Soldier's wife holds body armor benefit for troops
By ANGELA K. BROWN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
FORT WORTH - A U.S. soldier's wife is launching real and virtual bake sales to raise money to buy body armor for troops, even though the government has promised to rush more protective gear to those on Iraq's front lines.
The Laredo Moring Times via-AP
As you can imagine, this sort of thing still going on was not taken well:
Anger at the Department of Defense
However, the sale was not positively received by officials in the Department of Defense. The Helena Independent record reported that Lt. Col Barry Venable of the Defense Press Office in Washington D.C. Said, "Every soldier has appropriate armor. Period." A Pentagon Spokesman went further saying it is "ludicrous" and "mis and "dis-information to suggest that our soldiers do not have the right equipment.
the military's reponse via the Helena Independent quoted at BSFBA.org
"When I realized my husband didn't have the side and deltoid body armor, the feeling of desperation to have it for him was overwhelming," said Rosenleaf, who recently moved back to her native Helena, Mont. "It occurred to me that no one loves their soldier any less than I love my husband, and people would do just about anything to get the armor to them."
It is close to mid-February of 2006.
The war has been grinding on since 2003.
The military has already gotten a 70 million dollar emergency contract for additional ceramic body armor.
How is it possible that there are still problems with soldiers, some of whom have been in Iraq for quite some time, getting the proper protective gear in Iraq to this day. How? That's mind-boggling. When I first saw this story I thought it was an old one, from last year or the year before... but its not. This piece was written about running bake sales now to buy soldiers armour from a Laredo Tx. newspaper. How in the hell is it that there are still questions about husbands, brothers, and fathers, mothers, sisters, and daughters, coming home crippled or dead because of this inability to get the job done and make sure that every soldier has the best protection he or she can have in the field?
Rosenleaf hosts the first bake sale Saturday at the Lewis and Clark Library in Helena, and others are planned this month in New York, Virginia and Texas. Beatriz Saldivar of Fort Worth, whose nephew Daniel Torres was killed in Iraq a year ago, said she plans to help organize one soon.
This is still an unresolved problem, after years of being in-country, no matter what the public relations flacks in the Pentagon or from the Bush administration keep saying.
"If we can raise money and have one soldier fully armored and save his life, I think we're making a difference," Saldivar said. "If Daniel would have had the right armor, he would be with his 4-month-old baby right now and our family would not be destroyed."
This is the ultimate embarassment for one of, if not the, largest and most well funded military machines ever assembled by any nation in human history. But adding insult to injury... soldiers who purchase, or have purchased for them by their families non-approved armour such as 'DragonSkin' are at risk for (maybe?) being denied their proper death benefits should they be killed with the 'wrong' gear. I don't give a damn if you are a liberal, a conservative, or anything inbetween. You should be embarassed that this sort of controversy lingered longer than a few weeks after the story first broke, and the ambiguity of the follow-up is just... evil. If there is still a problem with people not having the gear they need, the military needs to take action that will make things better and not worse.
Army Orders Soldiers to Shed Dragon Skin or Lose SGLI Death Benefits
By Nathaniel R. Helms
Two deploying soldiers and a concerned mother reported Friday afternoon that the U.S. Army appears to be singling out soldiers who have purchased Pinnacle's Dragon Skin Body Armor for special treatment. The soldiers, who are currently staging for combat operations from a secret location, reported that their commander told them if they were wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin and were killed their beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action.
Soldiers for the Truth
This story was first put out January 15 2006. The military still has not clarified to anyone's satisfaction, its just vaguely 'this may happen, but we aren't saying definately so... just lump it'... at least so far. As of now, if you get killed in the body armour that your parents send you, then you may get the shaft. Or you may get screwed for having the armour at all. "Fuck you". Well, to me, fuck you isn't even an acceptable answer. Even if you use the politest language to say it. You wouldn't ever imagine a war memorial out along the Mall in Washington DC with FUCK YOU... and then the listing of the thousands honored dead would you? To me, its the same thing to take that kind of attitude with people who are truly scared for their loved ones who have chosen to serve overseas.
So, after years of warfare, the proud parents of young men and women gone off to war are having bake sales as if they are planning on sending, or have sent, their kids off to a gradeschool field trip ending at a science museum instead of combat. The military's response is to deny any problem exists, and to, maybe, perhaps, punish the families of those who buy their own armor should they get killed in combat. But it isn't clear. People who will more than likely desperately need any survivor's death benefits to financially survive the loss of a husband or wife gone to war... have been warned. Sort of.
Why do I bring this up? First, because it rips my guts up to think about this sort of nonsense going on in the Fox News-Chickenhawk-bumpersticker patriot era of the United States of America in 2006, so many years after September 11th, so many years after the start of the Afghan war, so many years after the start of the Iraq war. And second...
because of this via Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo tonight that has me so angry and outraged that I haven't been able to sleep tonight, hence this diary:
Anybody else notice this?
This is from Robert Novak's February 9th column ...
At the same time, the Bush administration is going directly to the public with its war message. Raul Damas, associate director of political affairs at the White House, has been on the phone directly to Republican county chairmen to arrange local speeches by active duty military personnel to talk about their experiences in Iraq. To some Republican members, this unusual venture connotes a desire to go directly to the people to sell the president's position without having to deal with members of Congress.
One of Karl Rove's deputies is arranging for active duty military personnel to make speeches at Republican party events? The president is commander-in-chief. He's also head of the Republican party. But he's supposed to make at least some effort to show that the two jobs aren't melded into one.
The military, for good reasons, actually has quite detailed regulations about how active duty military personnel can and cannot participate in political events. One of the most referenced is the restriction on military personnel appearing at political events in uniform.
For instance, one directive states that active duty personnel may "Attend partisan and nonpartisan political meetings, rallies, or conventions as a spectator when not in uniform." They may not "Participate in partisan political management, campaigns, or conventions (unless attending a convention as a spectator when not in uniform)." (See a recent reissuance of the directive here.)
Now, we don't know if these military personnel are appearing in uniform or not. And much of this probably turns on what constitutes a 'political event'. But to my mind, an event organized by a Republican party official at the direction of the White House political office is by definition a political event. That's just obvious, isn't it?
Another question. We know how the White House political office knows who's a Republican County Chairman. How do they which active duty military officers in a given area want to make speeches supporting the administration current policies in Iraq? Think about that.
In the United States, hearing from soldiers fighting in foreign wars has long been a way to maintain morale on the home front. But soldiers (& sailors, airmen and marines) aren't supposed to be dragooned by the president's political operatives into the GOP spin operation.
It seems that they are.
-- Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo Novak Post
The Bushies, after every absurdity and obscenity that has befallen post 9-11 America, are still planning on using active duty soldiers in violation of every standard of decency, let alone the rules, to shill the war and support a partisan political agenda in Washington when people's mothers are still having to discuss and carry out neighborhood bakesales to purchase body armor for their soldiers abroad, the purchase of which may, or may not, completely screw the fallen soldier and his or her family out of her death benefits?
I can't sleep at night because of this bullshit.
I really can't.
Anybody else wanna buy a damned muffin (or ten thousand dozen) to tide some frightened wives, children, and grandmothers over until our long national nightmare is finally over?