Soldiers Talk Back Live to Rummy

Posted on December 8, 2004

Camp Buehring, Kuwait was the setting for an amazing piece of theater -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was on a morale-building trip and (ill-advisedly) decided to take questions from the troops in front of reporters. But instead of the kinds of questions President Bush got during his controlled campaign appearances, Rummy got a doozy of a question from Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, which consists mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee Army National Guard.

Specialist Wilson asked "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?" A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.

Nonplussed by the question, Rummy asked him to repeat it. "We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Spc. Wilson said after asking again. The Defense Secretary's response? "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can [still] be blown up." Well then, that settles it.