I have to address this because I was part of the 278th ACR when Rummy made his remarks about “going to war with the Army you’ve got” in Kuwait.
Look, the big issue was that we had been at Camp Shelby for months getting ready and during all that time nothing had been done to up-armor our vehicles. We had brand-new LMTVs, straight from the factory, it was known well in advance that they were going with us to Iraq, but no one in that process though “hey-maybe we should up-armor those trucks”. So when we got to Kuwait there was a mad-rush to do ad hoc up-armoring before we drove north. That was why that young troop asked Rummy to address the issue-and bear in mind that this happened in December 2004, 20 months or so after the invasion. Rummy’s excuse seemed pretty thin.
Conservatives love Rummy in large part because of the way he talked to the press (and I agree that he gave them well-deserved tongue lashings on a regular basis), but I don’t think most of us in the Army remember him as a very good SECDEF. He really ought to have been Bush’s press secretary.
