of his victorious opponent, but was instead whispered into his opponent’s ear by one of the guys in his corner in between rounds.
You can vote for Bush (and therefore Rumsfeld). You can elect them. You can support them. You can like them. You can love them. But you can’t protect them. Not this time.
By the way, why should we even have NEEDED Spc. Wilson to become America’s new Paul Revere, warning not that the British are coming, but that the armor is not? We heard all through the presidential campaign complaints that our troops lacked sufficient protection. Didn’t Rumsfeld – or his boss – ever get curious enough to find out if there was any merit to those complaints? Why didn’t Rumsfeld pound a wrestler’s fist onto his Pentagon desktop and yell, “Fix it!”
This failure is far from the most egregious wartime blunder in history. Gen. Moshe Dayan, Israel’s hero in the Six-Day War, drew sharp criticism in Israel by confessing in a postwar book that he had one of his entire armies deployed on the wrong border!
Others: Hitler’s refusal to delay Germany’s June 1941 attack on the Soviet Union until the following March. German Air Marshal Goering promising Hitler he could supply the Nazi troops besieging Stalingrad by air. Nazi General Erwin Rommel’s overextension of his supply lines, inviting the British counterattack at El Alamein in Egypt that caused the longest, fastest retreat in military history.
My Russian-born grandfather regaled Cousin Michael and me with wild tales of Russian troops freezing in Siberia during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 while opening boxcar after boxcar looking for heavy overcoats, long underwear, or mittens and finding … nothing but potatoes!
College wrestling matches have three rounds.
The first one has gone on points to Spc. Thomas Wilson by a wide margin, even though he’s fighting in a much lower weight class than his vastly more experienced adversary. I don’t care how conservative you are: If you’re any kinder to the administration than I’ve been, you’re showing me you love your ideology more than you love truth.
Rumsfeld is not a sacred cow, and if it is okay to criticize our troops as many have done here, then it is okay to criticize Rummy. Nothing wrong with criticism, it is healthy. Such as the fact we are being following to many PC rules in Iraq when it comes to dealing with the enemy.
Yawn!
This guy is a Guard toad who thought that he would be slick.
Rummy is hated by the left-wing media because he is seen as a real man not a girley-man. So to level the playing field they must destroy him, and hope for a girley-man replacement they can push around. Rember the MSN hate's the military period.
Exactly what was wrong with the answer Rumsfeld gave?
A lot of post question analysis indicates the military has done a very good job in ramping up the supply of hardened Humvees.
In this specific case, armored Humvees will be available to these specific troops when they reach their theater area.
Rummy is the best Sec of Defense we have had since well last time he was Sec of Defense under Ford! But he is not perfect and it is okay to criticize him its just that MSM goes overboard with their witch hunt.
Armored Humvees are grossly inferior to unarmored ones for the majority of missions out there, and for the mission they were bought for. They are needed for a particular mission that we now find ourselves in. Not having them was not negligence - except to the extent that as a nation we couldn't justify purchasing armored vehicles (proper ones, not this Armored Humvee stop-gap) as an alternate TOE for multiple divisions.
I dunno who Barry Farber is, but I have a suspicion about what he is not...
I agree, it was based on the BS that the guard alway sucks the hind teat of the supply hog.
They probably were not told how the up-armored equipment was assigned, and they had brought with them their Stateside issue Hummers which do not get up-armored unless needed in a hot area and would have been carried in on flat beds to the motor pools where that occurs.
Rummy's Comment was exactly right in retrospect. They are building the Army they need out of necessity, and as always, the Army adjusts to new circumstances as they emerge.
If anyone made a stupid comment, it was the guard soldier who was out of his element.
You may be right, but I suspect that what our troops really need is to start killing the enemy, killing anyone that harbors or sympathizes with them, and levelling the buildings that shelter them. That just might make them safer than yet more extra additional armor to hide behind.
Turned out to be just rumors and typical motor pool BS, as far as I can ascertain. The company commander was not a strong enough leader to keep a lid on her own mess.
Would'a, could'a, should'a....
Irrespective of why things "should" have been different,
there was nothing wrong with Rumsfeld's answer.
OBTW
Additional armour doesn't do much when the IED is comprised of a 155 round.
...
If you want to learn something about the military acquisition system read on - otherwise please keep you half baked totally uniformed opinions to yourself.
Yes, I have just flamed you. Do I have your attention?
I am retired military, 20 years as combat air crew, half of it in special operations. I have just completed 14 years as a system analyst, a dollar word for contractor, for AFSOC. Almost twelve of those years were in flight test - testing the “newest and greatest”.
The way the CONGRESS has structured the acquisition system:
It takes 8 to 15 years, as a minimum, to bring a new system on line.
You can only start a new system every other year - the paperwork for an odd year start is unbelievable!
I can go out to the commercial market and upgrade the HUMVEE using a third of the official cost at one tenth of the weight. But, since military purchases are viewed as re-election perks, I have to go through an approved vendor no matter the cost , weight and time deltas.
Any project needs between 10,000 and 50,000 pages of paperwork just to make its way to Congress. I have a system that was fast tracked and works but I can not get any money for maintenance until that paperwork makes its way up to and through Congress. The damn system works, there are a few prototypes in outside storage, and I can not get money to move them inside out of the weather.
A decade ago I knew, and could prove beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a sensor would not work - its in the wrong darn place. Since then we have attempted 4 times to fix the problem - all attempts cost in excess of 20 million, each, and all failed. We are now attempting solution # 5 and no one wants to bet me that it too will fail.
Yes these are signs of a serious problem. Most of which were written into Federal Law and Statue by Congress to “correct” problems that they had caused earlier.
What Congress didn’t do, the military did to itself by establishing “centers of excellence” to improve the acquisition process. Since when has a committee improved anything?
Can we do better? Yes, we have!
Kelly Johnson’s “Skunk Works” (Lockheed’s Advance Concepts Division) did the U-2 and SR-71 without going through the official process.
The AC- series of aircraft didn’t go through the official process either. Every variant was delivered ahead of schedule, with the required combat capabilities, at substantial savings.
“Google” an aircraft called Creditable Sport. Then remember it went from a mission requirement to ready for mission execution in less than six months. A heavily modified aircraft that could do things that active duty special operations aircrews still don’t believe is possible.
Enough soap boxing on my part.
If you want to blame a group for the problems the MSM reports with such glee - call your Congressman and Senator first!
The message is that there are no "knowns". There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say, 'well that's basically what we see as the situation,' that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.
I admit Rummy's a delight at press conferences!
That is still my sense of it all as well, but there is more.
The Troops are compelled to rely on civilian contractors more than ever now over there. Many of those contracted employees simply do not give a crap about safety and security for our Troops. The (some) Troops are aware (or simply believe this)and so some have apprehensions concerning many things.
The Troops should not have to carry such concerns. We owe them that at least!
Sounds like somebody missed the part where a newspaper type posed the question. Typical guerilla reporting...
I want our guys to be as safe as possible, but show me a war where the guys in the mud had everything they were suppose to have.
The fact is that although this may have been a legitimate question it was a set-up by a reporter looking for a story, and only gives the media another black eye.
Do liberals care if our guys get armor? No. What they want is to slap Bush, and this soldier provided the means to do that.
Will our soldiers get armor any faster because of that question? Probably not, but the liberals have something to attack Bush with, and he's the best CIC the military has at the moment.
You would be very wrong in your suspicion. He is a solid right wing Jew from the South, who has a real grasp of world history. The most eloquent speaker I have ever listened to. Do a little research on Barry you won't be disappointed.
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