U.S. soldiers in Iraq had a rare opportunity to exercise their First Amendment rights when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was recently broadsided by the troops he was giving a pep talk to. They asked him why they were underequipped, overextended, and why they were lacking armor: “Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles, and why don’t we have those resources readily available to us?” asked one specialist. Rumsfeld delivered the lame reply that “you go to war with the Army you have” and attempted to deflect the blame onto armor manufacturers. But some manufacturers are telling a different story: “‘We’ve been telling the Pentagon for months that we have the capacity to double our production,’ said former U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, a consultant for ArmorWorks of Tempe. ‘We’re ready, and we haven’t heard a thing.'”

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post both tried to cover for Rumsfeld with bogus claims that armor production is at full capacity: link