Rumsfeld Cornered...

Because lowering taxes at a time when more governmental spending is needed makes so much more sense.

 

WWII was fought on a budget and we won.

Fighting a war without even attempting to pay for the costs is what doesn't make sense.

 

I'm not talking about "fighting a war on a budget," I am talking about paying for the war as we go rather than piling up debt for our children and grandchildren.

Never before have we cut taxes in the middle of a war and there is a good reason for that: everyone should sacrifice in a time of war and the government should not defer those costs to another generation.

 

Why not? With interest rates at historical lows, there hasn't been a better time to employ debt finance. Are you familiar with the time value of money concept, moon? Are you familiar with optimal capital structures? Of course you aren't, which is why I reject all of your financial advice.

 

Looks like TJ might be right for once! We all have our good days I guess.

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Reporter planted GI's question for Rumsfeld

Says issue of unarmored vehicles wasn't being covered

CNN) -- The question a U.S. soldier asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld Wednesday about the lack of armor on some combat vehicles in Iraq was planted by a newspaper reporter embedded with the soldier's unit, the reporter told colleagues in an e-mail.

Edward Lee Pitts, Chattanooga Times Free Press military affairs reporter, said he wanted to ask the question himself but was denied a chance to speak to Rumsfeld at what the Pentagon called a town hall meeting for GIs in Kuwait.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/12/09/rumsfeld.reporter/index.html

 

Even with interest rates at "historical lows," we are still paying interest on those funds and are racking up record levels of debt. The interest on that debt alone dwarfs all government spending with the exception of defense spending and that number will continue growing dramatically as long as GWB and his cabal continue spending like Democrats.

Yes, of course. However, when you add up the interest payments along with the eventual paying down of the debt, we (and our children) are going to end up paying far more money than $1 (even adjusted for inflation) for every dollar we spend today.

You can keep assuming things of me, and you are more than welcome to reject my financial advice, but it doesn't change the fact that everything I have said here is absolutely true (as evidenced by your inability to rebut my statements). Nor does it change the fact that, as usual, you will simply run away rather than engage in any meaningful debate.

BTW, your sig gave me a nice laugh this morning considering that you continue to avoid my challenge like a sissy punk.

 

Not so fast, MC Mark. The soldier's girlfriend said on NPR this morning that the soldier told her serveral questions he might ask Rumsfeld even before the meeting. She said that the question about the armor for vehicles was one of the questions he mentioned, and that he had spoken about it before.

I think it may be a case of the reporter helped him frame a question he wanted to ask anyway.

I will give TJ partial credit for this assignment. But claiming that the story is debunked doesn't quite pass.

 

So, the really important issue here isn't whether our troops are digging through dumps to get armor for their vehicles, but instead whether this information was brought to the public's attention because a reporter prompted some soldiers. Anyone who looks at this situation and thinks the important issue is how the question came to be asked has their priorities so out of whack it is mind boggling.

 

You do what for a living?

So oh mighty TJ, does the federal government finance its debt with short, mid, or long term notes mostly? What are the implications of never actually paying down the debt (except for the rare occasion)? If interests rates double in ten years from now, how would that affect the financing of the federal debt?

I will take your lack of reply as an omission that you clearly have no idea wrt this matter.

 

and yours too!

 

i dont doubt that the reporter might have helped some soldiers with formulating their questions for rumsfeld, but i highly doubt that any of our troops could be such dim-witted patsies as to get tricked into making rummy look bad.

in other words, i dont think its the set up that some (t-j and rush) say it is. do you have such little faith in our brave soldiers that you think they would sucumb to such obvious manipulation by our "liberal media"? why do you hold our fighting men and women in such low regard?

were all the other soldiers who clapped for wilson also coached?

 

The reporter may have helped the soldier word the question, but do you think the press planted the hundreds of soldiers who applauded the question?

Even Dubya said it was right to ask the question. Soldiers need to know if they will be properly armed when sent into battle.

I guess Rush is still too high on Oxycontin to understand this.

 

It has been firmly established within this very thread that all of these soldiers were drugged with new fancy liberal drugs from liberal scientists. I'm confused as to why Drudge/Limbaugh have been so slow to run with this.

 

I'm pretty sure I started a thread about the inadaquacies of our military and the Humvee in particular a while back

and, when I close my eyes during the day, I can see the inside of my eyelids (they look red!)

 

http://bbs.clutchcity.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=82842

ya here it is, this isn't a new problem

I don't see it as possible for this to have not come to the attention of top level officials before now and it took public embarrasment for anything to get done

I want Rumsfeld gone... Sharp guy... very smart but so was McNamara and he is single handedly responsible for thousands of American lives in Vietnam, imo

 

I was kidding, Bush could run cicrles around Rumsfeld's hollow head .

 

I really despise Rumsfeld...how the F did this guy get to keep his job? oh yeah, he is in the Bush administration: where accountability is non-exsistent

Soldier says he, Rumsfeld talked about armor in '03

By LEON ALLIGOOD
Staff Writer
http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/04/12/62712488.shtml

Bomb had hit Tennessean's Humvee in Iraq

When a fellow Tennessee National Guardsman raised a pointed question to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld this week, Iraq war veteran Brandon Sandrell was proud.

It wasn't the first time the defense chief had been personally quizzed by a Guardsman about the lack of armor for Guard vehicles in the war zone.

Sandrell said he did that in September 2003.

The former soldier, a Page High School graduate, was wounded that month by a bomb that detonated beneath a Humvee on a night patrol near Baghdad.

Sandrell contends he raised the armor issue with Rumsfeld at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, when Sandrell was recovering from shrapnel wounds that nearly severed his left arm.

''He (Rumsfeld) was making his rounds and thanking me for my service, and he asked me, 'What do you guys need over there, what are you lacking?' I told him we needed up-armored Humvees,'' said Sandrell, who left the Guard on Oct. 1 after two years and nine months of service. He is 21 and lives in Culleoka in Maury County.

The former soldier said the secretary replied that he was working on it.

A Pentagon spokeswoman last night declined to comment.

In Kuwait this week, Spc. Thomas Jerry Wilson of Nashville, who asked why his unit was forced to scavenge for used metal and bulletproof glass to protect its vehicles for the trip into Iraq, got a different answer from Rumsfeld.

Responding to Wilson's question, Rumsfeld told several hundred assembled troops, ''You go to war with the Army you have.''

The Department of Defense has since issued a statement saying that it ''takes the matter seriously and is addressing it aggressively.''

Wilson's unit, the 278th Regimental Combat Team, is composed of 3,000 Tennesseans and is poised to move from Kuwait into Iraq. The unit has resorted to what is called ''hillbilly armor,'' which is scrap metal attached to the vehicle for added protection.

U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Nashville, who as a member of the House Armed Services Committee has raised the armor question repeatedly in the past year, said it's about time changes were made.

''To have this foot-dragging all these months is just plain wrong,'' the congressman said.

''America looks so foolish for not being prepared on an issue that has been around for 13 months or more. All Specialist Wilson was asking for is a decent piece of equipment. This wasn't a new question,'' he said.

On Thursday, the committee Cooper is on released information about shortages in armor for military vehicles in Iraq, particularly trucks to carry supplies. While the number of ''up-armored'' Humvees has risen to about 20,000 in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, there are thousands of transport trucks that are unprotected in the region.

Cooper said the committee's report noted that only about 6,000 factory-armored Humvees had been received in-country. Commanders report they need 8,000.

Meanwhile, transport trucks are much less likely to have protective armor installed. Only about 1,200 of those vehicles have armor out of about 9,000 in the fleet, the committee's report noted.

Col. John Zimmerman, the staff judge advocate for the 278th combat team, told The New York Times last week that the unit's Humvees were sufficiently armored but that most of its heavy trucks were not. Seventy tons of steel plates had been distributed, but that was insufficient.

Zimmerman, who in civilian life is an assistant district attorney in Nashville, told The Times that National Guard troops were not receiving fair treatment. ''We've got two Armies,'' he was quoted. ''We've got the active duty, and we've got the National Guard. We're proud to serve. We just want what everyone else has. We're not asking for anything more.''

Cooper said the guerilla aspect of the fighting in Iraq made it imperative that all soldiers, no matter what kind of vehicle they are driving or whether they are Guard, Reserves or active duty, should have the best protection the country can give. ''We owe them that.''

Cooper said he hoped the House Armed Services Committee would hold hearings on the issue in January when Congress returns to Washington.

''I think we have his (Rumsfeld's) attention. I'm so proud of that soldier to cut through all the baloney to get to the issue in a way that the president and the secretary of defense now have to confront it,'' Cooper said.

On Sept. 7, 2003, Sandrell said, he had no protection in his Humvee except what he could improvise.

''I had armored it myself. We had sandbags in the floorboards and I had an extra flak vest, so I hung it on the driver's side door. My whole team did that,'' he said.

The addition of the bulletproof vest probably saved his life. The vest was hit by flying shrapnel, some pieces as long as 4 inches. Even so, Sandrell was injured in the leg and the left arm.

''I got a wicked scar on my leg. I almost lost the arm, but they were able to save it, which was very fortunate,'' he said.

Sandrell served in the Guard's 269th Military Police Company, based in Murfreesboro.

''I loved my time in the National Guard. If I could do it again, I would. For the sake of all the guys going over there, I hope they get more protection on the vehicles. They fight a different way over there,'' he said.

 

Schwarzkopf Weighs In



Schwarzkopf, interviewed on MSNBC-TV’s “Hardball,” chided Rumsfeld for his reply to a soldier in Kuwait over the lack of armor on many military vehicles used in Iraq.

“I was very, very disappointed — no, let me put it stronger — I was angry by the words of the secretary of defense when he laid it all on the Army, as if he, as the secretary of defense, didn’t have anything to do with the Army and the Army was over there doing it themselves, screwing up,” Schwarzkopf said.

Schwarzkopf, a registered independent who campaigned for Bush in the last two presidential elections, has previously criticized Rumsfeld on several occasions as arrogant and out of touch with troops on the ground.

Monday, Schwarzkopf said the Defense Department had badly misjudged the situation in Iraq. Reserve forces were rushed into urban combat — “toughest kind of fighting” — without adequate training, and “things have gone awry.”

“In the final analysis, I think we are behind schedule” in Iraq, Schwarzkopf said. “... I don’t think we counted on it turning into jihad.”

The public pounding may have taken a toll on public confidence in Rumsfeld. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted Thursday through Monday, found that public approval of Rumsfeld, already fairly low, had fallen to 34 percent from 39 percent in May.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6708495/

 

schwarzkopf is just a liberal lunatic. soros paid him off.