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[Tyrone Slothrop]

• Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, for example, of the 278th Regimental Combat Team that is comprised mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee Army National Guard, asked Rumsfeld in a question-and-answer session why vehicle armor is still in short supply, nearly two years after the start of the war that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
  
  "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.
  
  Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.
  
  "We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson said after asking again.
  
  * * * * *
  
  "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up," Rumsfeld said.

AP, via SF Gate