posted December 19, 2004 12:34 PM            

It should have been foreseen that terrorists would use IEDs and RPGs to blow up Humvees and supply trucks.

An IED is an Improvised Explosive Device, notice the word Improvised, using a device that was not intended or produced to be used in the way it was actually used.

The people squealing the loudest, including the leftist press are those without a single concern for American military forces, were against doing anything about Saddam Hussein in the first place and would have left him in power to continue his rape, torture and murder of Iraqi citizens and to later threaten his neighbors as soon as the bribed French, Germans, Russians and Chinese were able to get the UN sanctions and embargo lifted against Iraq. That was what they were bribed to do and to also resist any military action against Iraq.

Of course, according to the lying leftist press, there were and are not now any terrorists in Iraq. They're all native born Iraqi insurgents fighting for the freedom of their country against the imperial American military occupying forces.

This is the real story about military uparmoring of Humvees and other vehicles in Iraq. This is also a story missing from the lying leftist press and also missing from the lying lips of leftists in general.

The truth puts the lie to virtually every position the left has taken both before and during the war in Iraq. Positions which will be laid out in more detail on this thread and punctured one by one.

Sunday, Dec. 19, 2004 10:18 a.m. EST
Rumsfeld's Questioner Wrong About Unit's Armor

The reporter who managed to get a National Guardsman serving in Iraq to question Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about why his unit's vehicles lacked sufficient armor, coached the soldier using false information.

In fact, by the time Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts rehearsed Spc. Thomas "Jerry" Wilson on what to say to Rumsfeld, the Pentagon had already up-armored 97 percent of the vehicles in Thomas' 278th Regimental Combat Team, senior members of the Army's combat systems development and acquisition team said Thursday.

Further undermining the premise of Pitt's question, orders to up-armor the last 20 of the 278th's 830 vehicles were already in the pipeline when he engineered the bogus inquiry.

According to the Maryville, Tennessee Daily Times - a rival to Pitt's paper - Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes and Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson said during last week's Pentagon briefing that routine pre-deployment preparations before proceeding to Iraq included adding protective armor plates to the last 20 vehicles of the Tennessee-based 278th Regimental Combat Team's 830 vehicles.

"When the question was asked, 20 vehicles remained to be up-armored at that point," Gen. Speakes said, in comments completely ignored by the big media.

"We completed those 20 vehicles in the next day," he said. "In other words, we completed all the armoring within 24 hours of the time the question was asked," Gen. Speakes added.

The eye-opening revelations by Gen. Speakes and Gen. Sorenson first gained national exposure on FreeRepublic.com late Friday.

In a Dec. 8 exchange during a question and answer session in Kuwait, Spc. Wilson asked Rumsfeld, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?"

Unaware that Wilson's questioned was based on false information, the Defense Secretary replied: "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have."

Reporter Pitts later admitted that the idea to question Rumsfeld about the unit's armor was his, and that he thoroughly coached the National Guardsman on what to say.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/12/19/102144.shtml

Now, the question is; where in the lying leftist press is this story which is a wire story. I haven't seen it from the NY Times, The Christian Science Monitor, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, CNN, The LA Times, The Wall Street Journal or any other major news media.

But then, it is fatal to the impression they are attempting to palm off on their readers and viewers of an administration unconcerned about the physical safety and welfare of our forces in Iraq.

I would also point out to you that this unit was staged in Kuwait and had not crossed the border into Iraq and was not going to until all their vehicles were uparmored, including Humvees and supply vehicles. That was always the plan.

Armor installed within 24 hours of soldiers' complaint
2004-12-17
From Wire Reports

Senior Army officials told a wire service reporter Wednesday that within 24 hours of a soldier's complaint to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about shortages of vehicle armor in Iraq, protective armor had been installed on every vehicle in the soldier's unit.

According to a Hearst Newspaper report Thursday, Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes and Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, senior members of the Army's combat systems development and acquisition team at the Pentagon, said routine pre-deployment preparations before proceeding to Iraq included adding protective armor plates to the last 20 vehicles of the Tennessee-based 278th Regimental Combat Team's 830 vehicles.

``When the question was asked, 20 vehicles remained to be up-armored at that point,'' Hearst reporter Stewart M. Powell quoted Speakes as saying at a Pentagon briefing. '``We completed those 20 vehicles in the next day. ... In other words, we completed all the armoring within 24 hours of the time the question was asked.''

On Dec. 8, Spc. Thomas ``Jerry'' Wilson, 31, of Nashville, asked Rumsfeld why, after almost two years of war, soldiers were searching dumps for metal to weld on vehicles destined for hostile territory.

``Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?'' Wilson said.

The question appeared to surprise Rumsfeld and prompted cheers among the soldiers listening to him in a hangar. After asking Wilson to repeat the question, Rumsfeld replied: '``You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have.'``