SECDEF Visiting the troops
 

December 8, 2004
Troops Put Tough Questions to Rumsfeld
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 9:05 a.m. ET

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait (AP) -- Disgrunted U.S. soldiers complained to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumself on Wednesday about the lack of armor for their vehicles and long deployments, drawing a blunt retort from the Pentagon chief.

``You go to war with the Army you have,'' he said in a rare public airing of rank-and-file concerns among the troops.

In his prepared remarks earlier, Rumsfeld had 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 two years after the start of the war that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

``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 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.

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 metal 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.

A different perspective on the armor question

Marines

Major "fuck-up."
 

His replies just hurt us!

Guy,
Whose replies? SECDEF's?

From watching the story on the news, the young man from the NG that was complaining hasn't even been to Iraq yet. The unit is apparently in Kuwait preparing to go. The Marines in the article, on the other hand, are in the contested area around Fallujah.

So, we have one that hasn't been and is complaining about something they haven't seen yet and another that has been there and done that and says he's good to go.

I am simply amazed.

These are observations, not opinions.

SECDEF wanted questions from the troops and he got them. The guy had balls standing up and asking a question like that.

What came out of the Pentagon was more interesting to me. According to a Brigadier General, I can't remember his name, policy is all armored vehicles will be driven into Iraq, un-armored are supposed to be trailered in. Unfortunately, the trucks doing the trailering are not armored either.

I can't judge if Rumsfields' answers hurt us but I think he could have come up with something better. Maybe it wasn't the content but the way they were delivered.

My opinion is when an American soldier steps off the plane, his attitude and reputaion should scare the bejeebers out of any enemy. If he/she is worried about driving an unarmored vehicle then the average soldier is going to be at least a little leary of going into a war zone. I would guess that would affect their attitude.

I think that someone somewhere dropped the ball in that when they realized there was a problem with armor they could have at least made it/steel/whatever readily available to the units to at least do the work themselves.

If I had the funds I'd do it myself. I'm not looking forward to my son going back over there.

I know that being a soldier is a dangerous job. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything possible to make it a little safer.

I can't say it enough, stay safe out there.

Ok, go ahead with the fire mission. :eek:

NDD,
Check your PM in a few minutes.

No fire mission , one observation:

If the young man that ask the question has not indeed been to Iraq yet, he should have waited until he goes and sees for himself what the situation is instead of relying on second hand information or supposition. Now, he's going to look pretty silly if he relieves someone there in place and they give him a level 29 UAH as part of the turn over. In other words, he was worrying about a problem that isn't his yet.

That's true, NDD, but on the other hand, If that IED gets him before the turnover point someone is going to catch major hell.

I hadn't heard anything about the problem in a while and was under the assumption that it was rectified. Either way, it's a bad situation. And I hope you're at least driving a Volvo where you're at. :)

Just checking OPSEC issues before I posted.

May they serve well and come home safe.

The SecDef should have had better answers for the troops.

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?...&article=25928

Amen

Yes!
 

Read his reply to the NG troop again.

Yeah, I know. But that's a whole other issue. Personally, I ain't real keen on these little chats. No SECDEF ever asked me shit about what I thougfht back in the day. And CSMs and 1Sgts. had that shit unmder control.

I'm curious if SPC Thomas is willing to accept the huge tax increase on his LES that would accompany outfitting every soldier, sailor and airman in all the components with the very best armor, the very best gear, the very best MWR facilities, the very best...

Folks, the bottom line, regardless of what you think about the personalities involved, is that the chain of command has the responsibility to provide the resources needed for the execution of the mission. It also has the responsibility to ensure that the resources provided are used in the manner for which they were designed and that if you have mission requirements for which you do not have the appropriate resources you change the concept of the operation so that the troops have the greatest chance of mission success. You can bring a hand gun to a tank battle but your first shot better take out the TC.

Jack Moroney

I don't think the guy's asking for the "very best" of anything. He was asking for adequate equipment. Not a clue on how SPC Thomas might feel about a tax increase to cover that but I can tell you how I as the Wife of one soldier and Mother and Aunt to several soldiers and sailors feel about seeing a tax increase on that soldier husband of mine's LES. It would be fine with me. I can tell you for a fact that soldier boy's 8 year old son would be Jim Dandy with having a few less toys if it meant Dad was going to be safer in a war zone.

Spend my tax money on good stuff for the boys and cut out crap like federally funded parking lots in Alaska and you you won't hear a word from me or mine.

I like Sec Rumsfeld better than anyone else in Bush's Cabinet but his answer sucked. He can and should do better.

You do the best with what you have. Would you like to have more? Yup. Should the Chain of Command bust their ass to get you what you need? Certainly. However, unlike oranges, armored vehicles don't grow on trees. Maybe once you convince the US population to mobilize akin to WWII and convert commercial industry to producing war stocks, Joe will get everything he perceives as 'mission essential'. Further, what is this soldier's mission? Will he be regularly running convoys through high IED threat areas, or is he concerned that his one-time trip from Kuwait into Iraq before he spends a year manning a desk in the Green Zone might be mined? What would be considered 'adequate' equipment for his mission? I don't know the answer, and I'm guessing most of us here don't, because we're too far removed from the facts in this particular case. I do know that as a former soldier, had I ran my mouth like that to even my BDE CDR rather than use my chain of command, I would rightfully expect to be labeled a whiner and be smoked for the rest of my time in the unit.

Granted and also think that Army gripes need to be kept out of the media for the most part. However, Sec Rumsfeld did ask for questions which would seem like a good time to by-pass chain of command and get an important question some face time. I'm all for following the chain of command but there's something about it that reminds me of that game "telephone." The soldiers with boots on the ground say one thing but by the time it reaches the top it sound completely different.

As for John Q Public being convincd that it needs to mobilize "as if we actually were fighting a war" :rolleyes: I think stories like this one can do more good than harm. The more people understand what our Army is doing without the better it is for the soldiers. This makes me think of the following saying...


For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail."
-- Benjamin Franklin

Given this, I'm wondering if the question was actually a concern of the soldier, or if he was acting as a reporter's pawn to get his 15 minutes of fame:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6676765/

In a related development, it was revealed Thursday that a reporter claims to have helped the soldier prepare the question directed at Rumsfeld. The Poynter Institute, a news media think tank, published on its Web site an e-mail from reporter Edward Lee Pitts of the Chattanooga Times Free Press in which he explains how he worked with the soldier since he wasn't allowed to question Rumsfeld himself.


And from the cited website:

12/9/2004 11:40:00 AM
From: [Chattanooga Times Free Press military reporter] Pitts, Lee
Sent: Wednesday, December 8, 2004 4:44 PM
To: [Chattanooga Times Free Press staffers]
Subject: RE: Way to go

I just had one of my best days as a journalist today. As luck would have
it, our journey North was delayed just long enough see I could attend a visit today here by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. I was told yesterday that only soldiers could ask questions so I brought two of them along with me as my escorts. Before hand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat have. While waiting for the VIP, I went and found the Sgt. in charge of the microphone for the question and answer session and made sure he knew to get my guys out of the crowd.

So during the Q&A session, one of my guys was the second person called on. When he asked Rumsfeld why after two years here soldiers are still having to dig through trash bins to find rusted scrap metal and cracked ballistic windows for their Humvees, the place erupted in cheers so loud that Rumsfeld had to ask the guy to repeat his question. Then Rumsfeld answered something about it being "not a lack of desire or money but a logistics/physics problem." He said he recently saw about 8 of the special up-armored Humvees guarding Washington, DC, and he promised that they would no longer be used for that and that he would send them over here. Then he asked a three star general standing behind him, the commander of all ground forces here, to also answer the question. The general said it was a problem he is working on.

The great part was that after the event was over the throng of national
media following Rumsfeld- The New York Times, AP, all the major networks -- swarmed to the two soldiers I brought from the unit I am embedded with. Out of the 1,000 or so troops at the event there were only a handful of guys from my unit b/c the rest were too busy prepping for our trip north. The national media asked if they were the guys with the armor problem and then stuck cameras in their faces. The NY Times reporter asked me to email him the stories I had already done on it, but I said he could search for them himself on the Internet and he better not steal any of my lines. I have been trying to get this story out for weeks- as soon as I foud out I would be on an unarmored truck- and my paper published two stories on it. But it felt good to hand it off to the national press. I believe lives are at stake with so many soldiers going across the border riding with scrap metal as protection. It may be to late for the unit I am with, but hopefully not for those who come after.

The press officer in charge of my regiment, the 278th, came up to me
afterwords and asked if my story would be positive. I replied that I would write the truth. Then I pointed at the horde of national media pointing cameras and mics at the 278th guys and said he had bigger problems on his hands than the Chattanooga Times Free Press. This is what this job is all about - people need to know. The solider who asked the question said he felt good b/c he took his complaints to the top. When he got back to his unit most of the guys patted him on the back but a few of the officers were upset b/c they thought it would make them look bad. From what I understand this is all over the news back home.

Thanks,
Lee

For some reason I have the Bulge episodes of Band of Brothers running through my head like an 8 track tape. You know, the one where they go into plug the break through and they don't have any winter clothes or med supplies and they have to take the ammo from the guys that are retreating. All this after being at it so long.

And I keep thinking about the first guys into Korea and that first winter...

I hope that the embedded flak from the Chatanooga Times has his pimp hat and cane, and the troops realize that they were just used like whores.

Razor had it right.

There is exactly ONE manufacturer for uparmored HMMWVs in the U.S., and last I heard they were running round the clock to crank them out. Money did not appear to be an issue, production capacity was.

What an ass the reporter was. I hope the folks back home are proud of him. :rolleyes:

TR

Is O'Gara still the only ones making them?

O'Gara Hess & Eisenhardt

http://www.ogara-hess.com/military/W...ehicles/M1114/

Last time I heard they were. Not sure who is making the kits, but if you start adding weight without upgrades to the rest of the vehicle, you have an imperfect solution.

TR

The parent company has a tough time retaining top talent. I think they need to pay their employees more. :)

I could care less about the "solution", it was his SECDEF reply to the troops question!

I was working for Armor Group when they aquired O'Gara. They have a factory here and one of the few glass factories. We had a meeting with them and toured their factory here. Their salesmen were saying how hard it was to sell the cars, so I went out and sold 8 in 10 days. No commission for me :boohoo . The process is pretty cool. Glass is a critical path item.

They do good work. They have a sign up that says they've made ever POTUS car since Truman.

http://www.indystar.com/articles/4/200880-5704-010.html

Bayh has requested more armored Humvees for troops in Iraq

By Dan McFeely
dan.mcfeely@indystar.com
December 9, 2004


A soldier's complaint to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that there is a shortage of armored Humvees wasn't a surprise to Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind.

In October, Bayh wrote a letter to Rumsfeld asking him to provide an accurate estimate of how many Humvees the Army needed.

Humvees are manufactured by AM General in Mishawaka, Ind.; they are then sent to Ohio to be armored.

The military continues to change its requests and then blame the industry for not producing the up-armored Humvees fast enough, according to Meg Keck, a spokeswoman for Bayh.

Bayh could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

In October, Bayh called on the Department of Defense to ensure that all troops have armored vehicles and equipment needed to fight the war on terror, after learning that the Army was short 3,000 armored Humvees and needed $350 million to provide bolt-on armor kits to protect troops.

Bayh urged Rumsfeld to work with suppliers to speed production and delivery of the vehicles.

"Our brave men and women fighting overseas should never be without the equipment they need while they are fighting the war on terror," Bayh said at the time. "Once again, the Pentagon is short of the vehicle that our troops consider a Number One priority. These shortfalls and delays are unacceptable."

Bayh said that since May 2003, the Army's requirements for additional armored Humvees grew from 235 vehicles to more than 8,100 as of October. The workers at AM General and the other companies have increased production to meet each previous Army demand, Bayh said.

In May, Bayh pushed an amendment through the Armed Services Committee to provide an additional $610 million for the Army to purchase more armored Humvees and armor kits.

Like TR said, post-fielding (aka bolt-on) armor kits may provide ballistic protection, but if you don't have a more powerful engine/transmission, the extra weight slows you down considerably, causes the engine to overheat, wears out the drive train faster than normal, and generally suck. We had 'em in Bosnia; no one that had to use them regularly had anything good to say about 'em.

Somehow, I suspect that Senator Bayh's enthusiasm is more about bringing the bacon home than troop safety.

IMHO, he is no friend of the military.

TR

Patriot Performance Materials in Sanford, NC is manufacturing armor systems for the HMMWV's as well as the 5-tons. They are also supposedly retrofitting a hanger in Baghdad to perform the work on a DOD contract. I was made privy to this information a couple weeks ago while touring their manufacturing facility.

I do not know if it was completely accurate or him blowing smoke, but there were several HMMWV's in the shop that had undergone some extensive work and testing out at Range 37.

Crip

Going back a little, I have never agreed with the "citizen soldier" concept. I know I am in the minority on this and will probably be flamed.

I have nothing against the NG and reserves or regular units. The all have fine people in them and they sacrifice a lot when called on. Most of them do a good job.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but you are either a citizen or a soldier. When I was on an A Team, we were one tiny step from jail all the time when at home - mostly because we didn't sign the social contract. We had our own rules, the rules of the regiment like the man said. We didn't talk to reporters or even anybody that wasn't wearing a green hat unless it was to tell them to shut the fook up or get us another beer.

Downrange was a different story of course.

And we had rights - the right to STFU and do what the leadership said and the right to conduct the mission.

A lot of the citizen soldiers appear to be more citizen than soldier. And probably correctly so. I'm not sure its fair to ask a person to leave normal society, where he is protected and has rights and plays by their rules - to go to another society like ours. And the JAG guys and the non-combat leadership tries to make that line fainter and fainter every day. Nice people usually do well in society, They have lots of friends, they have cocktail parties, they go to the theater and on vacations.

I never really knew any nice people in Group or the Spec Ops coomunity in general. Not nice by regular society standards. Seems like everyone was always one step away from a fist fight (at a minimum) there was no slack for anything, you were judged and criticized constantly and the "teasing" could be merciless. (I really miss it all). I don't think I ever heard anyone say "Old so and so, he's a nice guy." Good guy yes, but not nice.

These kids seem to be under the mistaken impression that they matter, that they have rights as individuals. Soldiers are chess pieces. We are disposable (woe be unto him that abuses). Anyone that thinks they matter as an individual is sadly mistaken and needs to look for another hobby.

Group is the only place I ever heard even the clergy say, "Stop sniveling you cry baby!"

This whole concept of pay as you go, soldier on call is misguided for the kind of conflicts we have today. Anytime there is not a direct invasion of the US, there will be a significant group questioning the purpose. There will be those that want the benefits without having to pay the price. That think the recruiter owes them something. The dirty little wars need to be fought by people that like that kind of thing.

You don't read a lot about anti-war protests before the draftees started going to Vietnam. I don't remember a lot of picketing and handwringing over the Rangers and Operators in Somalia, Panama, Grenada, El Sal etc. Yes, there were protests, but about imperialism, not troop losses or armor. Nobody seems to get too upset when its just us. Maybe we need to look at that a little bit.

I agree 99.9998%, the exception being the 19th & 20th SF Groups.

There are other units in the RC/NG that are not SOF that are doing an outstanding job. While my former NG would not be one of them they do exist.

Well said NDD. I also think that it is all a matter of mind set. If you go outside on a quite evening, even where you are located, and listen closely you will hear a low wailing sound similiar to the sniveling of an army of rats eating onions and it is coming from Vermont. You cannot believe the wailing and sobbing over the deployment of about 1000 NG folks, many of them who joined only for the social aspect and the extra pay check. Now that it is time to pay the piper they are literally about to revolt. What is so disconceting is the total lack of understanding about what the military even is or what the troops are even about. What it has all basically come down to is the loss of family income while daddy and mommy are away slaying bad guys. It has nothing to do with service to the country or the fact that this is what military folks do. To listen to them you would think that Vermont has been stripped bare of its ability to defend itself from the French and Indians that are now bound to sweep down from Canada to avenge the loss of their fur trading routes. I can't actually fault the mind set in the guard up here, just look at what the marketing tells them. One weekend a month and one month a year, etc, etc, etc. Join up and we'll send you to college, etc, etc, etc. I had the opportunity (not that I wanted it) to do the advisor thing for the 12th SFG back in the early 80s. They had some good troops and some good teams, but it was a frigging social club. They spent more time figuring out where they were going to go to eat in the evening then they did training. They loved to jump, but hated to train seriously in some of the units. I broke their bubble the first weekend they all showed up for drill at the group headquarters when I closed down thier big old DZ and made them jump on a small horse farm where they actually had to manuever their chutes and walk for a mile to turn in their chutes. It took me a while to find the smallest acceptable DZ I could and I named it Cairn DZ. They thought it was because of the small piles of rocks they had to avoid, but actually it was because when I was surveying it I had my dog, a small Cairn Terrier, with me and she took a dump on it dead center. It took me almost 2 years to get them back on track at the headquarters and it was always an uphill battle. But, as I said, there were good teams also and well motivated but most still had that part time dedication for something that required a full time commitment. After the requirement for SFAS and full Q course requirements started for all components I saw a distinct change in force for the better, but you cannot turn off and on the warrior spirit and most of us are not accepted in polite society and from what I have seen I am glad I never will be accepted. I think the best example of what you are talking about from a personal perspective was when I processed thru the VA once I retired. After a battery of exams and tests they told me if I was going to be integrated back into society I needed to go back to school because I possessed neither the skills or the "social graces" that would enable me to succeed as a civilian. So I went back to school and terrorized the faculty to the point where I revamped their ideas to the point where they turned over some classes to me and did all that they could to get me thru the program so that they could get back to teaching theories and avoid application in the real world when it came to management and leadership. But I digress.

Jack Moroney

All the Terries I've spoken to here were over the moon to be deployed for Timor. Mind you, you have to do it for the love of it since the pay is something like $50NZ a day.

For those members here who are not fluent in Kiwi, I think you were referring to the Territorial Guard, the Commonwealth equivalent of the National Guard or Army Reserve here.

Mr. Moroney, I think that you have to admit that those citizen soldiers when they return will likely have a significantly different attitude than when they left, hopefully a more realistic one.

Besides, people in that part of the country have a long history of being strong willed and anti-government. :D

TR

Sorry guys, should have been clearer. TR is right, it's the Territorial Forces.

Mr. Moroney, damn that is a little formal.

It is not the citizen soldier's attitudes, they are fine. Guess I didn't make that clear but then I was still on my first cup of coffee. The whiners belong to the citizens who for the most part don't even know where SWA is and vote continuously for the only socialist (Bernie Sanders) in congress year after year. The last time I saw so much crying and wailing was when they found out that Lake Champlain's legendary monster "Champ" did not exist.

Jack Moroney-sole survivor of MR Moroney :)

Sir,
I would argue, albeit not having been there, that it is indeed the citizen soldier's attitudes, at least in this case.

Armor seems to be a good thing and I am in favor of increasing soldier survivability by all means. It seems there is a defensive mindset being embedded here. Friends have told accounts of IADs for vehicle ambush being to take cover behind the armored vehicles and wait for help. I have also been told the Marines have fewer ambushes because they have a different IAD.

It would seem to me that armor is the latest magic bullet.

I wonder what will be said when 99.9% of all vehicles are armored and the BGs use bigger devices and there are still KIAs? Didn't we lose some Abrams tanks? The most advanced armored vehicle on the planet? Haven't Strykers been lost to RPGs? The newset armored vehicle in the inventory?

The only sure I know of to keep the BG from killing me is to kill that bastard first. Or not be where he can get to me. They aren't saying much about this IED Task Force, but the concept seems sound and the way to go.

Let's get the handover done and get out.