This Is How Washington Honors Our Troops

What a day I've had. Sometimes I absolutely hate technology. In the good old days we only had to worry about interruptions from a single phone (without call waiting), but now we have cell phones, e-mail, fax machines, PDA's, etc. Do you think we've progressed with all this new fangled stuff? I really wonder sometimes.

Anyway, I wanted to bring this information to your attention. I've blogged before about the problems our soldiers have with their armor provided exclusively by Point Blank Armor, Inc., and a recent Pentagon study found that as many as "80 percent of the Marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon largely has declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials."

Meanwhile, the soldiers serving our country have resorted to buying Pinnacle Dragon Skin Armor with their own money - at costs up to $6,000. That's no small chunk of change and it serves to emphasize how concerned the soldiers are about the adequacy of the Point Blank Armor. I doubt they'd spend that kind of money out-of-pocket otherwise.

As if that's not bad enough, our insane government got wind of what the soldiers were doing and issued this directive:

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.

This is the way our government honors the soldiers risking their lives everyday?