Are US troops packing enough protection?

As the Pentagon girds for possible military action against Iraq, it is having problems providing US troops with state-of-the-art protective gear against chemical and biological attacks, representatives of both parties said last week.
Their worries have been buttressed by the General Accounting Office, which recently reported "continuing concerns" about equipment, training and research. The office said that for six years, "we have identified many problems in the Defence Department's capabilities to defend against chemical and biological weapons and sustain operations in the midst of their use".
The chairman of the Government Reform Committee's National Security Subcommittee, Christopher Shays, said the latest problem Pentagon officials uncovered involved gas masks that had the wrong gaskets and would require extensive inspections to ensure they were functioning properly.
Mr Shays said he was also concerned about the Defence Department's inability to manage millions of protective suits so that units likely to deploy to the Persian Gulf received the highest-quality gear, with 250,000 defective suits unaccounted for in the Pentagon inventory.

I think the Pentagon needs to talk to Michael Jackson. After all, those veils his kids wear are supposed to magically protect them from kidnappers, so he could probably give them tips...

posted by James Russell | 3:31 PM