Visit with Donald Rumsfeld

Yesterday we had a guest appearance by none other than The Secretary of Defense himself. Donald Rumsfeld spoke to us from a hanger packed with about 2300 troops from all different units. I personally thought he gave a great speech. It was motivational without being cheesy propaganda. He spoke for about 10 minutes, then opened up the floor for questions. The big question was the first one, which asked about the lack of armor for our vehicles (you can read about that one below). All the news sites seem to be reporting this as a 'disgruntled troops strike back' story, but I did not leave the hanger with that impression. I did not feel the troops were pissed or that there was a huge Army-wide morale issue, like some of the papers are reporting. I thought it was a good speach and some soldiers raised some valid concerns, but on a whole everything went well.

In one particularly pointed exchange, Army Specialist Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Army National Guard demanded to know why his units' Humvees do not have adequate armor.

''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," Wilson said, drawing applause and shouts of approval from his fellow soldiers. ''Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?"

Rumsfeld responded that the lack of armor is a ''matter of physics," explaining that armored Humvees are being produced as fast as they can. ''It's a matter of production and capability of doing it," he said.