Rumsfeld Must be Armor Plated

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 12/18/04)

OK, a joke is a joke, but Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has got to go.

Just what does a guy have to do to get fired in the Bush Administration? Go to war with too few troops? Spout off about imaginary weapons of mass destruction and phantom Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda? Fail to anticipate widespread looting? Preside over the Apocalypse Now-ish Abu Grab dungeon and Land of the Lost Guantanamo?

Treat a member of the United States Army with the cavalier, condescending, sneering, dismissive tone normally reserved for reporters?

Rumsfeld, alas, is apparently unfireable. Makes me wonder if he has some compromising photos of the president or something.

The latest in the Rummy Can Do No Wrong saga came on December 8, when an actual soldier -- Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, Tennessee National Guard -- busted up Rumsfeld's photo op/love in at Camp Buehring, Kuwait with an actual pointed question.

Wilson asked, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?"

It was a great question made greater, in part, by the kind of person who asked it.

When The Media asks such a question, Rumsfeld immediately denies the problem. He'll say something like, "You don't know what you're talking about. We have plenty of armor. I know of no problems with armor."

But this question came from a soldier, on his way to fight in Iraq. One of the American fighting men and women who Rumsfeld so rightly and often praises.

Now when a reporter gets smacked on the bottom and put in his or her place by His Excellency (Rumsfeld) with his customary "you're just a liberal flag burning terrorist embracing commy who gets off on damaging the war effort to sell papers" flair, well, the folks back home think that's kind of fun.

But when the question comes from an actual soldier with the full credibility of someone in the process of risking his or her life for this great nation, not even Rumsfeld can shrug that one off.

Plus, the image of our boys (and girls) having to pick through a landfill for such life-saving necessities as armor and ballistic glass, well, that hits everyone at home right between the stars and stripes. Especially since about $150 billion (maybe $200 billion) in taxpayer cash has been lavished on war in Iraq during the first two years. That figures out to $223,000,000 a day. You'd think for that kind of money the troops would be up hip-deep in armor right now.

But Rumsfeld is Rumsfeld, so despite the forum and the source for the question, he couldn't help but snap back into the Sneering Ice Man mode. Although he couldn't open with his usual "You're an idiot" comment, Rumsfeld pressed on to Stage 2 of his standard answer -- make an excuse:

"It's essentially a matter of physics, not a matter of money," Rumsfeld said. "It's a matter of production and the capability of doing it."

Ah, wrong. A few days later, Matt Salmon, president of ArmorWorks of Tempe, Arizona, told CNN his company, which designs and manufactures high-tech vehicle armor, could double its production from 300 to 600 kits per month. They weren't doing that because the Pentagon hadn't asked for it. A bunch of other sources also said they too had extra capacity but hadn't heard a word from the Pentagon.

In fact, a few days after Wilson stood up, Pentagoners were claiming they had no idea the troops needed more armor.

Then, in a shocking move (even for Rumsfeld), he proceeded apace to Response Stage 3 and took the "you-people-are-jackasses" tone with Wilson:

"As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want," Rumsfeld said.

Well la-tee-da. What an uplifting message for the troops, especially a unit of the National Guard, which traditionally struggles to overcome the "weekend warrior" stigma.

I think it would have been grand if one of the troops there spoke for the millions of us who think, "Well, as you know, you go to war with the administration you have, not the one you want."

Then, for good measure, Rumsfeld finished his answer with a "quit-your-complaining," exclamation point:

"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up."

Sure, by a 500-pound bomb, but armor does tend to deflect pesky shrapnel and bullets nicely. Not a concern when you're in an office in Washington, but it quickly becomes top-of-mind in Iraq.

The whole episode -- making stuff up (we're making armored stuff as fast as we can) and the way he dissed and dismissed an American soldier like he was a common reporter -- has increased my incredulity on how Rumsfeld manages to keep his job. I'm starting to think Rumsfeld could have his picture taken embracing Osama and not get fired.

It's gotten so obvious that even Republican Congresspersons are starting to say they guy should be canned. So pardon me if the president's "accountability and responsibility" tough talk rings hollow. It applies to schools and teachers whose students don't score well on the No Child Left Behind tests. It applies to us commoners who can't find a job by the time we run out of unemployment. But it doesn't apply to Bush's homeys.

You know, guys like George Tenet, former CIA boss. You remember him, the guy who turned into Rain Man when you asked him about Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction: "Iraq definitely has WMDs; def-definitely have WMDs." The existence of something that could kill a few hundred thousand people in a single stroke was a "slam dunk" according to George.

At one point (and it continuously changes) WMDs were the reason for going to war against Iraq.

Ah, yeah. Unless rocket-propelled grenades are now Weapons of Mass Destruction, George was as wrong as possible. Still, Bush didn't can him. The guy finally resigned.

So what does Bush do? Pin a medal on him! A few days ago Bush gave Tenet America's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Harry S Truman, who established the medal in 1945, is doing cartwheels in his grave.

Seriously. Great job there, George, in misreading the intel so bad that we go to war for no apparent reason (although we've come up with some alternate reasons to go to war since then), spend $200 billion, get 1,000 Americans killed, tens of thousands more wounded and kill maybe 30,000 Iraqis based largely on phantom WMDs. Give the guy a medal!

Here's an idea: make Spc. Thomas Wilson Secretary of Defense. He'd easily do a better job than Rumsfeld. Or give the guy a microphone and let him report from the front. We could use someone who's less about being part of the background for Big Shot photo ops and more about getting some answers.

©2004 Bill Zahren

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