To all my sweet brothers and sisters

[Arrow]

out there will you do me a favor? Please read this material and act on it according to your heart. I have done my best to put the material together for you. Please pass it on to your friends and loved ones and encourage them to act on it. The websites and links are there to make it easy for you to contact your Congressional Reps.

I wish we could wake up in the morning and all this would be a bad dream. Unfortunately we are facing an enemy more powerful than we have ever known in our life time. I continue to study in order to know the mindset of those that vow to bring us down. I have to say that I began with the hope that somewhere we could find compromise. However, the more I read the less hope I have. The mindset is born of religion. And religion is one of the most dangerous forces on earth when coupled with the arm of the state as we all know. The slaughter of innocents down through the ages in the name of God could fill oceans with blood.

The enemy we face is well financed there are billions of dollars that have come from all over the world through so called humantarian agencys, Arab owned banks etc etc, not to mention the money that flows from rich and powerful families in Saudi Arabia.

I am well aware that we have painted ourselves into a corner because of our dependence on fossil fuels. It is possible if we had gone to other forms of energy we would never have heard of Osma Bin Laden.

It is too late to undo what has been done. A culture of hate has been created and we are the target. The least we can do is equip the troops in front of us with the best of everything we have sparing nothing.

Griz told me the other day he went to Fort Lewis and saw all these young troops many with families in tow. Some with small children. Some of them expecting. My heart was touched when he said he wanted to stand on the table and tell all of them how proud he was of them and that "I love you guys". Let's just do that over the next few days. Let's tell them we love them by insisting that they have all that they need to at least give them a fighting chance. Thank you all. I love you..sis


Defective Protective Gear goes missing...

THE LAWMAKERS? worries have been buttressed by the General Accounting Office, which recently reported ?continuing concerns? about equipment, training and research. The GAO said that for six years, ?we have identified many problems in the Defense Department?s capabilities to defend against chemical and biological weapons and sustain operations in the midst of their use.?

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the Government Reform Committee?s national security subcommittee, said the latest problem Pentagon officials uncovered involves gas masks that have the wrong gaskets and will require extensive inspections to ensure that they are functioning properly.

SUITS UNACCOUNTED FOR

Shays said he is also concerned about the Defense Department?s inability to manage millions of protective suits so that units likely to deploy to the Persian Gulf receive the highest-quality gear, with 250,000 defective suits unaccounted for in the Pentagon inventory .

"I visited the troops in Europe, who I believe will be first responders in Iraq, and they did not have the best equipment we have, and that is a concern to me,? Shays said. ?We don?t know where some of our best suits are ? they are God knows where. And in some cases, we?ve mixed bad inventory with good.?

Raymond J. Decker, the GAO?s director of defense capabilities ad management, said he was not convinced that the Pentagon had enough new, highly protective, lightweight suits to equip all forces likely to fight a war in Iraq.

With the new suits in relatively short supply, Decker said, the Pentagon must rely on millions of older suits manufactured since 1989. But the quality of those charcoal-lined garments, he said, diminishes with age.

A Capitol Hill source, who asked not to be named, said recent Pentagon tests had revealed that the older suits are good for only a day or two after they are removed from their protective packaging. If additional testing turns up similar results, the source said, ?they?ve got a big problem.?

The GAO told Shays?s subcommittee in October that the Pentagon could not locate 250,000 defective suits manufactured since 1989 by a New York company called Isratex, whose officers have been convicted of intentionally providing the military with defective garments. An additional 530,000 defective suits produced by the firm have been located and removed from military stocks.

In a letter sent Wednesday to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a member of Shays?s subcommittee, Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.), cited ?extremely troubling? testimony by his subordinates on chemical and biological preparedness, particularly with regard to the 250,000 defective suits still missing.

In the letter, Schakowsky asked Rumsfeld to certify that all troops deployed to the Gulf for any possible military action against Iraq ?have been provided with equipment to protect against chemical and biological attacks in quantities sufficient to meet minimum required levels previously established by the Department of Defense.?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp......9Found=true


Shays' Statement on Military Equipment Preparedness for Chemical and Biological Warfare

In the event U.S. forces are called upon to rid the world of the grave and growing threat posed by the current Iraqi regime, it must be assumed those men and women will face chemical and biological weapons. That prospect compels us to ask, ?Are we ready to fight, and prevail, on a contaminated battlefield??

That question has vexed Pentagon planners and congressional committees since the Persian Gulf War. According to Department of Defense (DOD) after-action analysis, shortcomings in the availability, suitability and durability of chemical and biological (CB) defense equipment, particularly protective suits and masks, left American combat troops avoidably vulnerable to unconventional attack in Operation Desert Storm.

What have we learned since then?

Despite prolonged and costly efforts to improve CB defense doctrine, tactics and materiel, seemingly intractable problems still plague the effort to defend against chemical and biological weapons attacks. Research and development remains unfocused, and in some instances duplicative. Procurements are behind schedule. Due to persistent inventory management weaknesses, DOD does not always know how many CB defense items are available, where they are, or when they will get to the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who need them. Old protective suits are expiring faster than next-generations suits are being produced, pointing to potential shortages through most of this decade. Compounding the problem, overall inventory visibility remains so poor some units have sold new suits on the Internet as ?excess? while other units are forced to delay critical training because they can?t get the same suits.

These challenges cannot mask the harshest reality confronted on the modern battlefield: There is no absolute immunity to biological or chemical attack. Nevertheless, having rightly renounced in-kind retaliatory capabilities, the key to CB deterrence is CB defense. U.S. personnel must be the best-equipped and best prepared force on earth to enable them to survive, fight and win on a chemical and biological battlefield.

One important lesson learned in the Gulf War should inform our discussions today: CB defense is a tactical, not a strategic, consideration. Contamination avoidance and other force protection capabilities shape how U.S. forces pursue their mission, not whether that mission is in our national interest. As one Gulf war analyst put it, ?having looked into the eyes of the dragon? in the Iraqi desert, military planners cannot rely on nuclear deterrence or mere luck to avoid CB attack. We must constantly reevaluate the threat and reform our defenses against it.

http://www.house.gov/shays/news/2002...er/chembio.htm

Contact: Betsy Hawkings, 202/225-5541


Contact your members of the House And Senate:

http://clerk.house.gov/members/mcapdir.php

http://www.senate.gov/general/contac...nators_cfm.cfm

http://thomas.loc.gov/

[phuloi]

I will continue to pray for all those youngsters ..and also for the old farts who are making the decisions and sending them into harm`s way,that they are not ill-equiped when the green flag drops...