[Media-watch] Rumsfeld faces tough questions from troops - CNN - 8/12/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/12/08/rumsfeld.troops.ap/index.html

Rumsfeld faces tough questions from troops
Defense chief speaks to soldiers heading to Iraq
Wednesday, December 8, 2004 Posted: 8:24 AM EST (1324 GMT)


CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait (AP) -- After delivering a pep talk designed to 
energize troops preparing to head for Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald 
Rumsfeld got a little "talking to" himself from disgruntled soldiers.

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

Some of soldiers, however, had criticisms of their own -- not of the war 
itself but of how it is being fought.

Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, for example, of the 278th Regimental Combat Team 
that is comprised mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee Army National 
Guard, asked Rumsfeld in a question-and-answer session why vehicle armor is 
still in short supply, nearly three years after the war in Iraq.

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap 
metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Wilson 
asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the 
cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.

Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.

"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson said 
after asking again.

Rumsfeld replied that, "You go to war with the Army you have," not the one 
you might want, and that any rate 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.

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

Asked later about Wilson's complaint, the deputy commanding general of U.S. 
forces in Kuwait, Maj. Gen. Gary Speer, said in an interview that as far as 
he knows, every vehicle that is deploying to Iraq from Camp Buehring in 
Kuwait has at least "Level 3" armor. That means it at least has locally 
fabricated armor for its side panels, but not necessarily bulletproof 
windows or protection against explosions that penetrate the floorboard.

Speer said he was not aware that soldiers were searching landfills for scrap 
mental and used bulletproof glass.

During the question-and-answer session, another soldier complained that 
active-duty Army units sometimes get priority over the National Guard and 
Reserve units for the best equipment 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 against the National Guard and 
Reserve in terms of providing equipment, Rumsfeld said.

Yet another soldier asked, without putting it to Rumsfeld as a direct 
criticism, how much longer the Army will continue using its "stop loss" 
power to prevent soldiers from leaving the service who are otherwise 
eligible to retire or quit.

Rumsfeld said that this condition was simply a fact of life for soldiers at 
time of 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."

In his opening remarks, Rumsfeld stressed that soldiers who are heading to 
Iraq should not believe those who say the insurgents cannot be defeated or 
who otherwise doubt the will of the military to win.

"They say we can't prevail. I see that violence and say we must win," 
Rumsfeld said.