...or at least trying their level best. (UPDATE: For those who find the title jarring - GOOD. This is money that could have gone to purchasing body armor.) From the
LA Times...
SALT LAKE CITY -- A Defense Department report says
the Air Force wasted $1 million on unreliable hand-held chemical agent detectors that could have put at risk any airmen who depended on the equipment, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Air Force officials may have violated federal laws and military rules when they bought 100 commercial versions of the detectors and supplied them to commanders in the Middle East while knowing that the manufacturer's tests showed the devices did not work well in hot areas or under battle conditions, the Deseret Morning News reported.
Aye chihuahua. The article doesn't specify whether any actual deaths were attributed to this, but the devices were shipped out and used in combat. More at the break...
Okay, this boils down to some crooked Pentagon types giving federal contracts to their friends
even knowing that they are putting trained US airmen at risk. Can you spell TREASON, boys and girls? I knew you could...
Moreover, officials did not wait for other necessary tests, including some at Utah's Dugway Proving Ground, according to a Defense Department inspector general report the newspaper obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Pentagon has ordered the Air Force to stop using the 100 detectors that were purchased and to send them to military testers who are working to improve them.
...
The tests found that, among many problems, the detectors did not perform well enough in identifying when chemical agents were present, the report says.
So in other words, the chemical detectors don't work and they never worked. Kinda like the missile defense shield. And the Air Force brass knew it. But we used them anyway.
Good fucking grief.
Welp, this was an AP story buried in the middle of the LA Times. Nothing to see here. Just the Bush Adminstration Rumsfeld Pentagon more consumed by corporate greed than concern for the lives of the men and women in uniform.
Again.