Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has taken exception to a statement made by President Barrack Obama. President Obama's statement was about the war in Afghanistan. He basically said that commanders in Afghanistan asked for more troops under the Bush administration but those troops were never sent. To be honest this statement dosen't take all of the issues into account such as priorities.

Mr Rumsfield's response was that there were no requests for additional troops while he was in office that he was aware of. He also says that such a bald misstatement (in other words the President is a bald faced liar) should require a written explanation. Now military ring customers, I'm not going to take sides here but I will state the facts as I know them.

First of all I have NEVER in ALL of my military life known a commander to not ask for more than what he had. The nature of every commander in the military, as I'm sure that our military ring customers know is that he or she never feels that they have all of the resources that they need.

In all fairness to Mr Rumsfeld resources were tight and we were stretched real thin so additional soldiers were not available to send right away. Also Iraq was the priority mission so all resources had to be channeled there first.

General David McKierman who was commander of troops in Afghanistan remembers things differently than Mr Rumsfield does. He served under the Bush administration and says that he tried many times to get additional troops and resourses but with no results. Times have really changed for our custom military ring customers in Afghanistan since that time, hopefully we will have the resources available to do the job.