It was all over today’s papers: a National Guardsman surprised Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in Kuwait by asking him a tough question about why soldiers had to scavenge through junkyards to find armor for their vehicles. It also now appears that the original idea for asking that question came from a journalist embedded with the unit. But, of course, the soldier asked the question himself.
So what is this bullshit coming from the Pentagon (and echoed by Limbaugh and other big fat idiots) about how "unfortunate" it is that someone has "interfered" with the Secretary’s "opportunity" for "soldiers to have dialogue with the secretary of defense"? No one forced that soldier to ask the question – he did it on his own, and he wouldn’t have asked the question if he didn’t think it was important. (The Pentagon hilariously insinuates that the reporter might have "pressured" the soldier to ask the question. How, by pointing his notebook at the soldier’s gun? Please.) And by all accounts, when the soldier asked his question, the 2,300 other soldiers present burst into applause and cheers – clearly this is something that was on all of their minds. And hey, even Bush said that "If I were a soldier overseas wanting to defend my country, I’d want to ask the secretary of defense the same question. And that is, ‘Are we getting the best we can get us?’" (Of course, how would Bush know what it feels like to be a soldier overseas defending your country … but that’s a different topic.)
Sounds like the soldiers were having a "dialogue with the secretary of defense" to me. Guess the Pentagon just didn’t like what the soldiers had to say.
