This entire episode was a setup. The question addressed a problem which is mostly solved. Yet that does not stop the ABB brigade here and elsewhere from acting as though Rummy doesn't give a damn about the lowly soldier. That entire line of thought is based upon LIES.
Almost all the criticism of Rumsfeld comes from those who HATE Bush and who HATE all who work with him and who were opposed to the war. It is the same crew of nitwits and Know Nothings.
Then why did his fellow soldiers react that way? Set up as well?
Here's a good question: Why were these Humvees and trucks ever made without this armor? This is a systemic problem. This problem was exposed in the 90s.
Why was the military starved in the 90s? Why was the bureaucracy so slow to move? Why, after Mogadishu, didn't the whole Humvee, light and heavy truck fleet get fully armored and fitted with bullet proof glass?
This has been an issue for awhile. It would have been nice if the military brass, Clinton appointees, Clintoon and the Congress had done something about this in the 90s. Where were all the whistleblowers then? Where the Hell was the media? The POTUS -- who was starving the military and slashing the Hell out of the Army's end strength.
Bush and Rummy have to answer for this, but much of our current problems stem from the neglect and abuse heaped on the armed forced during the 1990s.
Wouldn't we be better off if Clintoon hadn't cut so many divisions? Wouldn't there be less stress on the Guard and Reserve? Wouldn't we be better off if a complete audit of the campaign in Mogadishu had been done? Wasn't it plain as can be that the Humvees and other wheeled vehicles were exposed as easy-to-hit death traps in an urban fight with guerilla insurgents with RPGs? In Chechnya and the West Bank, we have seen what IEDs can do. Not a darn thing that we have seen in Iraq is new.
Why in the Hell were no lessons learned, appropriations sought, and on and on? Bush inherited a broken, underfunded, badly managed military. But Bush should have reacted better on some scores. In a just world, Clintoon would be getting hammered for this. Don't you remember the days, immediately after the fall of Baghdad, when the Clintoonistas declared that Bush had won the war with Clinton's army? There is no doubt, we are fighting this war with Clinton's army. In the postwar phase we are paying the price for the steep cuts in infantry divisions and the defunding of the 90s.