In addressing National Guard troops on the way to Iraq today, Secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld was slightly taken aback by questions about the sufficiency of armored vehicles they are being asked to use:

You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

This is spot-on. If you can do any sort of effective deployment of the resources you have, that’s what you must do.

“It’s not a matter of money or desire,” Lt. Gen. R. Steven Whitcomb, the commander of Army forces in the Persian Gulf, told the troops after Mr. Rumsfeld asked him to address Specialist Wilson’s question. “It’s a matter of the logistics of being able to produce it.”

This is pure bullshit. We are the nation which, three years after our entire Pacific Fleet was decimated at Pearl Harbor, floated an armada larger than the accumulation of all that history had seen to date. This goes back to my core criticism: we are not conducting this Islamofascist War, in the Iraqi theater or elsewhere, like a real war. We are doing it off-the-cuff, and on-the-cheap. A wholesale change in attitude is in order.