Last week I wrote an article titled Pentagon Incompetence or Bush Bashing? It concerned the now famous question to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about armored vehicles in Iraq. The gist of my article was that the question was staged by a journalist trying to exploit a problem for his own gain. 

As evidence, I cited a magazine article that answered this question some months earlier. My feeling is that if the journalist were really concerned about the amount of armored vehicles available he would have known the answer and either confirmed or refuted its validity. Instead, he chose to exploit the concerns of a soldier. He chose to do the work of liberals and Democrats and try to discredit Rumsfeld. Because of this, I doubted the credibility of the journalist.

My article elicited a tsunami of vitriolic emails from those purportedly concerned for the welfare of military personnel. They were full of righteous indignation that anyone would try to defend Rumsfeld blatant incompetence.

However, corresponding with them soon revealed their true motive was their hatred of George Bush. Rumsfeld’s alleged incompetence was merely a proxy. Troop safety was a tertiary consideration. In fact, many gave the impression that just a few weeks earlier they were probably calling troops baby killers.

Yet, some expressed legitimate questions, so more research was in order.

Further research confirmed my initial belief. The full tape of the dialogue between Rumsfeld and the soldier on the radio, and the full transcript of the conversation also confirmed it. What the mainstream media communicated is very different from what really occurred.

This is the transcript of the dialogue between Specialist Wilson and Secretary Rumsfeld. What was broadcast and printed by the mainstream is in red font. The omitted portions of the colloquy are in normal font. Notice how the editing distorted what was said. All italics are mine.

Specialist Wilson asked, “Yes, Mr. Secretary. My question is more logistical.  We’ve had troops in Iraq for coming up on three years and we’ve always staged here out of Kuwait.  Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don’t we have those resources readily available to us? [Applause]

Rumsfeld replied, "I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they’re not needed, to a place here where they are needed.  I’m told that they are being – the Army is – I think it’s something like 400 a month are being done. And it’s essentially a matter of physics.  It isn’t a matter of money.  It isn’t a matter on the part of the Army of desire.  It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it.

As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.  Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it’s a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment. 

I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they’re working at it at a good clip. It’s interesting, I’ve talked a great deal about this with a team of people who’ve been working on it hard at the Pentagon.  And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up.  And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up.  And you can go down and, the vehicle, the goal we have is to have as many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate level of armor available for the troops.  And that is what the Army has been working on

And General Whitcomb, is there anything you’d want to add to that?

GEN. WHITCOMB:  Nothing. [Laughter] Mr. Secretary, I’d be happy to.  That is a focus on what we do here in Kuwait and what is done up in the theater, both in Iraq and also in Afghanistan.  As the secretary has said, it’s not a matter of money or desire; it is a matter of the logistics of being able to produce it.  The 699^th, the team that we’ve got here in Kuwait has done [Cheers] a tremendous effort to take that steel that they have and cut it, prefab it and put it on vehicles.  But there is nobody from the president on down that is not aware that this is a challenge for us and this is a desire for us to accomplish.

SEC. RUMSFELD:  The other day, after there was a big threat alert in Washington, D.C. in connection with the elections, as I recall, I looked outside the Pentagon and there were six or eight up-armored humvees.  They’re not there anymore.  [Cheers] [Applause] They’re en route out here, I can assure you”

Not only were Rumsfeld’s remarks selectively edited for ideological reasons – to my knowledge it was never reported that General Whitcomb responded. This is indicative of how tendentious this reporting is. Subsequent news reports compound this distortion. Re-read the transcript and then read these comments by Newsweek reporters Michael Hirsh, John Barry and Babak Dehghanpisheh.

According to their December 20 article, “Rumsfeld's initial response was testy. ‘You go to war with the army you have,’ he barked.” Rumsfeld did not bark at all. This was intentionally characterized this way to impugn Rumsfeld’s character.

Newsweek’s hatchet job continues by stating, “Two days after Rumsfeld's embarrassing exchange with Wilson, the Defense Department announced it was ordering 100 more up-armored Humvees a month from their main supplier, O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt in West Chester, Ohio. The Humvee armoring company …told reporters only a few days before that it was operating at 22 percent under capacity, but that there were no more orders from the Pentagon. Then suddenly there were more, for reasons the Army did not make clear. (The Pentagon claims it did not know about the additional capacity until the head of O'Gara's holding company, Armor Holdings of Jacksonville, Fla., announced last week that it was possible.)”

Once again, the media neglected to tell the whole truth. Newsweek conveniently omitted that Armor Holdings stated that they are unable to ramp production until at least February or March.

Newsweek – obviously not wanting to blatantly appear biased later in the article wrote,” this lack of armor was not some indication of supreme incompetence… “ Newsweek, at least, wanted to give the impression that they were not doing a hatchet job. Other media were not even trying to be objective.

NBC’s Chris Matthews and his panelists derided Bush during Matthews’ December 12 edition. One panelist noted military expert, Katty Kay, BBC’s Washington DC correspondent said unqualifiedly that the military, " absolutely" should have expected this insurgency.

I never realized Katty Kay had experience conducting military operations. I do realize, as a sports fan, that there is always a guy at the bar who knows how the coach should have called the game. These guys are known as Monday Morning Quarterbacks.

Sometimes Monday Morning Quarterbacks are correct and sometimes they are not. However, the fact is they are Monday morning. What they say is purely an opinion without consequence. They do not have to worry about the team.

It is easy to be a critic. Critics have the luxury of not having to experience the consequences of their choices. They have the luxury of not being responsible for the lives of other people. They have the luxury of not being responsible for the continuation of an enterprise.

This does not mean their criticism should not be considered. However, when such criticism is motivated by purely selfish political reasons then it is not cedible. Such criticism is unconscionable. The critics are unscrupulous.

My opinion is that most of those who emailed me with their vituperative denunciations of Secretary Rumsfeld were being purely political. They were not concerned for the safety of the troops.

I did solicit opinions from those who are concerned about the troops. Let me refer you to comments (in blue font) I received from them via email. I cannot give you their names since I have not asked their permission.

First, a former Marine Sergeant, who served in Bosnia and Kosovo:

“The Marines do, in fact, have some armored Humvees, the early version were known as 'turtlebacks' (we used them in Kosovo) this wasn't planned for or thought about.  Once the need developed, they have done everything they can to set it right.  Lastly, there were no armored humvees to deliver!   None, zero, nada.  It's kinda hard to deliver something to the troops that the gummint (sic) hasn't made yet.  Which leads into the other problem, the stupid gummint procurement system. ... FYI, in the interest of interservice rivalry, I haven't heard the Marines doing all this whining, unless I've missed it.  Army guys, tho, are used to having all the latest and greatest toys...   (This is why most Marines dislike the damn Army). 

Another friend, a paratrooper, who saw action in Afghanistan and Iraq:

We didn't have enough armored HMMWVs in Afghanistan, therefore instead of griping about the system, we …fabricated our own and "made do" with the materials that we had...sandbags and all....just like our fathers did in Vietnam.

There was one other opinion I obtained – from an interview in Stars and Stripes. An interview that was available on the internet for anyone who wanted to find it. This quote from Major Mark Paget, the battalion executive officer of the 7th Transportation Battalion who is currently stationed in theater and one who is responsible for the program of creatively modifying the vehicles. The italics are mine and were not included with the original article:

Maj. Mark Paget, the said there was no alternative when the battalion’s vehicles had to leave Kuwait and drive north last January...“We came up in soft skin vehicles. And we took hits,” he said. “We quickly realized we needed to do something fast...The battalion began a full-scale upgrade of every vehicle that would leave Anaconda, the supply heart of the mission....Paget said there is no one to blame for the lack of vehicles arriving in the theater, even 20 months after the war began....“We have a huge Army,” he said, and outfitting all of it will take time....Plus, the nature of warfare has changed, he said. His vehicles would normally be several miles behind the front lines, ferrying supplies to the front....In this war, he said, the front is everywhere. It simply takes time to adapt to the change....That’s why, he said, the 7th Transportation Battalion took the bull by the horns and addressed the problem its own way.

It is obvious that those who are directly involved with the Iraqi theater are not critical of Rumsfeld. This is why I question the motivation the critics who emailed me and who I have read or heard. They seemed to be more concerned about politics than people.