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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: "homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Body armor truth now coming out
  • Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2005 05:06:36 -0700

Those who want truth about the issue will read this article, to be found at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/international/middleeast/07armor.html?hp
Many Missteps Tied to Delay in Armor for Troops in Iraq

By MICHAEL MOSS

Published: March 7, 2005

The war in Iraq was hardly a month old in April 2003 when an Army general in charge of equipping soldiers with protective gear threw the brakes on buying bulletproof vests.

The general, Richard A. Cody, who led a Pentagon group called the Army Strategic Planning Board, had been told by supply chiefs that the combat troops already had all the armor they needed, according to Army officials and records from the board's meetings. Some 50,000 other American soldiers, who were not on the front lines of battle, could do without.

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In the following weeks, as Iraqi snipers and suicide bombers stepped up deadly attacks, often directed at those very soldiers behind the front lines, General Cody realized the Army's mistake and did an about-face. On May 15, 2003, he ordered the budget office to buy all the bulletproof vests it could, according to an Army report. He would give one to every soldier, "regardless of duty position."

But the delays were only beginning. The initial misstep, as well as other previously undisclosed problems, show that the Pentagon's difficulties in shielding troops and their vehicles with armor have been far more extensive and intractable than officials have acknowledged, according to government officials, contractors and Defense Department records.

The article is several pages long, too long to post here. This is another excerpt:

Scrambling for Body Armor

The insurgency had already taken root in Iraq when General Cody made his decision on April 17, 2003, that enough soldiers had bulletproof vests. As more casualty reports flowed in during the next month, he came to recognize that the advice he had gotten from staff members in Washington did not reflect the reality of the war.

"We began to realize how wrong we were and the Army has been scrambling ever since," Mr. White recalls.

General Cody, now the Army's vice chief of staff, declined to comment, but his staff members confirmed the details of the supply problems. Some of the most glaring problems were contained in an April 20, 2004, report by the inspector general that remained confidential until it was released to The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act.





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