It's The Question,
Stupid!

I is a new world in journalism,
and the messenger is now the
message.
Take last week's
story of the soldier
who asked Defense
Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld the ques-
tion about vehicle
armor protection.
"Why do we sol-
diers have to dig
through scrap local
HARRY
landfills for pieces
KI RS BAUM
of scrap metal and
Columnist
compromised ballis-
tic glass to up-armor
our vehicles, and why don't we have
those resources readily available to
us?" he asked amid cheers of the
1,500 other soldiers in the room dur-
ing a town hall meeting in Kuwait.
"It's essentially a matter of physics,
not a matter of money," Rumsfeld
said speaking of production capability.
"You have to go to war with the army
you have, not the army you want."
You would think that the story
would be followed up with normal
questions.
Why isn't more being done for our
fighting men and women?
Or, how can we increase production
of armor-protected vehicles?
But you'd be wrong.
As these questions were being raised
and answered in not so flattering
ways, a new story was breaking
online.
The Drudge Report reported that
Wilson's question was actually planted
by Edward Lee Pitts, a Chattanooga
Times Free Press reporter embedded
with some troops.
And in this day and age, the bigger
story is when the "liberal press" is
caught trying to show up one of our
leaders.
Radio commentator Rush
Limbaugh, the nation's crack reporter
and standard bearer of the truth, read
the Drudge story to his minions
moments after it appeared:
"So it seems safe to assume that had
the reporter not been fishing around
with the soldiers, that these questions

Harry Kirsbaum's e-mail address is

hicirsbaum@thejewishnews.corn

might not have been asked," he said.
"Now, don't get upset about this,
folks. This is just another Dan Rather
moment. It may be a journalistic coup
for this guy, but this is not the kind of
story that the American people are
going to stand up and say all of a sud-
den 'we hate Rumsfeld."'
That's right Rush, let's not get in
the way of the real story.
Forget the fact that in a
Newsday.corn story, Armor Holdings
Inc., the sole supplier of protective
plates for Humvee military vehicles
said it could increase it's output 22
percent with no investment, but is
still waiting for Pentagon approval.
Forget the fact that according to an
Arizona Republic story, ArmorWorks
— an Arizona firm which has a $30
million Pentagon contract and pro-
duces 300 armor kits for other mili-
tary vehicles — is only operating at
half of its capacity, according to
ArmorWorks consultant Matt
Salmon, a former U.S. representative
and a conservative Republican who
ran for Arizona governor in 2002.
No, Rush, don't let a silly thing like
the truth get in the way of a good
rant among dittoheads.
Sure, the reporter bragged about the
question in an e-mail back home, but
not because he was part of the liberal
media.
"I believe lives are at stake with so
many good soldiers going across the
border riding with scrap metal as pro-
tection," he wrote. It may be too late
for the unit I'm with, but hopefully
not for those who come after.
No matter how you read into the
rest of his comments, the reporter is
on the front lines with actual troops
in actual dangerous places, not sitting
in the safety of a radio studio with
one good ear and a handful of pills.
It doesn't matter what the question
is or that the answer is a lie. What
only matters to a virtuous soul like
Rush was that a member of the "liber-
al media" fed the question to a soldier.
Somewhere between the "liberal
media" and Rush Limbaugh lies the
truth. And the truth in this case is a
simple question: If we are supposed to
be the world's best-equipped army,
why aren't we?

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