GENERAL'S UP-ARMOR PLEA IGNORED: "For more than a year, Maj. Gen. William Webster, the head of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, had been asking his bosses for the money to toughen up his armored personnel carriers. And for more than a year, his requests went nowhere. Then, in December, Tennessee National Guard Spc. Thomas Wilson scorched Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for not armoring up American vehicles. Within days, Inside the Pentagon notes, Gen. Webster's long-ignored plea was finally answered. Webster’s request for additional armor for his M113 [personnel carriers] had languished at Army headquarters since October 2003, a month after he took command of the ‘3rd ID,’ as it is called... The requirement for up-armored M113s was just one of more than 50 ‘operational needs statements’ Webster submitted at the time... Initially, the 3rd ID flagged other requirements as more critical than the M113 up-armor effort, sources said. The division was requesting hundreds more radios, machine guns and trucks with the first priority being ‘to shoot, move and communicate’ when they returned to Iraq, said one Army insider."

(Via Defense Tech.)