[Shadow_Group] Rumsfeld Hears Gripes From GIs in Kuwait

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

Why don't Bush and Co. quit paying lip service to the
"support the troops" mantra and actually do it...
================
Rumsfeld Hears Gripes From GIs in Kuwait 
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer 

FROM:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=2&u=/ap/20041208/ap_on_re_mi_ea/rumsfeld<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=2&u=/ap/20041208/ap_on_re_mi_ea/rumsfeld>
CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait - In a rare public airing of
grievances, disgruntled soldiers complained to Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday about long
deployments and a lack of armored vehicles and other
equipment. 

"You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld
replied, "not the Army you might want or wish to
have." 

Spc. Thomas Wilson had asked the defense secretary,
"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local
landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised
ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?" Shouts of
approval and applause arose from the estimated 2,300
soldiers who had assembled to see Rumsfeld. 

Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his
question. 

"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with
us north," Wilson, 31, of Ringgold, Ga., concluded
after asking again. 

Wilson, an airplane mechanic whose unit, the 278th
Regimental Combat Team of the Tennessee Army National
Guard, is about to drive north into Iraq for a
one-year tour of duty, put his finger on a problem
that has bedeviled the Pentagon for more than a year.
Rarely, though, is it put so bluntly in a public
forum. 

Rumsfeld said the Army was sparing no expense or
effort to acquire as many Humvees and other vehicles
with extra armor as it can. What is more, he said,
armor is not the savior some think it is. 

"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and
a tank can (still) be blown up," he said. The same
applies to the much smaller Humvee utility vehicles
that, without extra armor, are highly vulnerable to
the insurgents' weapon of choice in Iraq, the
improvised explosive device that is a roadside threat
to Army convoys and patrols. 

U.S. soldiers and Marines in Iraq are killed or maimed
by roadside bombs almost daily. Adding armor
protection to Humvees and other vehicles that normally
are not used in direct combat has been a priority for
the Army, but manufacturers have not been able to keep
up with the demand. 

Wilson's ex-wife, Regina, said she was not surprised
he challenged Rumsfeld. 

"It wouldn't matter if it was Bush himself standing
there," she said. "He would have dissed him the same."


Wilson joined the National Guard in June 2003;
previously, he had served about four years in the Air
Force, beginning in 1994. 

Rumsfeld dropped in to Camp Buehring  named for Lt.
Col. Charles Buehring, who was killed in a rocket
attack on a downtown Baghdad hotel in November 2003 
to thank the troops for their service and to give them
a pep talk. Later he flew to New Delhi for meetings
Thursday with Indian government officials. 

In his prepared remarks in Kuwait, Rumsfeld urged the
troops  mostly National Guard and Reserve soldiers 
to discount critics of the war and to help "win the
test of wills" with the insurgents. 

Wilson and others, however, had criticisms of their
own  not of the war but of how it was being fought. 

During the question-and-answer session, another
soldier complained that active-duty Army units seem to
get priority over National Guard and Reserve units for
the best equipment used in Iraq. 

"There's no way I can prove it, but I am told the Army
is breaking its neck to see that there is not"
discrimination of that kind, Rumsfeld said. 

Yet another soldier asked how much longer the Army
would continue using its "stop loss" power to prevent
soldiers from leaving the service who are otherwise
eligible to retire or return to civilian life at the
end of their enlistment. 

Rumsfeld said this condition was simply a fact of life
for soldiers in times of war. Critics, including some
in Congress, say it's proof the Army has been
stretched too thin by war. 

"It's basically a sound principle, it's nothing new,
it's been well understood" by soldiers, he said. "My
guess is it will continue to be used as little as
possible, but that it will continue to be used." 

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., told Rumsfeld in a
letter Wednesday that his response to the question
about armored vehicles was "utterly unacceptable" and
that it was the duty of the government to provide
safety equipment. 

"Mr. Secretary, our troops go to war with the Army
that our nation's leaders provide," he wrote. 

The deputy commanding general of U.S. forces in
Kuwait, Maj. Gen. Gary Speer, said in an interview at
Camp Buehring that as far as he knew, every vehicle
deploying to Iraq from Kuwait had at least "Level 3"
armor protection. That means it had locally fabricated
armor for its side panels, but not bulletproof windows
or reinforced floorboards. 

Speer said he was unaware that soldiers were searching
landfills for scrap metal and discarded glass. 

However, Maj. Gen. Gus L. Hargett, the adjutant
general of the Tennessee National Guard, disputed
Speer's remarks. "I know that members of his staff
were aware and assisted the 278th in obtaining these
materials," he said. 

At the Pentagon, spokesman Larry Di Rita said
production of armored Humvees had increased from 15 to
450 a month since fall 2003, when commanders in Iraq
started asking for them because of insurgents' heavy
use of roadside explosives. 

Overall, there are 19,000 armored Humvees in the Iraqi
theater. Some were built with additional armor, others
had it added on later. That's, 2,000 short of what
commanders are asking for, Di Rita acknowledged. 

Military policy is that troops driving into Iraq in
Humvees drive only in armored ones, Di Rita said. Some
$1.2 billion has been included in the defense budget
to pay for armored vehicles, he said.









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