The troops are getting fiesty

I guess they forgot to make them sign loyalty pledges... this is pretty amazing.

Also amazing are some of Rummy's incredibly lame responses to the soldiers' questions:

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.

Actually, you can do a LOT better job of going to war with the army you want... it's not like he had an ICBM pointed our way; we could have taken a little longer prior to the war to make the necessary components (and get more allies, and...).

And another thing: is Rummy dissing the troops by implying that he would have preferred a different army? SUPPORT THE TROOPS! SUPPORT THE TROOPS!

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.

This is about the lamest argument I have heard in a while... following this line of reasoning, why do we spend any money on armor for tanks? Why not have a big unarmored truck with a howitzer attached if we are going to take a damned-if-you-do attitude? Obviously this is about risk management, and placing humvees in military situations where they are not able to withstand the most common types of ordenance they are likely to face is the issue here... Rummy was clearly caught unawares to verbalize such an idiotic (even for him) argument.

But the Booby Prize on this one probably goes to Maj. Gen. Gary Speer:

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.

Huh? This has been an issue for months on end! Hell, it wasn't even really "news" to many people when 60 Minutes did a piece on it a couple months ago...

Either the guy is flat out lying (most probable) or our intelligence regarding our own military is scarily lacking... I prefer to believe the former.