Rumsfeld Reams Russert

When Tim Russert queried Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Meet the Press this morning by showing a tape of Rumsfeld's infamous "...army you have..." quote, Rumsfeld forcefully characterized the soundbite as unfair. Then Rumsfeld insisted on replying by reading a transcript of the exchange in its entirety.

"As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it’s a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.

I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they’re working at it at a good clip. It’s interesting, I’ve talked a great deal about this with a team of people who’ve been working on it hard at the Pentagon. And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up. And you can go down and, the vehicle, the goal we have is to have as many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate level of armor available for the troops. And that is what the Army has been working on."

When Russert than asked if the soldier's question had prompted new focus on the shortage of armored vehicles, Rumsfeld pointed out that his complete reply (which he had just read to Russert), as opposed to the soundbite, indicated that they were already painfully aware of, and sharply focused on, the problem of getting fully armored vehicles to the front line.

Russert made no mention, of course, about the soldier's question having been planted by a reporter.