Dowd on Rumsfeld:

We watched Rumsfeld handle that soldier who asked the question about armoring vehicles and felt that the Defense Secretary was up to his usual bag of tricks - tricks designed to put the interlocutor on the defensive. (Variants of the "gosh and golly" crap he uses in other forums.) Specifically, Rumsfeld's request that the soldier repeat the question. The original question was succinct and well delivered. However, when the soldier repeated it, it was less crisp and lost its punch.

In today's Op-Ed, Dowd makes a point of Rumsfelds attitude: (emp add)

Rummy, however, did not hesitate to give the back of his hand to soldiers about to go risk their lives someplace he didn't trouble to go.

He treated Thomas Wilson - the gutsy guardsman from Tennessee who asked why soldiers had "to dig through local landfills 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?" - as if he were a pesky Pentagon reporter. The defense chief used the same coldly cantankerous tone and squint he displays in press briefings, an attitude that long ago wore thin. He did everything but slap the kid in the hospital bed.

In one of his glib "Nothing's perfect," "Freedom's untidy" and "Stuff happens" maxims, Rummy told the soldier: "As you know, you go to war with the Army you have."

At least somebody else noticed.

posted by Quiddity at 12/09/2004 10:04:00 AM