Disgruntled soldiers put Rumsfeld on the spot

[penumbral_shadow]

Originally Posted by sfga6970

I said yes. It is a valid question and our troops should be equipped with the best equipment available. Industry in this country was able to build ships in less than thirty days during WWII, why can't they produce sufficient vehicles for our troops now?

ask all those displaced industrial workers who lost their jobs to outsourcing or companies moving overseas to increase profits. we have lost such a large part of our industrial base ... and honestly out military leadership and political leadership is to blame there , anything needed for warfighting should be 100% aquired in the usa.

[Caldric]

Bush responds and you can also see his video and the video of Rumsfeld from the question period in Kuwait.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6676765/

[C130 pilot (ret)]

Originally Posted by Hannibal

On another note. Man, can we stop whining about stop loss?

Does some of these guys in the NG and reserve think that they were only going to do 2 weeks and 1 weekend for the rest of their lives?


-Jason

Unfortunately Jason, that is exactly what they thought. Have personally heard many say "But we never thought we would have to go to war". They seem to forget what they are trained for and why. Not all are like that - but too many are and therefore an unsettling influence on others.

[BrianK]

Originally Posted by penumbral_shadow

ask all those displaced industrial workers who lost their jobs to outsourcing or companies moving overseas to increase profits. we have lost such a large part of our industrial base ... and honestly out military leadership and political leadership is to blame there , anything needed for warfighting should be 100% aquired in the usa.

Not surprising I don't agree with the part about

Originally Posted by penumbral_shadow

and honestly out military leadership and political leadership is to blame there , anything needed for warfighting should be 100% aquired in the usa.

This addresses the displaced industrial workers.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Tra...nAid/wm467.cfm

Ten Myths about Jobs and Outsourcing
by Tim Kane, Brett D. Schaefer, and Alison Fraser
WebMemo #467

myth # 7 talks to your thought about outsourcing.

Myth #7: American manufacturing jobs are moving to poor nations, especially China.

Fact: Nations are losing manufacturing jobs worldwide, even China.

America is not alone in experiencing declines in manufacturing jobs. U.S. manufacturing employment declined 11 percent between 1995 and 2002, which is identical to the average world decline.[7] China has seen a sharper decline, losing 15 percent of its industrial jobs over the same period.

No one likes the thought of job loss but pretty much of what we've heard is has been one sided & negative oncerning outsourcing.

Think what you will but I think the article conclusion deserves some consideration.


Conclusion

America's workers deserve a more informative, less partisan debate on outsourcing. The negative impact of outsourcing on the economy and American employment has been greatly exaggerated, and the benefits of outsourcing almost entirely ignored.



Tim Kane, Ph.D., is Research Fellow in Macroeconomics in the Center for Data Analysis, Brett Schaefer is Jay Kingham Fellow in the Center for International Trade and Economics (CITE), and Alison Fraser is Director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.


As for 100% aquired in the usa I don't know about you but I can't imagine the staggering cost to produce anything using that standard. Use of American only crude oil to produce the plastics needed would be a nightmare. Then there is the tiny problem of planting enough rubber trees to supply tires for the proposed aquired 100% in the usa. Like it or not we can't be isolationists.

So getting back to the thread. We have to go wth what we have & catch up. Meanwhile those that had no clue that military training wasn't an effort by our government to spend tax money to supplement their income need to come to an understanding that a long term goal was why they are serving in Iraq. Once in the choice of what, where, when & how isn't theirs to make. Complain yes but make the decisions no.

[Hannibal]

It was just on FOXNEWS that a reporter from the Chatanooga Free Press had taken two soldiers and spent an entire day coaching them on what questions to ask after he found out that only soldiers would be allowed at the Press Conference.

Typical media bull. I have the FOXNEWS Video clip and will cut it up tonight and post it. Check out the grapevine link on FOXNEWS.com and see if they have Brit Hume. Until then I gotta run, will post it tonight,

-Jason

[AndJusticeForAll]

When you sign a contract and do your part faithfully, you rightfully expect the other party to the contract to live up to their part of the deal just as faithfully as you have. There is a difference between those AR and ARNG's who piss and moan just because they are deployed and those who are serving beyond what they legally contracted for. Some of these folks have legitimate gripes and no way I'd ever cast aspersions against them from the comfort of Fort Livingroom.

[odannyboy]

Originally Posted by Hannibal

It was just on FOXNEWS that a reporter from the Chatanooga Free Press had taken two soldiers and spent an entire day coaching them on what questions to ask after he found out that only soldiers would be allowed at the Press Conference.

Typical media bull. I have the FOXNEWS Video clip and will cut it up tonight and post it. Check out the grapevine link on FOXNEWS.com and see if they have Brit Hume. Until then I gotta run, will post it tonight,

-Jason

Yep, that seems to be the case. It should be noted, though, that the soldier in question was not coerced and acted in concert with the reporter.

Reporter behind Rumsfeld grilling (Keith Olbermann)

NEW YORK - An embedded reporter from the Chattanooga Times Free Press is claiming credit for the blunt questioning yesterday of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by American soldiers in Kuwait.

In an e-mail to an unidentified colleague at the newspaper, Edward Lee Pitts — traveling with a Tennessee National Guard Unit — said that when a scheduling delay permitted him to attend Rumsfeld’s visit with 2,300 troops, he learned that only soldiers could quiz the Secretary. “So,” Pitts writes, “I brought two of them along with me as my escorts. Before hand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat have.”

A copy of Pitts’ e-mail to his Chattanooga colleague is posted on Jim Romenesko’s media blog at the Poynter Institute website. Pitts has a copyrighted piece on the Rumsfeld grilling, headlined “Dispatch Kuwait: ‘Hillbilly armor’ for 278th,” in today’s edition of the Times Free Press.

His e-mail goes on to claim that he even helped ensure that two of the members of the 278th Regimental Combat team got to ask what can only be described as their and his questions. “While waiting for the VIP (Rumsfeld),” Pitts writes, “I went and found the Sgt. In charge of the microphone for the question and answer session and made sure he knew to get my guys out of the crowd.

“One of my guys,” Pitts writes, “was the second person called on.” That would’ve been Army Specialist Thomas Wilson, whose question provoked first several seconds of silence, and then thunderous applause and cheering from the troops. Wilson asked: “We've had troops in Iraq for coming up on for three years and we've all been staged here out of Kuwait. Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local land fills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles, and why don't we have those resources readily available to us?"

Wilson appeared to be reading his question from a small piece of paper in his hand.

Pitts did not identify the second questioner he claims to have prompted, although additional pointed queries of Rumsfeld focused on the military’s controversial “Stop-Loss” policy, and the purported disparity between the quality of equipment assigned to active-duty units, and guard and reserve units. It is noteworthy that Pitts claimed only two of the three most searing questions were, in essence, his plants — the third presumably arose organically.

In the e-mail Pitts insisted this wasn’t merely a clever journalistic strategy. “I have been trying to get this story out for weeks — as soon as I found out I would be on an unarmored truck — and my paper published two stories on it. But it felt good to hand it off to the national press. I believe lives are at stake with so many soldiers going across the border (to Iraq) riding with scrap metal as protection. It may be to (sic) late for the unit I am with, but hopefully not for those who come after.”

If Pitts’ account is correct, he certainly got the attention for the story that he sought. Yesterday, the Pentagon had to applaud the soldiers who questioned Rumsfeld. This morning, the President echoed that endorsement. And the Defense Department had scheduled an early afternoon briefing on the subject of armoring U.S. troop vehicles in Iraq.

Pitts had opened his e-mail to his colleague with a cogent observation: “I just had one of my best days as a journalist today.”