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12-13-2004, 01:50 PM
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000735935
Another Tennessee Paper Finds a National Guardsman Who Questioned Rumsfeld
By E&P Staff
Published: December 12, 2004 4:00 PM ET
NEW YORK When Specialist Thomas Wilson, with a little help from an embedded reporter from a Chattanooga, Tenn., daily, asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a pointed question about a lack of armored vehicles in Iraq this past week, he wasn’t the first Tennessee National Guardsman to do so.
According to The Tennessean in Nashville, Brandon Sandrell was there first, more than a year ago, and the paper printed a photo of the guardsman with the Pentagon chief.
The paper also published a photo of a wrecked Humvee that Sandrell was traveling in when a bomb was detonated under it during a night patrol near Baghdad just before meeting Rumsfeld. Due to lack of armor, the soldiers had place sandbags on the floor of the Humvee, Sandrell said.
Sandrell said he raised the armor issue with Rumsfeld at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where the soldier was recovering from shrapnel wounds that nearly severed his left arm.
Quoted in the newspaper, Sandrell said: "[Rumsfeld] was making his rounds and thanking me for my service, and he asked me, 'What do you guys need over there, what are you lacking?' I told him we needed up-armored Humvees."
The secretary replied that he was working on it.
Sandrell, 21, left the Guard on Oct. 1.
A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment to the newspaper.
When the attack on the Humvee took place on Sept. 7, 2003, Sandrell said, he had no protection in his Humvee except what he could improvise. "I had armored it myself. We had sandbags in the floorboards and I had an extra flak vest, so I hung it on the driver's side door," he told the Tennessean.
"I loved my time in the National Guard. If I could do it again, I would. For the sake of all the guys going over there, I hope they get more protection on the vehicles. They fight a different way over there," he said.
Another Tennessee Paper Finds a National Guardsman Who Questioned Rumsfeld
By E&P Staff
Published: December 12, 2004 4:00 PM ET
NEW YORK When Specialist Thomas Wilson, with a little help from an embedded reporter from a Chattanooga, Tenn., daily, asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a pointed question about a lack of armored vehicles in Iraq this past week, he wasn’t the first Tennessee National Guardsman to do so.
According to The Tennessean in Nashville, Brandon Sandrell was there first, more than a year ago, and the paper printed a photo of the guardsman with the Pentagon chief.
The paper also published a photo of a wrecked Humvee that Sandrell was traveling in when a bomb was detonated under it during a night patrol near Baghdad just before meeting Rumsfeld. Due to lack of armor, the soldiers had place sandbags on the floor of the Humvee, Sandrell said.
Sandrell said he raised the armor issue with Rumsfeld at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where the soldier was recovering from shrapnel wounds that nearly severed his left arm.
Quoted in the newspaper, Sandrell said: "[Rumsfeld] was making his rounds and thanking me for my service, and he asked me, 'What do you guys need over there, what are you lacking?' I told him we needed up-armored Humvees."
The secretary replied that he was working on it.
Sandrell, 21, left the Guard on Oct. 1.
A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment to the newspaper.
When the attack on the Humvee took place on Sept. 7, 2003, Sandrell said, he had no protection in his Humvee except what he could improvise. "I had armored it myself. We had sandbags in the floorboards and I had an extra flak vest, so I hung it on the driver's side door," he told the Tennessean.
"I loved my time in the National Guard. If I could do it again, I would. For the sake of all the guys going over there, I hope they get more protection on the vehicles. They fight a different way over there," he said.