Rumsfeld - This is really disgusting!

[LadyEagle]

Merry Christmas, Galatian. I agree with you.

To the rest of you - PLEASE QUIT SCREAMING!!! YOU'RE HURTING MY EARS!

And...

Merry Christmas and Happy Channukah!

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

LE,

There is only one person in here screaming.

Merry Christmas everyone, and to all a good night!!!!

God Bless us All, Everyone!!!!!!

Joseph Botwinick

 

[DavidFWhite3]

Originally posted by Joseph_Botwinick:
I think he is doing a good job and should stay.

Joseph Botwinick

Doing a good Job?

1: Not properly assesing what would be required to win the war and secure the peace in Irag is not doing a good job. I know for fact that Rumsy did not listen to the foremost experts the Army has regarding this matter.(I personally know high ranking personnel who do the research before the fighting ever starts who told their superiors it will take at least 250,000 soldiers to properly do this job.) He wanted to show off his belief that the new High Tech Army could do a complete job. ALL evidence proves him wrong! Wrong! and Wrong!

2. Not seeing to it that the Armed Forces had the proper equipment for the task at hand, resulting in needless deaths and casulties.

The guy is a disaster.

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

Originally posted by DavidFWhite3:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Joseph_Botwinick:
I think he is doing a good job and should stay.

Joseph Botwinick

Doing a good Job?

1: Not properly assesing what would be required to win the war and secure the peace in Irag is not doing a good job. I know for fact that Rumsy did not listen to the foremost experts the Army has regarding this matter.(I personally know high ranking personnel who do the research before the fighting ever starts who told their superiors it will take at least 250,000 soldiers to properly do this job.) He wanted to show off his belief that the new High Tech Army could do a complete job. ALL evidence proves him wrong! Wrong! and Wrong!</font>[/QUOTE]Are you talking about the guys in the state department? Rumsfeld listened to the only military advisers who really matter right now, IMO, and those are the commanders and Generals on the scene. He has done a good job.

2. Not seeing to it that the Armed Forces had the proper equipment for the task at hand, resulting in needless deaths and casulties.

The guy is a disaster. [/QUOTE]

According to the latest reports I have seen, this might not be true either. Go back a page or two, I think. I already posted a link to this issue.

Merry Christmas!

Joseph Botwinick

 

[DavidFWhite3]

Originally posted by Joseph_Botwinick:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by DavidFWhite3:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Joseph_Botwinick:
I think he is doing a good job and should stay.

Joseph Botwinick

Doing a good Job?

1: Not properly assesing what would be required to win the war and secure the peace in Irag is not doing a good job. I know for fact that Rumsy did not listen to the foremost experts the Army has regarding this matter.(I personally know high ranking personnel who do the research before the fighting ever starts who told their superiors it will take at least 250,000 soldiers to properly do this job.) He wanted to show off his belief that the new High Tech Army could do a complete job. ALL evidence proves him wrong! Wrong! and Wrong!</font>[/QUOTE]Are you talking about the guys in the state department? Rumsfeld listened to the only military advisers who really matter right now, IMO, and those are the commanders and Generals on the scene. He has done a good job.

No. I am talking about the people in the United States Army that are specifically trained to analize the situation before we go in. I am not making this up. He ignorted the very people we train to give him the right advice. He simply blew it.

2. Not seeing to it that the Armed Forces had the proper equipment for the task at hand, resulting in needless deaths and casulties.The guy is a disaster. </font>[/QUOTE]According to the latest reports I have seen, this might not be true either. Go back a page or two, I think. I already posted a link to this issue.

.


Merry Christmas!

Joseph Botwinick [/QUOTE]

The facts are in. Our guys are getting killed because they have been asked to perform in situations that require equipment they do not have

Merry Christmas to you too. And I hope our boys can be home by next year.

Dave

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

The "facts" as presented by the media were not all that correct.

I hope we can get them back as soon as possible. I am not, however, willing to end the war prematurely and undermine the mission and work of these soldiers who have fought and died for freedom in Iraq.

Joseph Botwinick

 

[DavidFWhite3]

Originally posted by Joseph_Botwinick:
The "facts" as presented by the media were not all that correct.

I hope we can get them back as soon as possible. I am not, however, willing to end the war prematurely and undermine the mission and work of these soldiers who have fought and died for freedom in Iraq.

Joseph Botwinick

Glad you brought this up because I agree regarding the mission. The media is not making up the statistics. The satisctics are important. But I agree that we must finish the job now that we are there and so firmly entrenched. It would be a crime to leave Iraq in such a shambles that all that would come out of it would be another strong man dictatorship with no commitment to human rights and dignity. I think Bush should put aside his blind commitment to Rumsfeld, and concentrate more on his commitment to our troops.

Dave

 

[The Galatian]

We don't need to end the war. We need to get competent leadership to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion without unnecessary casualties.

That is a job too big for Rumsfeld to get his arms around. We need someone competent.

Lady Eagle, I might have guessed...

Gen hannon, Elthuron.

[ December 23, 2004, 09:44 PM: Message edited by: The Galatian ]

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

Originally posted by The Galatian:
We don't need to end the war. We need to get competent leadership to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion without unnecessary casualties.

That is a job too big for Rumsfeld to get his arms around. We need someone competent.

At least 52% of America voted last month that the leadership is competent in the election. Many of those votes came straight from soldiers in Bagdad. Kerry and his ideas lost. We won.

Merry Christmas!

Joseph Botwinick

 

[The Galatian]

I dunno, Joseph. When one of the troops got up and reamed out Rummy for his incompetence, he got an ovation from the rest of the troops.

They tend to be conservative, but they aren't stupid.

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

It now appears that the premise of the question that caused an uproar around Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was off base. In Kuwait two weeks ago, Army Specialist Thomas Wilson (search) told Rumsfeld, "our vehicles are not armored ... We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north [into Iraq]."

But, according to senior Army officers, about 800 of the 830 vehicles in Wilson's army regiment — the 278th Cavalry — had already been up-armored when he asked the question. What's more, 20 vehicles remaining to be modified were in the process of being up-armored — and that was completed within 24 hours of Wilson's question.

web page

 

[Baptist in Richmond]

Originally posted by The Galatian:
We don't need to end the war. We need to get competent leadership to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion without unnecessary casualties.

That is a job too big for Rumsfeld to get his arms around. We need someone competent.

Merry Christmas, Galatian.

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vppay124081263dec12,0,1417569.column?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines

 

[The Galatian]

Merry Christmas to you, too. I sincerely hope Rumsfeld learns from this, and does the right thing next time, before it kills people.

I will agree, Joseph, that Rumsfeld did belatedly do the right thing. That's not good enough. It's time for Rummy to find a job he can handle.

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

Nope. The premise of the question was flawed as the vehicles were already being uparmoured as the question was being asked. Take a look at it again.

Merry Christmas.

Joseph Botwinick

 

[KenH]

All of this carping against Secretary Rumsfeld is simply because that anti-war folks can't stand the fact that President Bush won re-election. Regardless of what Mr. Rumsfeld did or didn't do they would be criticizing him.

Sometimes you have wonder if these anti-war folks really want to see their nation succeed in Iraq.

 

[Baptist in Richmond]

Of course we want to see our nation succeed in Iraq. That is the quickest way to get our troops home, where they belong.

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

The armor helps, but the Army's IED Task Force also has helped. "While armor provides protection, it is not the be-all and end-all for security," said Army Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a DoD spokesman. "The Army's IED Task Force and the Center for Army Lessons Learned have provided as much, if not more, protection for our forces by sharing tactics, techniques and procedures to help counter IED attacks."

Officials would not be specific about the contributions of the organizations – they don't want to provide information to the enemy. But another Pentagon official said, "We have saved more lives with tactics, techniques and procedures than with armor."

Armored Humvees, Tactics Address IED Threats

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

The issue of the trucks that our soldiers are driving in, and that are prepared, for a large part, correction in Kuwait before they move forward in Iraq, is a good news story. I can tell you that the last full brigade that deployed into Iraq about six weeks ago, the 256th Infantry, almost a thousand wheeled vehicles, just a little short of 1,000 wheeled vehicles had some level of armor protection on them -- the level one, the level two or the level three. Those wheeled vehicles that did not have some level of protection were loaded on military trucks and they were trucked up into Iraq, so they were not driven by soldiers. That is our objective for units that are preparing to deploy -- the 278th Brigade Combat Team out of Tennessee and the 116th Infantry out of Idaho and a couple of states in that area. Our goal in what we're working towards is that no wheeled vehicle that leaves Kuwait going into Iraq is driven by a soldier that does not have some level of armor protection on it.



Now some of these units are in fact going up and replacing units already in Iraq, already operating. And those units that are already forward have level-one and level-two vehicles. They will -- those vehicles will stay in Iraq. They will not come back to Kuwait. And so what we're doing is we're providing vehicles going forward. They will fall in on the better armor that's already there, in addition to what we provided them before they've gone forward.



Does that get to your question?



Q Yes, sir. Just a brief follow-up. You say that -- I believe you said 4,500 -- you suggested 4,500 trucks have been fixed so far. Figures released by the House Armed Services Committee suggest that that's only about half of the trucks in Iraq. Is that true?



GEN. WHITCOMB: We've got about -- and I'm not going to get down into the sevens and eights, because I would be wrong surely, but I'm going to give you some pretty close approximations. We've got about 30,000 wheeled vehicles in our theater -- in Iraq and Afghanistan and other areas that CFLCC and Central Command operate. Of that 30,000 vehicles, around a little less than 8,000 of them do not have some type of armor protection on them -- level one, two or three. Of those vehicles that don't, some number of them are things like tool trucks, communication vans or vehicles that don't leave the base camp. In other words, they're trucked up into Iraq -- or in cases before what we're doing now, were driven up into Iraq -- and they go onto a base camp, and that's where they spend most of their time.



Now who makes the decision what goes off at base camp? That becomes a commander -- the tactical commander's call. And I can tell you that while I'm not a tactical commander in Iraq or Afghanistan, I know them and I know what they do. They do an assessment every time that they've got a combat mission in which their forces go off the base, and they assess what type of vehicle goes, who leads it, whether it's got track vehicles with it as protection or helicopters. Those are all, as you know, the types of things that go into those kinds of tactical decisions.



So I said about 4,500. Yeah, I think that's right in the neighborhood. But the more important figure is the approximate 30,000 and the numbers that we have up-armored. And that continues to climb.

Special Defense Department Briefing on Armored Vehicles

 

[LadyEagle]

All of this carping against Secretary Rumsfeld is simply because that anti-war folks can't stand the fact that President Bush won re-election. Regardless of what Mr. Rumsfeld did or didn't do they would be criticizing him.

Good Grief, Ken. That's simply not true! Grief. The Carping is because of BLUNDER AFTER BLUNDER AFTER BLUNDER! Need we list them again? Shall I start with Afghanistan again?

(Remember, Galatian, how I used to harp back then? Galatian probably remembers my posts - I'm sure they are cyberdust by now.)

 

[KenH]

Then if you were back in World War II I guess you would have been carping at Eisenhower, Patton, et al.

All battle plans pretty much go out the window once the first shot is fired. You carpers would do well to read histories of World War I and World War II so you can understand this.