From: "Glenn Meadows" 

Seems the deeper story is that the question was either a plant by a news
reporter from the Chattanoga Times, or was actually from an embedded
reporter from the same newspaper.

That story is making the rounds here in TN today.


RIPPING RUMSFELD. Not only did the media play gotcha with the Secretary of
Defense, they are also misreporting the story. All of it intended to
promote the agenda of the left rather than get to the news.

From the NY Post ONLINE EDITION......

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/21229.htm

December 10, 2004 --
It was as compelling a piece of video as you'll ever see: A scout with the
Tennessee National Guard, whose unit is headed for Iraq, publicly berating
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld over his fellow soldiers' alleged lack
of adequately armored vehicles.

What made the footage even more powerful was Rumsfeld's response: The
normally unflappable secretary stood motionless momentarily, seemingly at a
loss for words, before answering.

Rumsfeld responded with characteristic candor. "You go to war with the
army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later
time," the secretary said during a town hall-type session with
soldiers in an aircraft hanger in Kuwait.

It was red meat to the lions, who naturally ate it right up (while all but
ignoring the context Rumsfeld offered).

It was a lead story on the network news broadcasts, and photos of the
soldier and Rumsfeld dominated the top of the front page of The New York
Times.

But there was a little bit more - and a whole lot less - to the story than
what immediately met the eye.

For one thing, Rumsfeld was set up.

A reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, who subsequently couldn't
keep from chortling in an e-mail to his colleagues, had recruited a couple
of soldiers to ask potentially embarrassing questions.

"I just had one of my best days as a journalist today," bragged
Edward Lee Pitts, who was crowing over his success in finally publicizing a
story "I've been trying to get . . . out for weeks."



Pitts is embedded with the 278th Regimental Combat Team in Kuwait.

When he learned that Rumsfeld would be addressing troops at a town hall-
style meeting at Camp Buehring - and that only soldiers would be allowed to
ask questions - Pitts came up with a bit of journalistic subterfuge.

"I brought two [soldiers] along with me as my escorts," he wrote
- and worked with them on how best to grill Rumsfeld.

Then, "I went and found the Sgt. in charge of the microphone for the
question-and-answer session and made sure he knew to get my guys out of the
crowd."

So what looked to the world like a soldier spontaneously voicing his beefs
to the highest level of the military establishment turned out to be
something else entirely: a meticulously arranged ambush.

"The great part," crowed Pitts, "was that after the event
was over, the throng of national media following Rumsfeld . . . swarmed to
the two soldiers I brought from the unit I am embedded with."

When an officer from the unit asked Pitts what his story would say,
according to the reporter, "I pointed at the horde of national media
pointing cameras and mikes at the 278th guys and said he had bigger
problems on his hands than the Chattanooga Times Free Press."

And, of course, that was true.

After all, how often does a secretary of defense confess in public to
sending ill-equipped troops into harm's way - callously and with malice
aforethought?

Except Rumsfeld did no such thing.

That is, he made no such confession.

And he - and the U.S. Army - showed no such "malice" in the first place.

The soldier, Spec. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Army National Guard,
asked why he and his buddies were being sent into Iraq aboard what he
termed inadequately armored vehicles.

War, of course, is an inherently risky business, a fact Rumsfeld
underscored: "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank,"
he responded, "and a tank can still be blown up."

Nobody - least of all Rumsfeld - has denied that some troops have been sent
into Iraq with less-than-optimal equipment. The issue was thoroughly
debated during this year's presidential campaign - and no doubt President
Bush was damaged politically because of it.

But the most vociferous critics - Sen. John Kerry foremost among them -
would not have been satisfied with all the armor in the world: They were
against the war, pure and simple, and they viewed the equipment issue as a
tool with which to damage Bush.

Those who believe Operation Iraqi Freedom to have been an essential
engagement in the larger War on Terror are correct to be worried about
armor.

We certainly are.

Yet we also understand that all the armor in the world wasn't available.
The Army had been designed and equipped to fight an entirely different sort
of conflict than what it has encountered in Iraq.

Meanwhile, armor and related equipment is being produced, distributed and
installed as quickly as possible.

Some 18 months ago, it was deemed necessary to move against Saddam Hussein
- which brings the discussion back to where Donald Rumsfeld began it:
"You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or
wish to have at a later time."

The Chattanooga Times Free Press did the nation no service by reducing this
debate to a gotcha-game played in the Kuwaiti desert - and the liberal
media are compounding the damage by distorting what it was that Rumsfeld
said.

At the end of the day, soldiers need to make do with what they have.

So it has always been.


--
Glenn M.


"John Cuccia"  wrote in message
news:a9ahr0pbps1235v3rv1akttc6o39tka3p5{at}4ax.com...
> And Bush considers Rummy a "keeper"?  Good grief!
>
> http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_12/005289.php
> Today, he came face to face with pissed-off frontline soldiers. And he
> treated them with the same arrogance and condescension that their
> superior officers have come to expect. To the question about unequal
> retirement benefits for equal service, Secretary Marie Antoinette
> replied, "I can't imagine anyone your age worrying about retirement.
> Good grief."
>
>
>

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5