It is easy to mock the inadequate answers Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave to soldiers headed to Iraq. His answers, especially those regarding the lack of armor for military vehicles, aren’t funny. Worse, they aren’t accurate.

Asked by a soldier from the Tennessee National Guard why he and his comrades had to scrounge through landfills to find scrap metal and glass to armor their vehicles, Secretary Rumsfeld responded that it was a question of production capacity. “You go to war with the army you have … not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time,” he told the soldier.

The secretary added: “The Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it’s a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously – but, at a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.”

The companies that supply the armor and vehicles, however, say they can accomplish more.

Armor Holdings Inc., the only supplier of protective plates for Humvees, told Bloomberg, a financial news service, that it could increase its production by up to 22 percent. It hasn’t done so because it is awaiting an order from the Army.

The Florida company told the Army last month that it could add armor to as many as 550 vehicles a month, up from the current 450, Robert Mecredy, a company executive, told Bloomberg. “We’re prepared to build 50 to 100 vehicles more per month. I’ve told the customer that and I stand ready to do that,” Mr. Mecredy told the news service. The company has already cut the price of its plating from $72,000 per vehicle to $58,000 today.

The company that makes Humvees is also ready to boost production, but has not been asked to do so. “If they ordered more trucks, we’d build more trucks,” Lee Woodward, a spokesman for AM General LLC, told Bloomberg. “We’re not close to capacity. It might take some time to ramp up but we can do it.”

That “ramp up” time could have been eliminated if the orders had already been placed. Congress has appropriated the money, so an obvious question – one the Armed Services committees should immediately investigate – is why more Humvees and armor have not been ordered. About three-quarters of the Humvees in Iraq are armored. But few of the heavy trucks used to haul equipment, supplies and troops to the war zone are, even though the soldiers riding in them face the same threat from roadside bombs and grenades.

Michelle McCaskill, a spokeswoman for Army Materiel Command, said, “The intent is that all wheeled vehicles in Iraq will eventually be up-armored.” For some soldiers facing the immediate threat of insurgent ambushes and roadside bombs, “eventually” is too late.