"For lack of body armor, troops die. Why the delay?"

news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060113/
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I can understand the expediencies of war. I can respect that sometimes more lives are lost in delay than in action that isn't 100 percent planned.

And I can understand 'going to war with the Army you have.'

But this was no surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It's not like we didn't know we were going to war a year beforehand. It's not like we haven't had the last few years to figure this out.

In WWII, a few years were enough time to bulk our industrial might into the arsenal of democracy. An aircraft carrier every week. 50,000 Sherman tanks. If you lined every B-24 bomber we built wingtip-to-wingtip, the line would stretch more than 400 miles.

Surely we can crank out a little body armor.

Heaven knows can generate government SNAFUs and build expensive crap we never use.

Expanding beyond just flak jackets, for the cost of a single gazillion dollar stealth B-2 we only ever fly just to say we done it, we could, I dunno...

- pay off every radar operator in the world to just say they never saw it coming
- Armor every HMMWV
- Up-armor that Hummer
- Bring up every simple, cheap, Vietnam-era, mothballed M113 armored personnel carrier that actually has the armor we need
- keep the A-10 Warthog ground support aerial tanks soldiers love. The Air Force wants to replace them with more fragile F-16s -- faster, shinier, make cooler movies....
- buy health insurance, textbooks, breakfast for... I dunno... Oregon
- pay for body armor TO SAVE MY BUDDIES' LIVES
- pay to ship over the suits that botched this and strap them to the Hummers.

Improvised armor.

Well, it felt good getting that out. Very theraputic. Let me note, though, that this is just an example of one person's free speech. Opinions are like as..ahh..bellybuttons -- everybody's got one. Feel free to leave a (constructive, non-abusive) comment of your own.

Heck, lemme know and I'll help you set up a blog of your own so's the whole world can feel the wrath of our bellybuttons.