A little alternative history

(AP) - Eighteen American soldiers were killed today after the U.S. Secretary of Defense refused a request for existing armored vehicles to use against members of a Third World insurgency tied to Usama Bin Laden.

Actully, that's not alt-history. It really happened. Here's the key graf:

In September General Powell asked Aspin to approve the request of the U.S. commander in Somalia for tanks and armored vehicles for his forces. Aspin turned down the request. Shortly thereafter Aideed's forces in Mogadishu killed 18 U.S. soldiers and wounded more than 75 in attacks that also resulted in the shooting down of three U.S. helicopters and the capture of one pilot.

Liberals and lefty media types using the armor issue to take down Rumsfeld were no where to be found during the Aspin debacle. This sort of rank hypocrisy is one reason Democrats continue to lose ground nationally. If you're going to stay silent when a Dem SECDEF refuses a request for armor, you can't very well complain about a GOP SECDEF who is pushing all the armor he can into a current theater of operations. Registered voters tend to notice that type of thing.

BTW, the Slate piece I linked to was written by Fred Kaplan, who once was a foreign and defense policy adviser to - drumroll - Les Aspin.