Uncle Sam, can you spare some body armor?
■"Reimbursement Program for Troops Stalls: Rules for repaying soldiers for equipment remain unfinished after a year," by John Files, New York Times, 3 October 2005, p. A14.
Anybody's who's worked for the Fed knows what a joy it is to get reimbursed for equipment you buy yourself to make your job go better (cell phones are just the latest in a long line).
Well, that incompetency extends to our troops in the field. Not only have we not gotten them enough of the right gear, we can't seem to reimburse them for what they end up buying (often crucial stuff like GPS units).
Here Rummy and company have been rather shameful in their slow response. Congress asked for a plan to reimburse soldiers up to $1,100 a person for needed gear, and asked for it by February 2005. No plan exists, apparently, or at least not one that Congress has ever heard of.
Pentagon spokespeople promise it will appear any day now.
Meanwhile, military-related charity organizations (what else to call them) do their best to provide gear to soldiers, especially the more underfunded units, which naturally come from the most SysAdmin of venues: the Guard and Reserves.
Yes, yes, the Army has its own special program for just this sort of thing, but frankly, if it were doing its job, these stories would never be written.
The continuing Defense Department bias against funding the SysAdmin function, and the troops who are performing it, is a big reason why our peace-waging effort in Iraq too often looks like major combat ops. When you lowball the SysAdmin, you buy yourself more Leviathan work.