Crossposted from Left Toon Lane & My Left Wing
click to enlarge
More than four years into this, the Pentagon still can’t get the body armor right. First they didn’t have enough to go around and now what has been issued, isn’t the best and of course women have no real options.
I was talking recently with a military contractor about the issue of body armor and his take on it was that what the troops had was rubbish, specifically for women. The current Army-issued Interceptor armor was made for men, the armor is essentially a flat plate and when worn over female breasts, the armor creates a gap at the top of the armor and it is pushed farther from the rib cage on the top leaving a large gap big enough to drive a grenade through. The problem with side entry wounds is even worse for women as the Interceptor model of armor leaves them more vulnerable.
The new Dragon Skin model of armor WRAPS the body and provides 360 degree protection – in some areas better protection than the Interceptor and in some areas worse. But if you are a woman, you are ordered to wear the faulty fitting Interceptor model.
wow
good catch
Unfuckingbelievable.
Whatever happened to the idea that the military shouldn’t send women into situations in which there’s a good chance they can get killed or wounded?
The question of women in combat has been answered in Iraq. They serve with distinction.
Whatever happened to not sending US troops to war unless it was absolutely the last option?
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about US military policy on women in combat:
Thus, women in the US military do not serve in combat positions.
Your diary falls into the hands of the warmongers. The problem isn’t that troops, and women in particular, have inadequate armor, but that armor is required at all in non-combat situations. As is well known by now, it is impossible for a Westerner to venture beyond the Green Zone without grave risk to his or her life. It is lunacy to continue an occupation that has created such hostility among the local population, and in which the effort to pacify the local population has failed so catastrophically. Talking about the inadequacy of armor just obscures that fact. Armor doesn’t guarantee that a person won’t be killed or seriously wounded. Instead of providing soldiers with better armor, we should not be placing them in situations in which they need to wear armor, to fight a lost cause.
I think you are missing the point, which was the Pentagon never got the armor business correct to begin with and never bothered with an option for women.
And I really don’t care what Wikipedia says about the women in combat policy. They are in combat, they are in Baghdad and see action everyday. Besides, Bush never saw a policy he didn’t break.
I guess you’re right about that: for an American soldier to be outside of the Green Zone is, for all intents and purposes, to be in combat. And female soldiers are involved in transport, as we learned from the Jessica Lynch story.
The points you make about body armor are very good. The reason I reacted as I did is I think there’s something fucked up about women needing body armor in the first place. I think you put your finger on the problem when you say that Bush never saw a policy he didn’t break. The official policy is that women are not put into combat, but the reality is that they are. That’s the fundamental problem, as I see it.
And that’s part of the larger problem that the situation in Iraq is so FUBAR—Larry Johnson’s diary of today provides just one example of how—that it’s criminal to keep our soldiers there.
To respond to your diary in a more pragmatic manner, I think the “solution” is not body armor that can accommodate women’s breasts, but not requiring service women to venture beyond U.S. bases. They shouldn’t even be sent to the Green Zone, which is too dangerous nowadays.
That doesn’t negate of course your point that soldiers weren’t provided with adequate body armor to begin with.
Concerning your other point – warmongering, I agree, we should never have gone to Iraq and we should start pulling troops out NOW, not tomorrow, but NOW.