Secretary on the Defensive

Only a man as clueless as Secretary of Defraud Donald Rumsfeld would be taken aback by questions from Iraq-bound troops in Kuwait about why they had to scrounge through landfills for scrap metal to protect their vehicles from roadside bombs with what they refer to as "hillbilly armor."

I mean, this is the same dude whose brilliant idea of a light and agile military worked wonders to topple a regime that was surrounded, under-equipped, hardly motivated, and had little recourse other than vanishing back into the population to mount a successful insurgency.

And this is the fella that planned so well for post-invasion Iraq that the country is now perfectly secure, fully embracing the American occupying army, with a competent and trustworthy Iraqi security force in place, legitimate and uncontroversial elections on tap, utilities fully restored, beheadings reduced to the occasional paper cut, and oil flowing from sabotage-proof wells to pay for it all. Not to mention his proud role in accurately assessing prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs and in supervising the humanitarian party that was Abu Ghraib.

And, or course, the Iraqi people sing songs of praise for America.

If you don't think Rummy has that fantasy running in his head, how to explain the exchange he had with Spc. Thomas Wilson at that town hall-style supposedly morale-building shindig?

Wilson asked Rumsfeld, "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 apparently coughed up a fur ball before asking Wilson to repeat his question.

"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson, 31, of Nashville, Tenn., added after asking again.

And Donald Duck Rumsfeld, secretary of defense of the United States of America, had this to say: "You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld replied, "not the Army you might want or wish to have."

"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up," he said. "And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up."

Inspiring, no?