What happy coincidence!
In all seriousness, I'm glad the armouring is getting upped on the priority list, but the 'No, seriously, this is completely unplanned and not at all saving our asses' attempt to pass it off, very amusing to me.
WASHINGTON — Within 24 hours after a soldier from Nashville challenged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about armor shortages in Iraq, protective armor had been added to every vehicle in the soldier's unit, senior Army officers said yesterday.
Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes and Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, senior members of the Army's combat systems development and acquisition team at the Pentagon, said protective armor plates were added to the last 20 vehicles of the Tennessee-based 278th Regimental Combat Team's 830 vehicles shortly after the exchange with Rumsfeld.
The generals said it was part of routine, pre-deployment preparations in Kuwait before the unit proceeded into Iraq.
''When the question was asked, 20 vehicles remained to be up-armored at that point,'' Speakes said at a Pentagon briefing. ''We completed those 20 vehicles in the next day. ... In other words, we completed all the armoring within 24 hours of the time the question was asked.''
Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, 31, questioned Rumsfeld about armor shortages during a question-and-answer session in Kuwait last Wednesday, provoking roars of approval from about 2,300 military and civilian personnel attending the meeting. Wilson posed a question drafted with help from a reporter traveling with the unit, Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts.
''Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?'' asked Wilson, an airplane mechanic with the Tennessee Army National Guard unit. ''We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north.''
After asking Wilson to repeat the question, Rumsfeld replied: ''You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have.''
Wilson's question and Rumsfeld's answer quickly reached the White House, where President Bush defended the GI's right to ask the pointed question but insisted that the Pentagon was working to address shortages.
Speakes said Wilson may not have known that the Army was working under ''an existing program'' to add armor to the last of the unit's vehicles when he questioned Rumsfeld.
In response to the clamor provoked by Wilson's question, the Army on Friday revised a production contract with Armor Holdings Inc. to boost production of factory-built armored Humvees from 450 per month to 550 per month at its plant in Cincinnati.
Roughly half of the more than 1,300 U.S. troops killed and more than 9,750 wounded since March 19, 2003, have been victims of roadside bombs and ambush attacks on vehicles, many operating without fully encased, factory-installed armor and protective glass.
By the time Wilson's unit headed into Iraq, Speakes said, it had 252 vehicles with bolt-on armor plate produced as $7,000-$11,000 add-on kits in the United States and shipped to Kuwait for installation by soldiers.
An additional 459 vehicles had less protective, locally fabricated armor plate installed by GIs in Kuwait — armor known to GIs as ''hillbilly armor.'' Wilson's question referred to that type of ad hoc armor.
The unit picked up an additional 119 armored Humvees upon arrival in Iraq that had been left behind by departing combat units.
The Pentagon is spending $4.1 billion over the next year to add armor to vehicles in Iraq. Sorenson said 35,000 of them need armored protection, of which 29,000 have been funded by Congress.
