Rummy's Pep Talk

CNN reports on the Donald's chat with the troops:

Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" [Army Spc. Thomas] Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.

Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.

"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson said after asking again.

Rumsfeld replied that, "You go to war with the Army you have," not the one you might want, and that any rate the Army was pushing manufacturers of vehicle armor to produce it as fast as humanly possible.

And, the defense chief added, armor is not always a savior in the kind of combat U.S. troops face in Iraq, where the insurgents' weapon of choice is the roadside bomb, or improvised explosive device.

Later, when asked about the stop-loss "program," Rumsfeld "said that this condition was simply a fact of life for soldiers at time of war.

'It's basically a sound principle, it's nothing new, it's been well understood' by soldiers, he said. 'My guess is it will continue to be used as little as possible, but that it will continue to be used.' "

Goddamn if Rumsfeld isn't the 21st century embodiment of The Grim Reaper--a hollowed out shell, more skeleton than human. If there was any justice in the world, he'd be begging the soldiers for forgiveness before being cast into the dark recesses of hell...except that hell probably wouldn't even make him break into a sweat.