Word: rumsfeld
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Wilson, it turns out, had crafted the question with the help of a reporter embedded with his unit. It was Rumsfeld's response, though, that instantly ignited a firestorm. "You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld told Wilson, "not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." While the Bush Administration has been criticized for its refusal to acknowledge the scale of the dangers in Iraq, Rumsfeld's comments, however unintentionally, conveyed something far more disturbing, a seemingly blithe disregard for the welfare of troops. "You can talk like that...
Army General Barry McCaffrey, "but not to a soldier who's extremely concerned about the safety of himself and his buddies." Rumsfeld compounded the gaffe by adding that "you can have all the armor in the world in a tank, and a tank can be blown up." On Capitol Hill, Democrats ripped Rumsfeld for his insensitivity. "By that logic," says Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, "we should send our troops into battle on bicycles...
...exchange between Wilson and Rumsfeld was the most public airing of a concern that has spread among soldiers serving in Iraq and their families as the death toll has climbed: Is the U.S. sending troops into the line of fire without the means to protect themselves? The Pentagon has treated reports of equipment shortages--troops' hammering sheet metal onto humvees or asking their families to send bulletproof vests--as isolated kinks in the military supply chain. But last week, in response to Specialist Wilson, military officials were forced to acknowledge an unsettling reality: the U.S. has nowhere near the number...
Even the heavily armored humvees, as Rumsfeld inelegantly reminded the troops last week, aren't fail-safe: 120 have been destroyed in combat in Iraq. Unlike M1 tanks, even beefed-up humvees can't always stop a rocket-propelled grenade or .50-cal. machine-gun bullet from killing those inside. But they are built to halt armor-piercing 7.62-mm rounds--the kind of bullets fired from AK-47s, an insurgent favorite. The roof is engineered to thwart the blast of a 155-mm artillery shell exploding overhead, and the floor is reinforced to protect passengers from a bomb...
...nothing else, Specialist Wilson's grilling of Rumsfeld may finally force the military's civilian bosses to heed the concerns of soldiers like Captain Mark Chung, 37, an Army reservist who served in Iraq for nine months this year. Chung survived two roadside bomb attacks on his armored humvee; the second bomb exploded on the passenger side directly under his seat. "The up-armored humvee was the only thing that saved my life," he says. After returning from Iraq last month, Chung visited the Pentagon to implore officials to send more armored humvees to Iraq. He never...