…for speaking up!
Check out this New York Times article (you’ll need to sign-up but it’s worth it) in which some of our troops busted Rumsfeld’s ass about equipment shortages:
Specialist Thomas Wilson, a scout with a Tennessee National Guard unit set to roll into Iraq this week, was the first to step forward, saying that soldiers had had to scrounge through landfills here for pieces of rusty scrap metal and bulletproof glass - what they called “hillbilly armor” - to bolt to their trucks.
And later in the story:
Col. John Zimmerman, the staff judge advocate, or legal adviser, for the 278th combat team, said that the unit’s Humvees were sufficiently armored, but that most of its heavy trucks were not. He said Army supply officials had given the unit 70 tons of steel plates to attach to vehicles, but that it was not enough.Colonel Zimmerman suggested that the Army would not have let this happen to an active-duty unit about to deploy into Iraq. “We’ve got two Armies,” he said. “We’ve got the active-duty and we’ve got the National Guard. We’re proud to serve. We just want what everyone else has. We’re not asking for anything more.”
When asked about the soldiers’ complaints, General Whitcomb’s deputy, Maj. Gen. Gary D. Speer, acknowledged that many vehicles would head north into Iraq without the bulletproof windshields or the Kevlar flooring that protect against bombs. General Speer, echoing Mr. Di Rita, said many vehicles were not armored because they would be assigned duties in headquarters compounds where there is virtually no threat of roadside bombs.
General Speer said a special unit here removes the extra armor from vehicles that have left Iraq and attaches it to vehicles going into the country. “There’s a lot of people working around the clock to meet the concerns those soldiers raised.”
Colonel Zimmerman said he appreciated the efforts by Army supply officials here, but he and his troops said they could not help fuming at the sight of the fully “up-armored” Humvees and heavy trucks put on display here for Mr. Rumsfeld’s visit.(emphasis added)
Did you check out that last part? Yeah, all of those pretty pictures you see on the telly of our troops decked out to the nines are basically staged.