[A-List] US military: surprise attack on Rumsfeld

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Rumsfeld given a grilling by soldiers
WILLIAM TINNING
The Herald, December 09 2004

DONALD Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, yesterday faced tough questioning
by US soldiers in Iraq concerned about the poor state of their equipment and
the length of their stay in the country.

During a visit to Camp Buehring, 12 miles south of the Iraqi border in
Kuwait, one soldier told him troops were being forced to root through
rubbish to reinforce their armoured vehicles.

Thomas Wilson, a US Army specialist, who is preparing to head back to the
war zone within days with his regiment, said: "Why do we soldiers have to
dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised
ballistic glass to armour our vehicles? We do not have the proper armour for
our vehicles to carry us north."

His question brought cheers from about 2000 fellow soldiers - mostly Reserve
and National Guard troops - who assembled in an aircraft hangar to hear a
pep talk given by the defence secretary about the significance of the task
ahead of them.

Mr Rumsfeld replied: "You go to war with the army you have," before offering
some little reassurance that discussions had been held with military
commanders about the pace at which vehicles were being armoured for service
in Iraq, where US vehicles are attacked with roadside bombs, grenades, or
gunfire almost daily.

The defence secretary made his comments as fresh claims of a prisoner abuse
cover-up in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay hit the US military.

Documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained
them under the US freedom of information act, claimed that intelligence
officials who questioned harsh interrogation tactics in Iraq were threatened
into silence by US special forces soldiers.

The documents also claimed FBI objections to questionable interrogation
methods at Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, were dismissed by the Pentagon.

They are the latest piece of a jigsaw, which human rights campaigners say
proves that the US adopted a policy of abusing or torturing prisoners for
information.

The claims emerged on the same day Tony Blair appeared to reject calls by
leading figures in British society for an independent inquiry into the
number of civilian deaths in Iraq.

A report, published in the Lancet, put the figure at almost 100,000 since
the outbreak of hostilities in March last year. Mr Blair said figures from
the Iraqi ministry of health, which are substantially less, gave the most
accurate survey of civilian deaths.

Mr Blair's comments followed an open letter to him yesterday from 46
signatories, including ex-ambassadors, former senior military figures, and
two bishops, calling for an inquiry.

Replying to a demand by Alistair Carmichael, Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney
and Shetland, in the House of Commons, that Britain must hold a full
independent inquiry to comply with international legal obligations, Mr Blair
said: "I don't accept that . . . figures from the Iraqi ministry of health,
which are a survey of the hospitals there, are in our view the most accurate
survey that there is."

On a visit to Basra yesterday, Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, played
down the prospect of fresh deployments of British troops into the
American-controlled sector of Iraq.

Meeting members of the Black Watch recently returned from their
controversial mission supporting US forces at Camp Dogwood, Mr Hoon
described the Perth-based battalion's deployment to central Iraq as an
"exceptional" situation.

He added that the UK forces had received no further requests for British
troops to go into the American zone.