On the murdering bastard Rumsfeld and the "planted" armor question...

[Career Prole]

The reason the right-wing isn't jumping up and down in false indignation and outrage over this "duplicitousness of the liberal media" is very plain to anyone with a functioning memory.

The right wants this story to die a quick, quiet death.
Don't you let it!

When people with intact brains read this today...

WASHINGTON - The Army entered negotiations with an armor manufacturer Friday in an effort to accelerate production of armored versions of the Humvee to get them to the troops more quickly, Army and company officials said.

Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey spoke with officials at Armor Holdings, Inc., based in Jacksonville, Fla., who told him Friday they could increase production by up to 100 vehicles a month.

Army officials had previously believed the factory was working at capacity until the company told the news media Thursday that it could make more. Democrats immediately criticized the Bush administration for not boosting production sooner.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041211/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/armored_humvees


...they should have also remembered reading about this eight months ago...

PFC John Hart told his father about the threat, but there was little he could do. "John had called a week before he was killed (in an ambush late last year), whispering on the phone how he and his buddies felt exposed in these unarmored vehicles, and how they felt it was only a matter of time before they got hurt," Brian Hart told Newhouse News Service. "They're out there completely exposed. The enemy knows how to hit these unarmored Humvees, and the only people really not aware of the problem are the American people."

The military admits it was unprepared for this threat, "and so this is an area where you cannot fix it overnight," said Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff. Or even over months, the general could have added. It was last August when the Army considered adding armored doors to Humvees in Iraq, but it took four months to start manufacturing door kits. They won't be finished until May.http://www.saintpetersburgtimes.com/2004/02/24/Opinion/Protect_our_soldiers.shtml


...that claim of being caught unprepared is a complete fabrication there as well, because two months before that story they faced this embarrassment...

When members of the Army Reserve's 428th Transportation Company were called to active duty in Iraq, they looked at the vehicles they would take with them. They looked at the headlines out of the war zone, which told of sniper attacks and roadside bombs. And they looked back at their vehicles.

Their 5-ton trucks and Humvees are outfitted for drills in the Midwest. They have thin metal floorboards. Some doors are no more than a sheet of canvas.
<snip>

They found a local steel fabricator to build steel plates to fit over the floorboards and inside the doors. A local funeral home, not wanting the unit's members' business, stepped forward to pay for the modifications.

But when they reached Fort Riley, Kan., to prepare for shipping out, the Army had a blunt reaction: No.

The steel panels, you see, weren't Army issue. They hadn't been tested by the Army. The Army is working on its own changes, which officials say should be completed by summer 2005. Could the members of the 428th please try to stay alive until then?
http://springfield.news-leader.com/opinions/ourview/1231-Reservesin-256372.html


The funding for the armor kits was unpardonably put off until the FY2005 budget!

Section 112 -
Earmarks specified Army procurement funds for the procurement of: (1) up-armored high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles; and (2) wheeled vehicle ballistic add-on armor protection. Requires: (1) the Secretary of the Army to allocate the earmarked funds between the two procurements; and (2) at least 15 days' advance notice to the defense and appropriations committees prior to such allocation.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h108-4200

So when the garden variety out-of-the-loop freepers out there bitch to you about Rumsfeld being "tricked", be sure to remind them just how long that murdering little bastard has known about this...and let's all stop letting them pretend like this is something that "just came up".
:grr:

[agitprop]

1. .

I'm still confused as to why this got MM coverage

[agitprop]

2. usually

they'll ignore something like this alltogether

[MichiganVote]

3. And WHO made the biggest stink about armor during the campaign

Um.. would that be the Republicans? Yes, I thought so.

[Career Prole]

8. Yup...that was their baby.

Kerry kept decrying the lack of armor but you pretty much had to go to his website to find that out.
The only thing that got mainstream ink was the "87 billion"...
and no, freepers, the "87 billion" is not the reason humvees lack armor still.
Every spending bill for the war you asked for passed.
Your people just didn't think armor was important.
Halliburton, now...that was crucial to the war effort.

[donhakman]

4. Watching the entire episode was revealing

Don said he didn't hear the first part of the question then said to settle down, I.m just an old man and its early in the morning.
He spun an answer saying it was a matter of physics and not the fault of suppliers or military orders.

Keep passing around the Daily show version of this incident.
It is priceless.

[KC21304]

7. Rumsfeld, you're not only old, you're senile. Get out ! nt

[Career Prole]

10. I've not heard it, I've just read about it.

I believe one of the Rummy rationalizations went roughly like this...
"It doesn't matter how much armor you have...when your number's up, your number's up."
Something sort of like God Is My Armorer?

I long to see this bunch in the docket. They so richly deserve it.

[LoZoccolo]

5. I imagine the reporter felt he /had/ to get the other guy to ask...

...because he couldn't ask the question himself - either he wouldn't be allowed to or didn't want to face the consequences the administration might lay down if he stepped out of line. So fuck 'em - this is what they get when they try to control the media; I don't give a fuck and applaud the reporter for his ingenuity. He should get a journalism award for this.

[Career Prole]

11. There should be more reporters just like him, IMO.

You're absolutely right. :thumbsup:

[KC21304]

6. I would say it is the American people and the

troops who have been "tricked" big time and I don't think Rumsfeld would want to go there. And I'm not talking about armor.

[illbill]

9. Daily Show

Jon Stewart gave the best bio on Rumsfeld awhile ago. All of his incoherent speeches and hand gestures. :)

[Sara Beverley]

12. It's not the question that's the problem; it's the answer!

I don't care if my grandmother asked the question. Rumsfeld's response is the real problem. If I were a parent of one of the dead or maimed from Iraq invasion, I would be organizing a huge family group to take to the air waves, the WH, and the streets to demand that Rumsfeld be fired!!

[Career Prole]

14. The problem with the question is that it's been asked many times

over the course of the war, and every time it comes up they act as if it's a recent development. This incident in Kuwait was just the latest iteration.
Since the first time it was asked many have died and many more were maimed strictly because they've never addressed it, and they ought to be jailed for that.

[MichiganVote]

13. If I were a welder, I'd weld together a scrap metal coffin for Rummy

[Career Prole]

15. Speaking of welding, my buddy at work has a nephew who just returned

from a tour in Iraq.
Nearly a year ago he says they tried armoring their own humvees using local Iraqi welders and scrap.
The soldiers were happy, the newly employed Iraqis were happy, yet the Army made them stop.
:shrug:

[MichiganVote]

16. He should be taking to the media. Well maybe, maybe not.

[Career Prole]

20. That's what I think, but he doesn't want to.

There's another issue he doesn't want coming to light of which he's not so proud.

[Nordic]

17. when, oh when, can we start sending people to jail for this shit?

It's just the saddest most godawful thing that people are having their sons KILLED because of these idiots.

Just tragic and wrong and it doesn't have to be that way. These people should NOT be in power, we could TAKE them out of power, but everybody's too fucking STUPID in this country to do anything, they'd rather sit back, eat their fucking pork rinds and watch Pox News.

Disgusting as all hell. What an embarrassment to the country and to the human race as a whole.

[Career Prole]

21. Sons and daughters...

I remember seeing a Holly Geough mentioned as one of the many victims of this particular bit of criminal negligence.

[Pluvious]

18. And then Dumsfield did say unto us...

"I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know, and that's a good thing...."

[Javaman]

19. Wasn't part of, the, now famous 87 billion dollar, request for Iraq...

Include armor for the troops? Isn't that what those fucking moron repukes were squawking about when they talk about Kerry not voting for it?
So, let me get this straight, if it didn't pass, they troops wouldn't have gotten the armor, however it did pass, and the still didn't get the armor!!!
Fuck the repukes and the horse they road in on!!! just plane bastards.

[Career Prole]

22. Somebody got something, sure enough.

But "the shaft" should be cheaper than $87 billion.