Body By Jarlsberg: The Crackheads' Latest Military Screwup

Yeah, nothing like an urban assault vehicle that puts our troops in harm's way because the shell is made of freakin' Swiss cheese. Blah3 brings this latest waste of money - and ultimately lives - from the Crackhead Administration to our attention:

Faulty Armor?
By John Barry, Newsweek Web Exclusive

The Bush administration's military predicament in Iraq has suddenly gotten worse.

JUST A MONTH before the next U.S. Army unit is due to deploy in Iraq to relieve the hard-pressed forces already there, the military is confessing to a potential showstopper. The deploying unit's new armored vehicles may have faulty armor which would leave them vulnerable to machine-gun fire and to the rocket-propelled grenades that are the Iraq insurgents' favorite weapon.

The vehicle is the prized new Stryker wheeled troop carrier, advertised as the first fruit of the Army's plan to transform itself into a lighter, go-anywhere-fast force.

Worse still: the Army has known it might have a problem since February, but has kept quiet about it. An Army memo sent yesterday to the head of the Stryker program, and obtained by NEWSWEEK, reports: "Evidently this issue was first raised in February 2003. Am unsure how this issue escaped public scrutiny for six months." Not even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was told, NEWSWEEK has learned. "Understand that ARSTAF [Army Staff] have been told to treat this issue as if it were 'classified'," says the memo, which is addressed to Lt. Gen. John Riggs, the head of the Stryker program. At a recent Army meeting to discuss the faulty armor, the main topic on the agenda, according to a DOD source, was: "How do we tell Secretary Rumsfeld?" Rumsfeld is now in Iraq.

Don't worry. Newsweek and the Blogosphere took care of that.