Rumsfeld, the bungler

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Seven months before the defense secretary's recent exchange, another grunt had complained about inadequate armor. Every GI who's been blown up since then is another reason to fire him.

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By Joe Conason



Dec. 14, 2004 | When a courageous Army specialist confronted Donald Rumsfeld over the insufficient armor on military vehicles at a "town hall" meeting in Kuwait on Dec. 8, the secretary of defense may well have felt an unpleasant twinge of déjà vu.

Perhaps Rumsfeld recalled (as the reporters accompanying him on last week's trip apparently did not) that he had heard precisely the same complaint at a similar town hall meeting in Baghdad -- seven months ago.

That May 13 assembly was the last stop on a lightning visit to Iraq by the defense secretary that featured a speech at the Abu Ghraib detention camp. Aiming to preserve morale as well as his own job, he was no doubt preoccupied by the prisoner abuse scandal. Critics at home were already demanding his resignation, but the American troops seemed glad to see their civilian chief when he showed up to talk with them at one of Saddam Hussein's palaces.

In contrast to the strange answer he offered last week, when he provoked a national uproar by snappishly informing the troops that armor doesn't always work, Rumsfeld reacted quite differently last May. Back then, in fact, he offered no answer at all. But there's no doubt he was listening when the issue of inadequate armor came up in Baghdad. (There is also little doubt that, whatever he may think about armor's efficacy against roadside bombs, the secretary doesn't lack for hard protection when traveling in Iraq and Kuwait.)

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/12/14/rumsfeld/index.html

[teryang]

1. He doesn't shive a git.

Tell the people we're winning the war while the slaughter is ongoing. The Nazis told the public that they were winning while entire divisions were being destroyed. People who are surprised at this are naive.

Public appearances by this regimes officials are Potemkim appearances. Reality is not to make an appearance.

It isn't incompetence, it's greed and lust for power. Why build hummers with armor when you can finance one NMD missile for 85 million that can't even operate in cloudy weather? Which has the greater profit margin? Which yields the greater dividend for your friends defense conglomerate? How many shares do you own? Soldiers aren't shareholders.