Rummy to troops: suck it up

Rumsfeld Gets Earful From Troops (washingtonpost.com):

'A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon,' said Wilson, an airplane mechanic with the Tennessee Army National Guard, according to a transcript of the meeting released by the Pentagon. 'Our vehicles are not armored. We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up . . . picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper . . . vehicles to carry with us north.'

Rumsfeld replied: 'As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.'

According to Larry DiRita, the article continues:

The Army is moving to produce as many armored Humvees as it can, he added. In the fall of 2003, there were only 15 made each month, he said, but after the need for more became clear, the rate of production was boosted to 450 a month.

Let's examine this. We knew we were going to war probably as early as the fall of 2002. The Rumsfeld and Cheney "doctrine" was that this would be a cake-walk and that we would be "greeted as liberators". Most of those in the "reality-based" world, including Powell and Shinseki, thought at the time that this was a recipie for disaster. But their input was discounted and cavalierly discarded by Rumsfeld and ultimately by Dubya. There were plenty of signs that despite the declaration of "mission accomplished" in May 2003, that the situation on the ground was getting progressively worse by the day and that the U.S. military was in for the long-haul. Yet, because the idiots in the Whitehouse and Pentagon refused to be distracted by inconvenient "facts", the lack of preparation and planning continued until late in the Fall of 2003. Of course, you don't just ramp-up production quotas from 15 to 450 over night. A sensible reporter would have asked for production numbers beginning in the fall of 2003 when DiRita says they boosted production. It might have made sense to also ask about the rates at which the deployed units were being blown-up, rendering certain quantities of increased production capacity as just maintaining the status quo.

The real problem with Rummy's response to the troops is that he doesn't appologize for his failure to plan effectively, he basically just tells them "shit happens, suck it up". No wonder recruitment efforts for the all-volunteer army are inadequate.

Despite the fact that Rumsfeld has been the most inept cabinet member of the Bush administration, Rummy is one of the few Doofus is keeping on for his next term!

[Update: Apparently, the NYT editorial staff share this opinion.]