WASHINGTON - The US army is working to ensure that all vehicles carrying US troops into Iraq from a staging area in Kuwait have some level of armored protection, a top US commander said Thursday.
Lieutenant General Steven Whitcomb, commander of the US 3rd Army Corps, told reporters from a base in Kuwait that his forces were meeting the demand by bolting, welding and strapping on armor plating on vehicles bound for Iraq.
"I've got enough metal, I've got enough folks, and I've got enough time to meet our schedule that ensures that no combat unit in a wheeled vehicle goes into Iraq now that is not in an armored vehicle," he said.
Whitcomb briefed reporters via video-teleconference as the administration sought to tamp down a controversy touched off by a soldier's complaint to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait Wednesday that his unit was going into Iraq without armored vehicles.
The exchange has revived debate here over whether the administration was adequately prepared when it went to war against Iraq in March 2003.
President George W. Bush commented on the Humvee controversy Thursday, telling reporters he understood the soldiers' concerns.
"If I were a soldier overseas, wanting to defend my country, I would want to ask the secretary of defense the same questions, and that is, 'Are you getting the best we can get us?'" Bush said. "And they deserve the best."
Whitcomb echoed the sentiment, telling reporters the soldier had asked "a fair question."
He acknowledged the army was caught unprepared for a shift in insurgent tactics in favor of improvised explosive in August 2003.
But he said it has responded since then by producing armored Humvees at a higher rate and setting up facilities in Kuwait and Iraq to add armor onto unprotected vehicles.
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