Two Mikes

Last month at a friend's birthday party in Scottsdale, I met two guys named Mike who are both in the defense business. The first Mike is a manufacturer's rep who sells armor plating to the second Mike. The second Mike's company makes the armor kits to retrofit Humvees in Iraq.

Both Mikes have been really busy lately because no one anticipated the kind of warfare going on in Iraq. More than 9,000 US troops have been killed or wounded, almost half of those casualties can be attributed to IEDs--improvised explosive devices. IEDs are mostly roadside bombs, often hidden in dead animals.

Now, Rumsfeld and our other military officials are taking a bunch of flak for not having enough armored vehicles in this war. Please tell me, who predicted that so many American soldiers would get hurt by exploding goats? Anyone? I didn't think so.