Winston Smith's boss at the Ministry of Truth would have been proud of the legacy media's continuing effort to whitewash the previous administration's role in current military equipment deficiencies.  Unfortunately, one of our own esteemed war correspondents has jumped on the 'dump Rummy' bandwagon with a clever bit of misdirection about the Army's solution to provide our troops increased armor protection while deployed to Iraq.

In the European edition of the Stars and Stripes, Joe Galloway reports that the Multi—national Corps Commander, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz has requested, and will receive the latest version of the 'veteran warhorse' the M113A3 armored personnel carrier (APC).  This is no surprise to those who have followed the questionable development of the Stryker family of light, wheeled armored vehicles, and the rushed effort to up—armor HUMVEEs in response to terrorist attacks in Iraqi cities.  In other words, adopting this 'off the shelf' solution is a blinding flash of the obvious to experienced troops on the ground.  By the way, the M113 has been C—130 transportable without modification since its introduction over 40 years ago, unlike the new Stryker. At least Galloway admits that much.

However, Mr. Galloway would have us believe that this Stryker stuff was all Rumsfeld's idea.  He quotes the ever popular 'unidentified serving officer' who said,

Rumsfeld "didn't even let us go to war with the Army we had; he made us leave half our armored vehicles at home in pursuit of lighter, faster and cheaper."

Since the officer in question wishes to remain anonymous, there is no way to verify this statement since we don't know his unit or its deployment orders.  But the larger issue is that Rummy is not responsible for the massive $10 billion boondoggle for a system that was envisioned as an interim solution.  In January of 2000, there was a comparative test of all new light armored wheeled vehicle candidates and the current family of armored vehicles, including the M113.  In virtually every category, the current systems outperformed the newcomers, including ease of transportation for their particular weight class.

Not to be discouraged in their thinking 'outside the box,' Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki and SecDef William Cohen proceeded to press their case to equip the Army to be literally a 'meals on wheels' peacekeeping force rather than one which could face—off and win against a determined enemy.  Galloway conveniently forgets the real history behind this farce, and in his zeal to nail the SecDef, he thinks we will all forget what really happened.

My own opinion is that Rummy's big mistake was that he actually believed  some of the transformation garbage coming out of the Department of the Army.  Sadly, Joe Galloway appears to have joined the major press chorus to oust a sitting SecDef, even if he misinforms the American people in the process.

Doug Hanson 01—06—05