Deep Throat Returns:
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Unzip! Stand at Ease! Spin Chamber and Fire! On 12 November,
the U.S. Army held a press conference in the Pentagon briefing room
to build public confidence
in the chem bio suits we’ll be using when we do Unfortunately for Rumsfeld’s war, all of the resulting publicity focused on an interesting event that occurred 25 minutes into the briefing -- the collapse of Army Sergeant First Class Kerrethel Avery while wearing one of the new tactical Battle Dress Over-garments, the Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology (JSLIST) or Saratoga Hammer Suit that replaced the BDOs used in Desert Storm I. The TV lights were blamed. The rest of the soldiers were told to unzip and stand at ease. Congressman Chris Shay has been asking questions about the acquisition management of these suits, and turns out 1 in 16 are defective. Shay calls it playing Russian roulette, but I guess the odds are a little better. The article mentions Isratex, a company convicted for fraud and delivering defective BDOs. Incidentally, owned at the time by some of our Israeli friends and allies. The story makes interesting reading on page 3 in the DoD Crime Awareness Newsletter. If you really want to get upset about MOPP-4 fraud and lies, have at it.Bottom line is we learned plenty in 1991 about what we needed in terms of better chem-bio gear, techniques and technologies to protect good guys, counteract toxins and improve warfighting in a desert chem-bio threat environment. We’ve had eleven years to work on the upgrades. A joke on the
Internet about the upcoming war comes from Kevin G. Barkes. “I've started referring to the proposed action against
We all know the kind of assumptions Microsoft, Inc. seems to make when they send out a new or upgraded product. “Everyone will buy this product regardless of expected major problems. Everyone expects problems because everyone knows that software writers can’t think of everything. It’s cheaper to use the whole world as paying beta testers than to actually produce better designs the first time around. And lastly, so what? We’re getting what we want.” Well, exchange “Microsoft, Inc.” for the War Party of Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Perle, “product” to Desert Storm 1.1, and “software writers” to the chicken hawk team of political appointees and pro-war media, and you might start to feel really warm. No, that’s not the TV lights—it’s because you are very close to understanding the process as it seems to be playing out in the Pentagon. It makes you wonder about the bio-chem assumptions they made when they upgraded Saddam’s demise to Version 1.1. Wonder no more! Assumption 1. Useless UN inspectors will eliminate the risk by actually disarming Saddam of chemical and biological weapons stores and delivery means. Assumption 2. We won’t be exposed to these elements on the battlefield, because air power and new battlefield technologies will quickly, with pinpoint accuracy, deprive Saddam of any battlefield operational initiative. Assumption 3. Saddam’s military leaders
will choose not to use chem-bio because
it would risk as many of their own soldiers and citizens as ours.
While they have gassed Iraqi Kurds and massacred Iraqi Shias
and tortured Iraqi children on Saddam’s orders, they’ll think twice
before using it on Christian invaders from the Assumption 4. The Iraqi army will heed Secretary Rumsfeld’s and President Bush’s direct warnings not to follow Saddam’s orders regarding chem-bio use, because they a) respect us, b) trust us, or c) have always wanted to live in Iowa. Assumption 5. We will fight only in 70 degrees instead of 90, 100, 110 or 120 degrees. After Sgt First Class Kerrethal recovered, she spoke to some reporters. She told them that she had “opened the suit at the cuffs” to allow air flow. Maybe we can write that into user patch sent out from headquarters. The Defense Department has effectively played down the Maybe when it backfires on the sand and rocks and crumbled concrete of
Russian roulette? Actually, when you take a really deep breath, it tastes and smells like a war crime. |
