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December 19, 2004
The Unarmoured Vehicles in Iraq Question: Based on a Lie?
A National Guardsman was prompted by a reporter a week or so ago to ask Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld the embarassing question of why his unit had to drive with unarmoured trucks. People have been calling on Rumsfeld to resign over this.
I don't think it was so bad that the reporter suggested a question to a soldier, except that now it appears that the premise was a lie. That soldier's unit doesn't have any unarmoured vehicles.
Via Instapundit, I find that
Powerline reports on a press conference in which it comes out that 810 of 830 vehicles in that soldier's unit were already armoured, and the other 20 were scheduled to be armoured the next day.
Q At the time of the question -- summarize this, now -- that unit that the kid was complaining about was mostly armored?
GEN. SPEAKES: Yes. In other words, we completed all the armoring within 24 hours of the time the question was asked.
Q If he hadn't asked that question, would the up-armoring have been accomplished within 24 hours?
GEN. SPEAKES: Yes. This was already an existing program.
Of course, it might be that General Speakes is lying. But he is very specific, and any lie is easily checked.
Posted by erasmuse at December 19, 2004 02:38 PM
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