[Marxism] Rumsfeld challenged by GIs heading for Iraq

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

These questions -- obviously prompted by the opening provided by the
army's decision not to court-martial
soldiers in Iraq who had refused a mission in inadequately armored
vehicles (inadequately armored given the level of combat with the
national resistance) -- are the tip of the iceberg of dissent in the
military.

This issue is the safest avenue for beginning to pose the question of
whether this fight is worth dieing for.

Never, ever forget that willingness to die for a cause is a very basic
human characteristic, and not one specially lacking in the people of the
U.S. You can see why the army thought it was important to court-martial
those soldiers, and why their inability to do so was a blow to the war.
Fred Feldman




Rumsfeld faces tough questions from troops

Defense chief speaks to soldiers heading to Iraq

Wednesday, December 8, 2004 Posted: 12:11 PM EST (1711 GMT)



CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait (AP) -- After delivering a pep talk designed to
energize troops preparing to head for Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld got a little "talking to" himself from disgruntled soldiers.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld speaks to troops in Kuwait on
Wednesday.

In his prepared remarks, Rumsfeld 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 three years after the war
in Iraq.

"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, "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.

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.

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.

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.






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