Rumsfeld to Troops: Go Fuck Yourself

I'm sure you've all seen those wonderful ribbons on everyone's cars lately - Support Our Troops (and the nationalistic but only tangentially related God Bless America ribbons).

Well, apparently Rummy, our civilian in chief over at the Pentagon, hasn't seen them yet, because during a surprisingly frank Q & A with the troops, he basically told the troops where they could stick their concerns about inadequate supplies:

Disgruntled U.S. soldiers complained to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday about the lack of armor for their vehicles and long deployments, drawing a blunt retort from the Pentagon chief.

``You go to war with the Army you have,'' he said in a rare public airing of rank-and-file concerns among the troops.

Strong words from the man who rejected the idea that we would need upwards of 200,000 troops on the ground to properly secure the country.

Rumsfeld even whipped out some of his infamous Rumsfeldian-Kung-Fu-Poetry to confuse the troops (its kinda like Star Wars when Obi Wan and Luke are in Mos Isley and Obi Wan uses The Force on the Storm Troopers to let them pass):

``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 replied that troops should make the best of the conditions they face and said 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 that has killed and maimed hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops since the summer of 2003.

``You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up,'' Rumsfeld said.

Wow, so the guy in charge of "transforming our military for the 21st Century" thinks its OK for troops not to have armored vehicles that can protect them from bullets and shrapnel, some roadside bombs and just general bad and deadly things thrown at them because some of the weapons/tactics (not all) used by the insurgents are powerful enough to kill them no matter what armor the army provides.

I bet that's cost efficient as hell. (Oh yeah, and what was all that hub-bub about stolen explosives again?)