Inside Politics: Rest of the Story [Faked Un-Armored Humvees Story Exposed - FR Credited]

Washington Times ^ | December 21, 2004 | By Greg Pierce

[Jim Robinson]

"The reporter who managed to get a National Guardsman serving in Iraq to question Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld about why his unit's vehicles lacked sufficient armor coached the soldier using false information," NewsMax.com reports.

"In fact, by the time Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts rehearsed Spc. Thomas 'Jerry' Wilson on what to say to Rumsfeld, the Pentagon had already up-armored 97 percent of the vehicles in Thomas' 278th Regimental Combat Team, senior members of the Army's combat systems development and acquisition team said Thursday.

"Further undermining the premise of Pitts' question, orders to up-armor the last 20 of the 278th's 830 vehicles were already in the pipeline when he engineered the bogus inquiry," NewsMax said.

"According to the Maryville, Tenn., Daily Times — a rival to Pitts' paper — Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes and Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson said during last week's Pentagon briefing that routine pre-deployment preparations before proceeding to Iraq included adding protective armor plates to the last 20 vehicles of the Tennessee-based 278th Regimental Combat Team's 830 vehicles.

" 'When the question was asked, 20 vehicles remained to be up-armored at that point,' Gen. Speakes said, in comments completely ignored by the major media.

" 'We completed those 20 vehicles in the next day,' he said. 'In other words, we completed all the armoring within 24 hours of the time the question was asked,' Gen. Speakes added.

"The eye-opening revelations by Gen. Speakes and Gen. Sorenson first gained national exposure on FreeRepublic.com late Friday."

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Posted now on Free Republic:

Special Defense Department Briefing on Uparmoring HMMWV

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

See link above.

[fire_eye]

We should put up a big subbanner on the homepage: "WHERE THE OLD MEDIA GETS ITS NEWS"

[Grampa Dave]

This response to the Rummy Phobia attacks is another great job by the Free Republic. Freepers are seekers of truth while exposing the left wing mediots as liars, spinners and manipulators instead of being journalists.

The Rummy Phobia, we have seen and heard from the mediots, Rinos, Rat Politicians and the Hate GW Trolls on Free Republic is another obvious planned attack on GW. This time the attack came via the Rummy Phobia reactions in the media and the shameless ones here on Free Republic.

[facedown]

bump

[MeekOneGOP]

And you know what? What is the possibility that the reporter KNEW these Humvees were upgraded and the last of them were planned for upgrade, too?

Anything to try to discredit our military, Rumsfeld, and ultimately President Bush.

The media are shameless.

[Happy2BMe]

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[bray]

If 97% of the vehicles were already armored, he obviously never was sifting through the garbage searching for unbroken glass! Hope this guy likes KP, because the rest of his tour should be cleaning the head with a toothbrush. As for the Propagandist, cigarette and a blindfold comes to mind.

Merry Christmas to Our Troops

[PhilDragoo]

Need to give the reporter and his girl friend some quality time alone, walking point as IED magnets.

[XHogPilot]

Bump

[TruthNtegrity]

I love seeing my favorite place mentioned more and more in Washington Times and other Conservative places. Yahoo!

As for the MSM, one cannot expect them to pull their heads out of their - ahem - (can't finish that sentence).

[pepperdog]

bttt