Hey, Georgie, where's the protective body armor you're supposed to
give our troops?
Last month, Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio) and 102 other House members
wrote to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed
Services Committee, to demand hearings on why the Pentagon had been
unable to provide all U.S. service members in Iraq with the latest
body armor.
In the letter, the lawmakers cited reports that soldiers’ parents had
been purchasing body armor with ceramic plates and sending it to their
children in Iraq.
Joe Werfelman, the father of Turley’s student, said he was dismayed to
learn that his son had been sent to Iraq in May without ceramic
plates.
"He called us frantically three or four times on this," Werfelman said
in an interview.
"We said, ‘If the Army is not going to protect him, we’ve got to do
it.’ "
Pfc. Gregory Stovall of the 82nd Airborne Soldier Support Battalion
was wounded in an explosion in Baghdad Nov. 5.
He says the body armor saved his life.
So Werfelman, of Scotia, Pa., found a New Jersey company that had the
ceramic plates in stock, plunked down $660 for two plates and a
carrying case, and sent them to his son.
"As far as I know, he’s still using the ones that we got him," he
said.
"Some units have the new plates and some units don’t."
From MSNBC, 12/4/03:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/1000971.asp
Body armor saves U.S. lives in Iraq
Pentagon criticized for shortage of protective vests
By Vernon Loeb and Theola Labbé
THE WASHINGTON POST
BAGHDAD --
Pfc. Gregory Stovall felt the explosion on his face.
He was standing in the turret of a Humvee, manning a machine gun, when
the roadside bomb went off.
At the time, he was guarding a convoy of trucks making a mail run.
IN AN INSTANT, Stovall’s face was perforated by shrapnel, the index
finger on his right hand was gone, and the middle finger was hanging
by a tendon.
But the 22-year-old from Brooklyn remembers instinctively reaching for
his chest and stomach -- "to make sure everything was there," he said.
It was, encased in a Kevlar vest reinforced by boron carbide ceramic
plates that are so hard they can stop AK-47 rounds traveling 2,750
feet per second.
Thus, on the morning of Nov. 4, Stovall became the latest in a long
line of soldiers serving in Iraq to be saved by the U.S. military’s
new Interceptor body armor.
This high-tech "system" -- the Kevlar vest and "small-arms protective
inserts," which the troops call SAPI plates -- is dramatically
reducing the kind of torso injuries that have killed soldiers on the
battlefield in wars past.
Emergency room chief, 28th Combat Support Hospital, Baghdad
Soldiers will not patrol without the armor -- if they can get it.
But as of now, there is not enough to go around.
Going into the war in Iraq, the Army decided to outfit only dismounted
combat soldiers with the plated vests, which cost about $1,500 each.
But when Iraqi insurgents began ambushing convoys and killing clerks
as well as combat troops, controversy erupted.
Last month, Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio) and 102 other House members
wrote to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed
Services Committee, to demand hearings on why the Pentagon had been
unable to provide all U.S. service members in Iraq with the latest
body armor.
In the letter, the lawmakers cited reports that soldiers’ parents had
been purchasing body armor with ceramic plates and sending it to their
children in Iraq.
The demand came after Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central
Command and commander of all military forces in Iraq, told a House
Appropriations subcommittee in September that he could not "answer for
the record why we started this war with protective vests that were in
short supply."
With the armor, "it’s the difference between being hit with a fist or
with a knife," said Ben Gonzalez, chief of the emergency room at the
28th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, the largest U.S. Army
hospital in the country, which treats the majority of wounded
soldiers.
_______________________________________________
What a disgrace! Georgie can't be bothered about body armor to save
our troops. Too busy fundraising, ya know. First things first.
Harry
"First, any time we commit a troop into action, that person must have
the best equipment, the best training, the best possible -- the best
pay possible."
George W. Bush -- Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Apr. 15, 2002
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