Soldiers Ordered To Choose Between Armor and Death Benefits?

[Bark Bark Bark]

I am not familiar with "Soldiers For The Truth," so take this with a grain of salt--for the moment--but keep watch. If this story is for real, it had damned well better be THE tipping point...or I'm moving.

http://www.sftt.org/main.cfm?actionId=globalShowStaticContent&screenKey=cmpDefense&htmlCategoryID=30&htmlId=4514

Two deploying soldiers and a concerned mother reported Friday afternoon that the U.S. Army appears to be singling out soldiers who have purchased Pinnacle's Dragon Skin Body Armor for special treatment. The soldiers, who are currently staging for combat operations from a secret location, reported that their commander told them if they were wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin and were killed their beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action.

...

On Saturday morning a soldier affected by the order reported to DefenseWatch that the directive specified that "all" commercially available body armor was prohibited. The soldier said the order came down Friday morning from Headquarters, United States Special Operations Command (HQ, USSOCOM), located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. It arrived unexpectedly while his unit was preparing to deploy on combat operations. The soldier said the order was deeply disturbiing to many of the men who had used their own money to purchase Dragon Skin because it will affect both their mobility and ballistic protection.

My gratitude to the always-awesome Steve Gilliard for the link.

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/

[Lisa]

1. this is surreal ...

I wonder how this fits in with some of the earlier stories reported here on DU ... such as the medical study which showed that Marines' lives could have been saved if they'd had adequate armor ... and that claim by the Pentagon that many troops didn't want to wear armor even if it had been available. If I were a cynical person, I would almost think that the higher-ups don't care about soldiers getting hurt, and that they are letting the numbers of wounded and dead go higher than necessary just to make a point. Am I being cynical?

[livvy]

2. Truthout has the article also.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011606S.shtml