Archive for the 'Politics' Category

In 1974 the Atlanta Rhythm Section (known to fans as ARS) released a cut called “Doraville.”  Do you remember ARS — the sophisticated southern rock style, up tempo tunes and silky smooth vocals?  Do you remember Doraville?  “… touch o’ country in the city, Doraville, it ain’t much but its home.  Friends of mine, say I oughta move to New York.  Well New York’s fine, but it ain’t Doraville.”  If not, here is a teaser:

Doraville

It appears that Doraville ain’t New York, and it also ain’t what it used to be.

A small-town Georgia police chief who left to face enemy fire in Iraq only to return and be fired by town officials got his job back Wednesday, thanks to an angry mayor.

Doraville Mayor Ray Jenkins deemed his council’s recent vote to oust Police Chief John King contrary to state and federal laws and put the chief back on the job.

“I support him 100 percent,” Jenkins told FOXNews.com. “The community is really upset and disturbed. I am trying to get it under control.”

King, a colonel with the Army National Guard, came under fire by council members who were upset after he was sent to Iraq, calling him a part-time police chief. Doraville is about 16 miles outside of Atlanta with about 15,000 residents, King said.

“Apparently they feel it takes away from my effectiveness as police chief,” King said. “I think my service to my country has made me a better chief.”

One of the three members who voted to fire King, Bob Spangler, said his vote was not personal. Ed Lowe and Tom Hart also voted against King.

“The City of Doraville must have a fair, honest and present Chief of Police. As a City Council Representative, it is my responsibility to ensure that happens. While some are attempting to spin our decision as personal, I assure you it was based on solid facts,� Bob Spangler said in a statement released to FOX 5 News Atlanta.

Police Chief King has just today given his story on national television.

Iraq war veteran and Doraville police Chief John King told a national CNN television audience Friday night that he was “absolutely shocked” to hear he had been fired, a move widely attributed to concerns over his National Guard service.

“This is not the America that I fought for and defended,” he said during an appearance on CNN’s “Out in the Open.”

King, an Iraq war veteranand commander of Georgia Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, was fired Tuesday by the Doraville city council, then reinstated Wednesday by the Mayor.

Earlier this week, King, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that when he was fired, “I felt like I was in south Baghdad getting hit by snipers and had no chance to fight back.”

King was fired at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday after a closed-door meeting, following an exchange in which Councilman Tom Hart called King a “part-time chief” and criticized him for being out of the loop during the 18 months he served in Iraq.

On Friday, Hart told the AJC that he misspoke by bringing up King’s service in Iraq but said he stands by his decision to fire the chief.

“I had gone two days without any sleep,” said Hart. “It [the firing] has nothing to do with the military stuff.”

The ploy at sympathy (”I had gone two days without any sleep”) is pathetic and irrelevant.  Since the alleged ‘facts’ are of interest, let’s go over them with Messers Spangler, Lowe and Hart.

1. Firing Mr. King violates United States Code 38 U.S.C. Section 4301.  It is manifestly obvious that Mr. King’s military service caused what the stolid councilmen call “part time” service to Doraville (on Foxnews King stated that the council complained that King wasn’t available by cell phone while in Baghdad), and thus by saying the things that they did they have already lost the certain lawsuit should they continue with their intent to fire King.  [Sidebar: If we were to deploy Messers Spangler, Lowe and Hart to Baghdad — an appealing idea — it is likely that their cell phones would not work there either].
2. It is not germane that they had temporarily lost the services of King.  This is assumed as the precondition for application of the federal code (cited above).  Said another way, if they had not temporarily lost King’s services, the complaints would never have been lodged and the Federal Code would never have been invoked.
3. It is even more damning that the council fired King when he returned rather that when he deployed.  Since they now have his full time services again, his termination can only be seen as punitive.
4. As a rule of thumb, companies in the U.S. not only allow employees time off for service (including long term deployment) and ensure employment upon return, but most continue to pay the employee his or her full time salary while being deployed.
5. Finally, Mr. Hart’s sleeping habits are not germane to the case and will not be mentioned in the upcoming lawsuit.

“Red clay hills, rednecks drinking wine on Sunday; behind their field, gettin’ down in Doraville.”

In 1974 the Atlanta Rhythm Section (known to fans as ARS) released a cut called “Doraville.”  Do you remember ARS — the sophisticated southern rock style, up tempo tunes and silky smooth vocals?  Do you remember Doraville?  “… touch o’ country in the city, Doraville, it ain’t much but its home.  Friends of mine, say I oughta move to New York.  Well New York’s fine, but it ain’t Doraville.”  If not, here is a teaser:

Doraville

It appears that Doraville ain’t New York, and it also ain’t what it used to be.

A small-town Georgia police chief who left to face enemy fire in Iraq only to return and be fired by town officials got his job back Wednesday, thanks to an angry mayor.

Doraville Mayor Ray Jenkins deemed his council’s recent vote to oust Police Chief John King contrary to state and federal laws and put the chief back on the job.

“I support him 100 percent,” Jenkins told FOXNews.com. “The community is really upset and disturbed. I am trying to get it under control.”

King, a colonel with the Army National Guard, came under fire by council members who were upset after he was sent to Iraq, calling him a part-time police chief. Doraville is about 16 miles outside of Atlanta with about 15,000 residents, King said.

“Apparently they feel it takes away from my effectiveness as police chief,” King said. “I think my service to my country has made me a better chief.”

One of the three members who voted to fire King, Bob Spangler, said his vote was not personal. Ed Lowe and Tom Hart also voted against King.

“The City of Doraville must have a fair, honest and present Chief of Police. As a City Council Representative, it is my responsibility to ensure that happens. While some are attempting to spin our decision as personal, I assure you it was based on solid facts,� Bob Spangler said in a statement released to FOX 5 News Atlanta.

Police Chief King has just today given his story on national television.

Iraq war veteran and Doraville police Chief John King told a national CNN television audience Friday night that he was “absolutely shocked” to hear he had been fired, a move widely attributed to concerns over his National Guard service.

“This is not the America that I fought for and defended,” he said during an appearance on CNN’s “Out in the Open.”

King, an Iraq war veteranand commander of Georgia Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, was fired Tuesday by the Doraville city council, then reinstated Wednesday by the Mayor.

Earlier this week, King, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that when he was fired, “I felt like I was in south Baghdad getting hit by snipers and had no chance to fight back.”

King was fired at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday after a closed-door meeting, following an exchange in which Councilman Tom Hart called King a “part-time chief” and criticized him for being out of the loop during the 18 months he served in Iraq.

On Friday, Hart told the AJC that he misspoke by bringing up King’s service in Iraq but said he stands by his decision to fire the chief.

“I had gone two days without any sleep,” said Hart. “It [the firing] has nothing to do with the military stuff.”

The ploy at sympathy (”I had gone two days without any sleep”) is pathetic and irrelevant.  Since the alleged ‘facts’ are of interest, let’s go over them with Messers Spangler, Lowe and Hart.

1. Firing Mr. King violates United States Code 38 U.S.C. Section 4301.  It is manifestly obvious that Mr. King’s military service caused what the stolid councilmen call “part time” service to Doraville (on Foxnews King stated that the council complained that King wasn’t available by cell phone while in Baghdad), and thus by saying the things that they did they have already lost the certain lawsuit should they continue with their intent to fire King.  [Sidebar: If we were to deploy Messers Spangler, Lowe and Hart to Baghdad — an appealing idea — it is likely that their cell phones would not work there either].
2. It is not germane that they had temporarily lost the services of King.  This is assumed as the precondition for application of the federal code (cited above).  Said another way, if they had not temporarily lost King’s services, the complaints would never have been lodged and the Federal Code would never have been invoked.
3. It is even more damning that the council fired King when he returned rather that when he deployed.  Since they now have his full time services again, his termination can only be seen as punitive.
4. As a rule of thumb, companies in the U.S. not only allow employees time off for service (including long term deployment) and ensure employment upon return, but most continue to pay the employee his or her full time salary while being deployed.
5. Finally, Mr. Hart’s sleeping habits are not germane to the case and will not be mentioned in the upcoming lawsuit.

“Red clay hills, rednecks drinking wine on Sunday; behind their field, gettin’ down in Doraville.”

Sunnis in Iraq deal not only with the violence perpetrated by Shia death sqauds, but also the day to day living difficulties associated with being in the minority and out of power.  In Baghdad, the search for ice has become a deadly struggle.

Each day before the midsummer sun rises high enough to bake blood on concrete, Baghdad’s underclass lines up outside Dickensian ice factories.

With electricity reaching most homes for just a couple of hours each day, the poor hand over soiled brown dinars for what has become a symbol of Iraq’s steady descent into a more primitive era and its broken covenant with leaders, domestic and foreign. In a capital that was once the seat of the Islamic Caliphate and a center of Arab worldliness, ice is now a currency of last resort for the poor, subject to sectarian horrors and gangland rules.

In Shiite-majority Topci, icemakers say that Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army militia issued a diktat on the first day of summer ordering vendors to set a price ceiling of 4,000 dinars, or $3, per 25-kilogram, or 55-pound, block of ice - 30 percent less than they charge in areas outside Mahdi army control.

Everyone complied, delivering an instant subsidy to the veiled women and poor laborers who are the radical Shiite cleric’s natural constituency. The same price is enforced in his other power bases, like Sadr City.

Some suppliers are horrified.

“They are trying to improve their image, and gain favor,” grumbled one merchant, as a sickle-wielding colleague chopped the hollow crystalline blocks in half for black-robed women to cram into shopping bags. “But it won’t do much good. We all know what the Mahdi army are.”

We have repeatedly called for the disappearance of Moqtada al Sadr from the political and military scene in Iraq, as has Omar Fadhil of Iraq The Model, who observed that “While Al-Qaeda poses a serious security challenge in some provinces, Sadr threatens the future of the whole country. He can paralyze or disrupt the proper functioning of whole ministries and provinces.”  But it appears that Sadr will remain unmolested, and perhaps for good reason (in Maliki’s eyes).  Maliki’s party remains secretive, suspicious, and obsessesed with survival.

As the U.S. military attempts to pacify Iraq so its leaders can pursue political reconciliation, Iraqi and Western observers say Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his inner circle appear increasingly unable to pull the government out of its paralysis.

At times consumed by conspiracy theories, Maliki and his Dawa party elite operate much as they did when they plotted to overthrow Saddam Hussein — covertly and concerned more about their community’s survival than with building consensus among Iraq’s warring groups, say Iraqi politicians and analysts and Western diplomats.

In recent weeks, those suspicions have deepened as U.S. military commanders have begun to work with Sunni insurgents, longtime foes of the Shiite-led government, who have agreed to battle the group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

“The level of mutual trust is so low that you really have to not just rebuild trust, you have to build trust in the first place, and that is still very much a work in progress right now,” said Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, the top U.N. envoy to Iraq.

The prime minister’s close aides counter that Maliki can lead and that party leaders are committed to building a broad-based government.

“The Dawa party has no special request that Maliki must listen to us,” said Hassan Suneid, a Dawa legislator and close adviser to the prime minister. “We do not want to impose a government different than what everybody else wants. Trust me, the Dawa party is the one who pushes Maliki to be open-minded to other voices.”

There are many reasons for Iraq’s political stagnation. In the fifth year of war, Iraq’s politicians remain more loyal to their sect, clan, tribe and region than they are to the nation. A culture of fear, inherited from Hussein’s reign, remains entrenched.

“Some of the coterie of Maliki fear their friends more than they fear their enemies,” said Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite who heads Iraq’s Supreme National Commission for De-Baathification. “You can’t separate people from their backgrounds. Most of them were used to secret-society politics, not open politics.”

A moderately different take on this might be that Maliki and his party distrusts, and because of this doesn’t want a strong central government or institutions to develop.  It is seen as contrary to his own survival.

Not surprisingly, insurgencies have become a topic of considerable interest among military analysts, with experts studying the life cycles of insurgencies around the world. In that work, they’ve found that as an insurgency matures, the motivation of its leaders often changes. Rebels who start out fighting for what they see as a noble cause or to achieve a goal in time come to enjoy the power and money that insurgency brings them. Analysts describe that transition as “grievance to greed.”

In a new paper, Steven Metz, a professor at the U.S. Army War College, makes a point with considerable relevance to Iraq. He argues that government leaders fighting an insurgency undergo that same transformation. They too find the insurgency a convenient way to accumulate power and money, and they don’t really mind if it continues. In their world, the considerable personal risks they would have to take to make peace vastly outweigh the minor risks of letting the insurgency continue.

For example, Metz points out, building an effective military is essential if a government is to defeat an insurgency. Yet government leaders also understand that a powerful military can also become a threat to their own existence. As Metz notes, “more regimes have been overthrown by coups than by insurgencies.” Government leaders are more secure with a weak military and continuing insurgency than with a strong military and no insurgency.

Then there is another view.  The always interesting and compelling Nibras Kazimi calls the Sunni withdrawal from the government a miscalculation, and points to the hardship of learning democratic politics as the root cause of the problems.  After dealing with a significant amount of detail on the personalities and political machinations involved, he concludes:

Maliki may be secure for now in the fact that no one can agree on his replacement in such a confused, yet healthy, atmosphere of political jockeying. The sectarian-based coalitions that emerged from the last elections are breaking down as the threat of sectarian warfare diminishes further and further, and the Sunni insurgency grinds down to an allowable baseline of violence. But Maliki must act quickly and confidently to put his own stamp on a new cabinet of his own choosing, something that many doubt that he has the personal stamina and brain-power to do.

For now, it’s great for me to watch the Islamist parties fumble, with no dominant ‘leader’ emerging. Everyone is being forced to play politics within the rules of the game; no more military coups, no more ‘Great Leaders’. The Sadrists have shown themselves to be as inept and corrupt as all the rest, and the shrill Sunni voices are being supplanted by new political forces that can live with the huge cascade of change begun on April 9, 2003.

But Iraqis are still suffering from the ineptness of their public servants, and new and empowered managerial talent must be harnessed to improve basic services and revive the economy, and it’s immoral to keep Iraqis waiting much longer.

The best case scenario would be early parliamentary elections in six months, with Maliki acting as a care-taker. But all the parties understand that this may greatly diminish their gains and will work to prevent it from happening; the Shiites will probably be unable to depend on a blessing from Grand Ayatollah Sistani this time around given their poor performance in power. An even-better scenario would be to turn parliamentary seats into district representations rather than slate-backed, but again, the current lack-lustre MPs would refuse that.

Congressional critics and the western media may want to play up this political confusion as a sign that Bush is not making progress in Iraq, and they predictably will. But a fairer analysis would conclude that these are all healthy signs of the re-introduction of politics into Iraqi life. It may not even be as pretty as sausage-making, yet it puts to rest the Middle Eastern instinctual impulse for a short-cut to power through violence and tyranny.

These are two radically different views of the events transpiring before our eyes.  From politics to the daily needs of ice to prevent food from spoiling, every element of Iraqi society is in a struggle.  Is this a struggle to prevent a strong central government from developing and keep a party in power, or is this a picture of the reintroduction of politics into a society which hasn’t seen it in decades?  Which view is correct will become apparent in good time.

**** SCROLL FOR UPDATES **** 

Discussions on body armor for Soldiers and Marines can be highly technical, and most of them have been, right up until recently.  Senators are now winning political points by talking about body armor that will never be deployed because it is too heavy to wear on the battlefield; the Government Accountability Office is performing investigations that fail to address government accountability; the Army refuses even to consider assistance to its testing program by an independent engineering consultant; and all the while Marines are still being denied the equipment that they need.  Body armor has gone political.

Introduction & Background

In Body Armor Wars: The Way Forward, we gave a primer on the features and characteristics of the currently deployed body armor (the Interceptor Body Armor and the Modular Tactical Vest, or Spartan 2 Assault Vest), and expanded the investigation into the claims and counterclaims of Pinnacle, and the Army, respectively, concerning the Dragon Skin body armor.  Finally, we outlined a way forward for all concerned parties, this way being the best solution for the Soldier and Marine irrespective of how other parties feel about it.  The recommendations included but were not limited to the development of analytical models of the body armor types, a re-examination of the testing protocol, a review of the test data and more testing as deemed appropriate, and real world input from Soldiers and Marines concerning ‘wearability’ and heavy battlefield weight.  This was to be led by an independent engineering consultant to the Department of Defense.

There were political machinations at work prior to our article on body armor wars, but these wars are becoming increasingly political and less oriented towards technical substance and reviewer independence.  Shrill voices who have never put on body armor are now weighing in, clearly attempting to gain political points.

Survey of the Debate

Below we catalog recent articles which bear on the issue of body armor and the Dragon Skin versus the IBA (Interceptor Body Armor) / MTV (Modular Tactical Vest, or Spartan 2).

On April 26, 2007, the Government Accountability Office published their preliminary findings in Defense Logistics: Army and Marine Corps’s Individual Body Armor System Issues, as GAO-07-662R.  Other than standardization of test protocol for soft ballistic panels, the GAO reported a substantial amount of detail to Congress concerning their findings, none of which were worthy of mention as problems.  The study and report focused on meeting theater requirements and body armor availability, testing protocol, post-deployment inspections and information sharing between the Army and Marine Corps.  A comparison of the IBA/MTV with the Dragon Skin (or an assessment of claims made by Pinnacle) was not within the scope of the study.

On May 2, 2007, OpFor published the summary of the GAO’s investigation into the body armor testing, and reported “sorry Pinnacle, no government conspiracy.”  OpFor followed up this article with two more articles: May 21, 2007 and May 22, 2007, both of which were extremely critical of the Dragon Skin and the claims by Pinnacle.

On May 18, 2007, Senators Clinton and Webb issued a press release in which they “called on Comptroller General of the United States David M. Walker to initiate a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation to reassess the body armor systems currently being issued by all the military services and the Special Operations Command for effectiveness and reliability against the threats facing U.S. troops in combat.”  Note that this press release recommends a different GAO investigation, one that focuses on the currently deployed systems versus the Dragon Skin.

On May 20, 2007, two days after Senators Clinton and Webb issued their press release, NBC published an article on the Dragon Skin body armor entitled Are U.S. Soldiers Wearing the Best Body Armor?  In addition to conducting their own tests after which they call into question the Army test results, they NBC slips in their summary statement up front, saying that “the Army’s Interceptor uses four rigid plates to stop the most lethal bullets, leaving some vital organs unprotected. Dragon Skin — with discs that interconnect like Medieval chainmail — can wrap most of a soldier’s torso, providing a greater area of maximum protection.”

Also on May 20, 2007, Jeff Huber of Pen and Sword published an article that was highly critical of the Army’s handling of the body armor situation.  The article at Pen and Sword presupposes the superiority of the Dragon Skin to the IBA/MTV.

On May 28, 2007, The Captain’s Journal published Body Armor Wars: The Way Forward.  In this article we sided with OpFor concerning battlefield weight, although we decidedly favored completely independent testing and analysis by a mechanical and forensic engineering firm, as well as review of all DoD testing protocols of body armor.  We provided a list of ten recommendations for such a project.  On the same day, Blackfive published a list of useful links to the body armor controversy, and concurred with our opinion regarding independent testing and analysis.

On June 5, 2007, DefenseTech published an article entitled The Dragon Skin Circus Begins.  Defense Tech received an advance copy of testimony before congress and supplied some technical analysis and criticism, and using an extensive history of coverage of this body armor issue, raised a number of technical issues associated with both the Dragon Skin testing and the testimony before Congress.

On June 6, the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing on the controversy, and ranking member Duncan Hunter, whose son is a Marine who has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, issued a statement both warning on the one hand of the necessity to test in high temperature conditions, and on the other of the need for retesting of the body armor systems.  Despite the requests, Army officials declined to retest the body armor systems under any other protocol than a new contract.  On June 7, 2007, DefenseTech published a post-mortem on the Dragon Skin Congressional hearing.

On June 7, 2007, Daily Kos weighed in with the most vitriolic and shrill article yet on body armor.  The article sees an evil administration at every turn, refusing to consider the safety of the troops.  This insightful comment sits at the end of the responses to the article for those readers patient enough to endure the beating: “Dragon Skin’s attempt to disguise lobbying as concern for the troops isn’t terribly creative.”

On June 11, Air Force contracting officials sought to prohibit Pinnacle Armor from signing new contracts with the U.S. Government, alleging false claims by Pinnacle to have met ballistic standards that in fact they did not.  On June 14, the Navy issued the same order that the Marines did, banning personally purchased body armor.

Even more recently, American Legion Post 735, which spent $6000 for Spartan 2 Vests (commercial equivalent to the Modular Tactical Vest) for Marines soon to be deployed to the Anbar province, have had their equipment retired and denied use by Marines due to Marine administrative order MARADMIN 262/07 that we discussed in Gear and Equipment Problems for the Marines.  Be careful not to confuse this with the debate about Dragon Skin body armor, since New York Congressman Brian Higgins, albeit with the best of intentions, has made this mistake and issued a press release asking for the same independent probe that Senators Clinton and Webb have requested.

Assessment & Evaluation

The chorus of voices discussing body armor has become so loud that clarity and precision are languishing … and body armor has gone political.  Senator Clinton, while standing to gain political points, is at least ignorant of body armor issues.  Senator Webb is not ignorant of body armor issues, and knows full well that the U.S. cannot put Soldiers and Marines in the Dragon Skin’s 48 lbs. of weight (compared to 32 for the Interceptor or MTV).  It must be remembered that the warrior carries not only his body armor, but a hydration system, weapon, ammunition, sometimes communication gear, and often other supplies.  The heavy battlefield weight has led to ankle and knee injuries that incapacitate fighters on the battlefield, thus endangering their lives.  There is currently a push by the Army and Marines to decrease battlefield weight, not increase it.  “Anecdotal evidence is streaming back from the battlefield about Marines breaking their ankles while jumping off of trucks because of the weight they are carrying … Maj. Gen. William D. Catto, commanding officer, Marine Corps Systems Command, during the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exhibition April 6, 2006, said that the “current body armor system is ‘too heavy’.  Catto went on to call for industry “pinheadsâ€? to help develop lighter armor because the “lightest guy in the platoon going across the line of departure is wearing 80 pounds of gear.â€?

Senator Webb knows this, and he is merely trying to gain political points.  In fact, the question should be considered how Pinnacle’s body armor system even justified testing by the Army given its heavy weight.  It cannot be deployed as is, and its weight must be reduced by a fraction of at least 32/48 = 0.667, or 2/3, before it can be considered equivalent to the currently deployed body armor, regardless of coverage area.  This is a nontrivial amount of weight.

Yet there are troubling issues.  Questions have arisen concerning the rigid restraint of the Dragon Skin during testing, the angle of incidence of the projectile, and other issues of testing protocol and interpretation of results.  This matters for one simple reason: proof of principle.  If flexible, full coverage body armor is to be in the future of the Army and Marines, these questions must be answered.  The Army is being profoundly unhelpful by refusing any independent consultative support for their testing and analysis engineering.

The Marines have their own problems.  The Modular Tactical Vest, which represents a substantial improvement over the IBA, was supposed to be deployed in February of this year, and all Marines deployed to Iraq were supposed to have this armor carrier (with the same ESAPI plates and soft armor panels - see Body Armor Wars: The Way Forward, for an explanation of improved features of the new carrier).  Since it has been delayed in manufacture and deployment, it has become common practice for Marines at Camp LeJeune to drive down the road a mile or two to Tactical Applications Group and spend the money to purchase their own vest.  This is what American Legion Post 735 purchased for their adopted Marines, only to be denied its use by a field grade officer who is not being innovative and taking advantage of the fact that the Spartan 2 is the exact duplicate in form, fit and function as the Modular Tactical Vest.

Finally, the Government Accountability Office sent too many investigators to Quantico to talk to Marine Corps officers, and not enough to Camp LeJeune to talk to Lance Corporals who could have told them that talk of the MTV was a smoke screen and a ruse since the MTV has not yet been issued.  To be named the GAO, this office gives little confidence that there is much “accountability,” whether in the GAO or elsewhere.

Conclusions & Recommendations

Given the lack of confidence inspired by the federal government, independent consultative support is necessary to restore the public confidence in the system.  Support, that is, who doesn’t stand gain from whatever conclusions that are reached.  This is necessary for not only proof of principle for future body armor designs, but for currently deployed armor we well.

The politicians who stand to gain by demanding new GAO investigations of the Dragon Skin should stand down and align themselves with the House Armed Services Committee, because when politics rears its ugly head, science rarely wins, and government accountability is a rare commodity.

We are advocating the same thing that Representative Duncan Hunter is: independent testing and consultative support — yet with a full view to the comprehensive requirements under which the body armor system must perform, including temperature and battlefield weight.

**** UPDATE ****

This article was published on June 18, 2007.  On June 20, 2007, the Strategy Page weighed in on body armor weight:

June 20, 2007: While politicians and pundits make a lot of noise about getting the troops better body armor, the troops are asking for less, or at least lighter and less bulky, armor. Anyone who has been in combat will tell you that survival depends, first of all,  on speed and mobility. Body armor helps when you do get hit, but the latest body armor often slows troops down and makes them vulnerable to hits in unarmored areas (the face, and limbs). Troops traveling in vehicles find the body armor a major obstacle to getting out quickly. This can be a matter of life and death. Another problem is fatigue and heat. The heavy armor is cumbersome, and wearing it in action wears you out more quickly.

SOCOM troops have a lot of discretion, and sometimes prefer to go into action without their body armor. But regular soldiers and marines must wear the body armor at all times, and they are not happy with the no-win situation they are often put in because of this requirement. The politicians are really paying attention, and the troops are not happy with the results. No one, except the troops who wear the stuff, appear to realize how critical weight and bulk is.

One (sort of) bright spot is that the enemy often obtains body armor, either Russian stuff, or police grade protective vests. This does give them some protection, but it also slows them down and wears them down more quickly. In some situations, when Taliban gunmen are being pursued, they have been seen abandoning their body armor, in order to increase their chances of getting away.

Of course, the solution is not to make use of discretion to jettison body armor.  It is for the designers of the ceramic ESAPI plates to come up with something lighter.

From Bill Gertz of The Washington Times:

New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.

U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been used in the past by China to hide its arms-proliferation activities from the United States, according to U.S. officials with access to the intelligence reports.

Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms.

The Washington Times reported June 5 that Chinese-made HN-5 anti-aircraft missiles were being used by the Taliban.

According to the officials, the Iranians, in buying the arms, asked Chinese state-run suppliers to expedite the transfers and to remove serial numbers to prevent tracing their origin. China, for its part, offered to transport the weapons in order to prevent the weapons from being interdicted.

The weapons were described as “late-model” arms that have not been seen in the field before and were not left over from Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq.

U.S. Army specialists suspect the weapons were transferred within the past three months.

The Bush administration has been trying to hide or downplay the intelligence reports to protect its pro-business policies toward China, and to continue to claim that China is helping the United States in the war on terrorism. U.S. officials have openly criticized Iran for the arms transfers but so far there has been no mention that China is a main supplier.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that the flow of Iranian arms to Afghanistan is “fairly substantial” and that it is likely taking place with the help of the Iranian government.

Defense officials are upset that Chinese weapons are being used to kill Americans. “Americans are being killed by Chinese-supplied weapons, with the full knowledge and understanding of Beijing where these weapons are going,” one official said.

The arms shipments show that the idea that China is helping the United States in the war on terrorism is “utter nonsense,” the official said.

John Tkacik, a former State Department official now with the Heritage Foundation, said the Chinese arms influx “continues 10 years of willful blindness in both Republican and Democrat administrations to China’s contribution to severe instability in the Middle East and South Asia.”

Mr. Tkacik said the administration should be candid with the American people about China’s arms shipments, including Beijing’s provision of man-portable air-defense missiles through Iran and Syria to warring factions in Lebanon and Gaza.

The Bush administration hides the destabilizing influence of China in the Middle East because they are “pro-business.”  In China, anyone - Chinese citizen or visitor to the country - can legally purchase any piece of software for $5 or less because of the pirating being done in China, with the full approval of the Chinese government.  There is China’s pro-business policy for you.  It costs U.S. software developers and code writers billions of dollars each year.  China has always been and is currently a nation run by a band of criminals.

With each passing day, new evidence emerges that indicates that this administration doesn’t want to win the war.