A Boston Tea Party …(Armor Hypocrisy)

Last week National Guardsman Thomas Wilson asked Secretary of Defense Donald 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?” The following would have been my answer had I been Donald Rumsfeld.

First of all, Mr. Wilson that is a great question. Please allow me a few minutes to explain. As you know, as the Secretary of Defense I am in charge of securing funds from Congress to equip America’s military. I make my recommendations to President Bush who then in turn works with both houses of Congress to come up with an amount of money for defense. Congress decides how much funding is available to our department. We have increased spending in defense every year since President Bush took office in order to make our military the best-equipped military in the world but we have many needs from increased soldier pay to better equipment. It is my jobs to prioritize what I feel are the most important of those needs and we will continue to do whatever possible to get our soldiers every possible advantage in the battlefield. Your question Mr. Wilson is a question of priority. Congress recently passed a spending bill that contained $16 billion of pork in it. Evidently those Congressmen that included such a large amount of wasteful spending felt their pet projects took priority over your need for armor. There are some in Congress that would even prefer to give the defense department much less than it is getting now. I believe that with an extra $16 billion we could pay for your suggestion as well as many other needs you may have. I suggest if your families are listening or watching that they write their Congressmen and ask them why they chose pork over you’re the safety of our troops. Again, I can’t stress enough that the money is there to do what you ask of us but your Congress has a different set of priorities.

I am not the biggest fan of Mr. Rumsfeld but he had a golden opportunity to nail the hypocritical Congressmen we are seeing all over the television shows over the past week. For them to speak about a lack of military support is embarrassing. Their priority will always be reelection even over the death of soldiers. Mr. Rumsfeld is known for telling it like it is. He blew a wonderful opportunity and for that matter so has the national press. I am quite sure Rumsfeld did not cast a single vote for any of the pork projects passed in the last spending bill.