Body armor story has a strange whiff to it

There is a strange story in the West Virginia Gazette about a wounded soldier being told he needed to reimburse the army $700 for damaged body armor when he sustained injuries from a road side bomb. There are several things that leap out of this story. First, the concept of charging an injured soldier for this is so completely bizarre that anyone who leaps onto its bandwagon must truly have their judgement questioned. Second, Senator Jay Rockefeller immediately jumped onto the bandwagon of outrage firing off a nasty letter to Don Rumsfeld demanding he give the money back. The third point is that Senator Byrd seems to have had a rational response.

What everyone continues to overlook is that the military is a bureaucratic entity just like any other government agency. It may be one of the more disciplined bureaucracies, but it is one nonetheless. Every time there is a snafu of this sort, the Dems and media are quick to jump all over it and will certainly make every attempt to portray this as Bush and Rumsfeld lacking care of the soldiers. Here we see Rockefeller going berzerk and writing a letter to Rumsfeld. He could have asked an aide to make a phone call to simply ask what this was about. Is there some new secretary, or processing agent that is not familiar with such things? Is somebody being a spiteful renegade? A simple "this is ridiculous and it needs to be corrected" is all that is needed, but the Dems simply can never pass up an opportunity to make a scene. Robert Byrd actually keeps his cool and wonders if this is standard practice?


I think this raises a specter in my mind of political ideologs in certain lower positions in government. I'm sure there are quite a number of lefties at the Pentagon, in the CIA, in the State Department, in the DHS and many other departments small and large. Here is a simple clerical "mistake" that happens to hit the papers. Can it be that some closet lefty might have done this so that we can plan on seeing claims of soldiers being charged for damaged armor in an explosion? I am sure this will get corrected immediately, but we will be seeing a moveon.org commercial about this in the '06 and '08 elections no doubt.

Oddly enough a liberal blog was "Johnny on the spot" to raise money for the poor soldier:

The bulk of money for Rebrook was raised Tuesday after the soldier’s story was posted on americablog.com, a popular liberal political blog.

Donations ranged from $1 to $400, said John Aravosis, who runs the Internet blog. More than 187 people gave money. About 200 people posted to the blog.

“Everybody thinks liberals hate soldiers,” Aravosis said. “But the majority of people get that it’s not right to abuse our troops.”

So we have a strange occurrence completely at odds with standard practice, Rockefeller firing off letters and making a big scene, a liberal blog raising money for the soldier and making claims of troop abuse. This one is so ripe I am not even seeing any reference about it on CNN.

The soldier William "Eddie" Rebrook has a great attitude. Almost $6000 was raised to give to him and he is not even keeping it. He is giving it to a woman who suffered from Katrina whose son helped save his life. He admits it was a tough pill to swallow, but the article states:

Despite the “bureaucratic snafu,” as Rebrook calls it, he holds no grudges. “I love the Army,” Rebrook said. “I love my soldiers. I loved being in it.”

Kudos to this great American for his service and his obvious love of country and serving it. Kudos to Robert Byrd for the second lucid moment this year. Shame on Rockefeller for continuing to politicize every single issue that comes his way.