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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

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.