Free Republic

Dec. 20 issue - Predators know to hunt the weakest animal in the herd. So do the Iraqi insurgents. It is an essential truth about the Iraq war that's ingrained in soldiers like Pvt. Daniel Rocco, a Humvee gunner with the Second Battalion of the 82nd Field Artillery Regiment. Rocco's unit is an artillery regiment trained for conventional warfare, not escorting convoys. But the "Steel Dragons" of the Second now spend most of their days protecting the weak: VIP visitors and 18-wheel trucks loaded with food or other supplies on the road to Baghdad. In the process Rocco's unit gets...

A reporter traveling with a National Guard unit prodded one of its soldiers to ask Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the lack of armor for some U.S. military vehicles in Iraq, an exchange that made worldwide news Wednesday when the assembled troops cheered the question. Edward Lee Pitts of the Chattanooga Times Free Press told colleagues in an e-mail that he and members of the Tennessee Army National Guard now in Kuwait "worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor" and that Spec. Thomas Wilson posed the question at his request. President Bush and Rumsfeld...