Rumsfeld on the spot

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait (AFP) About 1,800 of the 10,000 troops at Camp Buehring gathered to hear the US defence chief say that Iraqis will have to take over their own security to allow foreign troops to leave after the January 30 election.

But one soldier was loudly cheered as he told Rumsfeld soldiers were "digging through landfills" to find scrap metal to bolster the hundreds of US trucks and other military vehicles that pour across the frontier into Iraq each day.

"Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up to three years, a lot of us are getting ready to move north pretty soon," said the soldier.

"Our vehicles are not armoured. We are digging up pieces of rusting scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that has already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best for our vehicles to take into combat.

"We do not have proper armour on our vehicles to carry with us north."

...

Rumsfeld replied that he had discussed security for US convoys on the way to the camp and that every available armoured vehicle from around the globe was being sent to Iraq.

"It is essentially a matter of physics, it is not a matter of money, it is not a matter on the part of the army of desire. It is a matter of production and capability of doing it."

Rumsfeld added: "As you know you go to war with the army you have not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

As if we didn't go to war at the exact time of our own choosing, with exactly the force structure he himself had specified, and had assured Congress would be more than sufficient.

Aside from the absurd notion that we somehow had to go to war with what we had available at the time, and hadn't been planning the invasion for months, just how would that explain why now, two years later, there is still a problem?

Rumsfeld said that after a recent security alert in Washington he had looked out of his Pentagon window to see about six Humvee armoured cars outside. "They are not there any more. They are en route out here I can assure you."

Assurances aside, is there any interpretation of these remarks that doesn't boil down to "We've been so unwilling or unable to understand the conflict or the supply needs of our forces that we now find ourselves scrambling, even pulling equipment away from defending the capital of the US"?

We're forced to move Humvees away from Washington, DC, and our troops are digging through Kuwaiti landfills, and this man was just enthusiastically re-hired? My brain hurts.

Hey, but "Suck it up, soldier!

Rumsfeld replied that troops should make the best of the conditions they face and said the Army was pushing manufacturers of vehicle armor to produce it as fast as humanly possible.

And, the defense chief added, armor is not always a savior in the kind of combat U.S. troops face in Iraq, where the insurgents' weapon of choice is the roadside bomb, or improvised explosive device that has killed and maimed hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops since the summer of 2003.

``You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up,'' Rumsfeld said.

So yes, we are scrambling as fast as humanly possible to get armor in theater, because it's obviously so important, but it's not like you really need it, because, you know, you could be blown to pieces no matter what you do.

'At-a-way to buck up the troops, Don! (What's next? "If you think about it, getting trapped here by that stop-loss order isn't so bad, because it's not like you're likely to live long enough to make it through another whole term anyway?")

I suppose only a real cynic might interpret his meaning as "Really, we've been content to allow a certain number of you guys blown to pieces, which is why the armor isn't already here, but now that our fig-leaf elections seem threatened, we've decided we might actually need to do something about it." No, that would be cynical.

And only a politically motivated hack would wonder whether this might suggest that Rummy's concept of lighter, faster, high-tech armed forces doesn't stand up when the enemy is a bunch of determined guys with cell phones and plastic explosive we let them steal.

Update: It seems like the actual full quote is "...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." If you think about it. And this was supposed to be a pep-talk?