Whitehouse Decries Failure to Provide Body Armor in New TV Ad

Whitehouse Decries Failure to Provide Body Armor in New TV Ad

Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate Shares Stories from Soldiers' Mothers

The latest television commercial from Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Sheldon Whitehouse focuses on the Bush administration's failure to provide adequate body armor for our troops serving in Iraq.

"Mothers have come up to me, and they have told me that when their child was sent over to Iraq they had to go shopping, for body armor for their kids," Whitehouse says in the ad, speaking at one in his campaign's series of community dinners. "When we have a United States government that we can't count on to provide adequate body armor for our children, and mothers have to do that, it is time to change the way things are done in Washington."

The new ad is available online at http://www.whitehouseforsenate.com/?page_id=263.

Within America's first year of involvement in Iraq, news reports began to surface of individual soldiers and their families making private purchases of body armor for use in Iraq. The purchases were made necessary by military supply shortages. In October of 2003 reports indicated that one quarter of troops deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom lacked interceptor body armor.

To remedy this, U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) offered an amendment to require the Secretary of Defense to reimburse private purchases of body armor and safety equipment. The provision eventually became law, but the Department of Defense dragged its heels for a year - seven months longer than the deadline set by the Dodd amendment - to implement the program.

Whitehouse has repeatedly taken the Bush administration to task for its misguided policies in Iraq, especially its failure to adequately equip and protect our troops. Recent reports on the readiness of military equipment indicate that as much as two-thirds of the Army's operating force is unprepared for wartime missions. The Army has estimated that it faces a shortfall of more than $17 billion to repair or replace equipment to get it ready for battle, and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker testified before Congress that the Army is using up its equipment four times faster than it was designed for.

Last week, Whitehouse reiterated his call for President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld in the wake of Rumsfeld's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Whitehouse called Rumsfeld's remarks "the same old sound bites and evasive responses," and said the Defense Secretary's inability to explain how the administration plans to fix its broken Iraq strategy "is just one more sign of George Bush's refusal to face reality and set a new course" there.

http://www.whitehouseforsenate.com/?page_id=273