Soldiers headed to Iraq grill Rumsfeld

WASHINGTON -- US soldiers in Kuwait who are headed to Iraq put Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on the defensive yesterday, grilling him about extended tours of duty and the continued lack of armor to protect vehicles from roadside bombs.

Rumsfeld's photo opportunity and question-and-answer session with troops at Camp Buehring turned into an extraordinary public confrontation between the defense secretary and troops in uniform. The complaints were aired in the same week that a group of soldiers filed suit to prevent the government from extending their time in combat.

Yesterday's session before National Guard and Reserve troops had been intended as a pep talk for the soldiers, but the troops who asked questions quickly changed the tone. How much longer will tours be extended without soldiers' consent, one asked. Why is their travel pay being held up, leaving creditors pounding at their families' doors, another asked.

In one particularly pointed exchange, Army Specialist Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Army National Guard demanded to know why his units' Humvees do not have adequate armor.

''We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat," Wilson said, drawing applause and shouts of approval from his fellow soldiers. ''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 responded that the lack of armor is a ''matter of physics," explaining that armored Humvees are being produced as fast as they can. ''It's a matter of production and capability of doing it," he said.

The harsh questioning seemed to catch Rumsfeld off guard as he made his first major public appearance since the White House announced last week that he would remain in the Cabinet for President Bush's second term. Rumsfeld's answers also were testy, with the secretary defending the administration's policies and declaring at one point: ''You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have."

Open criticism of the defense secretary by uniformed troops is exceedingly rare, since soldiers normally give great deference to the chain of command, particularly while deployed abroad. The harsh questioning of Rumsfeld, combined with the lawsuit over extending tours, suggested that the administration is confronting a morale problem in the military over the Iraq war.

Bush sought to address that concern with a thank-you visit to a Marine unit in Southern California on Tuesday. Vice President Dick Cheney made a similar stop yesterday at a US air base in Kabul, Afghanistan.

But the questions directed at Rumsfeld indicate that the Bush administration has yet to come to terms with the issue, said Loren B. Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a conservative-leaning public policy group in Arlington, Va., that studies national security issues.

''This may signal a growing restiveness on the part of the troops with both the terms of service and how well equipped they are for combat," Thompson said. ''You shouldn't generalize from a handful of complaints, but it is uncommon for a serving defense secretary to be challenged by his own troops when he's giving a pep talk in a war zone."

Rumsfeld's meeting with the troops was broadcast on the Internet, and a transcript of his exchange with the soldiers was provided by the Pentagon.

The defense secretary began his address to the troops by commending their service and emphasizing the importance of their mission. He then asked for ''tough questions" but seemed taken aback by questioners' intensity -- and by the murmurs of support questioners received.

''Now settle down, settle down," he said after being asked about antiquated equipment that National Guard soldiers are being given. ''Hell, I'm an old man, it's early in the morning. I didn't take -- just gathering my thoughts here."

Pentagon officials in Washington later dismissed the complaints as largely unfounded. In speaking of production limitations, Rumsfeld said the Army is acquiring as many armored vehicles as it can as quickly as it can and is not skimping on supplies. He also defended the administration's decision to extend tours of duty.

Larry DiRita, a Pentagon spokesman, said that about three-fourths of the Humvees in Iraq are armored and that the United States is producing about 450 new armored vehicles every month.

He said that Army officials realized they needed more armored Humvees in August 2003, and that production has proceeded as fast as possible to meet the demand.

Thompson said that the soldiers' concerns over extended tours of duty and lack of body armor grow out of the administration's miscalculations over the intensity and duration of the Iraqi insurgency. Many troops feel as if they were misled by the Bush administration, and some seemed to take out their frustrations on the defense secretary yesterday.

''The place the administration needs to start in terms of preserving morale is to not make more optimistic predictions about how the war's going to go and when they're going to be able to leave Iraq," Thompson said.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who has criticized Pentagon officials previously over the lack of body armor on many combat vehicles, yesterday chided Rumsfeld for refusing to address the problem and making ''cruel and callous" statements to troops near the front lines.

''Our troops are obviously fed up with Rumsfeld, and they gave him a resounding vote of no confidence," Kennedy said in a statement.

''If anything can shake President Bush's confidence, this will."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com.