It's funny that all the liberal posts that randomly bash Bush get equally inane and insulting comments. But the ones that make reasonable points--and reflect very badly on the administration anyways--get completely ignored.

That comment from Rumsfeld is really disgusting.

Rummy also added that something like, even armored vehicles can get blown up!

That's our guy!

I'd agree with with Adam if this post wasn't such a gross misrepresentation of the actual exchange.

So picking out key lines of a conversation is a gross misrepresentation? But here is the full quote (thanks for providing the link, I had relied on a second hand summary):

Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. My question is more logistical. We've had troops in Iraq for coming up on three years and we've always staged here out of Kuwait. Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don't we have those resources readily available to us? [Applause]

SEC. RUMSFELD: I missed the first part of your question. And could you repeat it for me?

Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they're not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I'm told that they are being - the Army is - I think it's something like 400 a month are being done. And it's essentially a matter of physics. It isn't a matter of money. It isn't a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it.

As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe - it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.

That 3 years later Donald Rumsfield hasn't been able to properly equip his troops and that as a leader his first instinct is to minimize a problem and not fix it, is NOT mis-representing his time as Defense Secretary.

Here is a radical idea, if we are fighting an OPTIONAL war, why don't we just DELAY our OPTIONAL war until we can properly equip our troops? Or is the ability to have a "wartime president" and furthering the "neocon agenda" more important than "supporting our troops"? The question is not "you go to war with the Army you have" it's, "if you CHOOSE to start a war are you going to wait until you have properly equipped your troops or are you just going ahead because your strategy is based on faith and not facts?

Okay, so here's the exchange:

Our vehicles are not armored. We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they're not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I'm told that they are being - the Army is - I think it's something like 400 a month are being done. And it's essentially a matter of physics. It isn't a matter of money. It isn't a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it.

As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe - it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.

I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip. It's interesting, I've talked a great deal about this with a team of people who've been working on it hard at the Pentagon. And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up. And you can go down and, the vehicle, the goal we have is to have as many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate level of armor available for the troops. And that is what the Army has been working on.

I'm not sure what was misrepresented.

Perhaps you just need to learn how to employ quotation marks properly. In your opinion your first representation of the exchange is equivalent to the selection you cut and pasted in the comment above. In my opinion, it is not.