When You Care Enough To Send Soldiers Into Battle With Defective Body Armor

In another astonishing display of concern for the health and well-being of U.S. soldiers, their commanders are insisting that they forsake the quality body armor that they or their families purchased, and instead wear defective body armor made by a big Republican campaign contributor, or else lose their life insurance benefits and face disciplinary action.

The company that makes the Interceptor OTV body armor is Point Blank Body Armor, a subsidiary of DHB Industries Inc. The CEO of DHB is David H. Brooks. DHB has given $130,000 to lobbying firms from 1998 - 2004, and Brooks has given $25,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

As it turns out, DHB has been the target of a host of class action suits stemming from a government recall of bullet-proof vests. Evidently, the bullet-proof vests don't really stop bullets. Mind you, these lawsuits have come since they signed a $100 million contract with the Defense Department.

Amazingly enough, shortly after these lawsuits started flooding in, David H. Brooks and other insiders sold off $200 million in stock of DHB. Go figure.

And then even more lawsuits charging purported fraud, misrepresentation, and breach of fiduciary duty came gushing in, as they failed to disclose the problems with the vests.

So I guess the big question is why, oh why, does the Defense Department care more about corporate Republican campaign contributors and the resultant stream o' cash into GOP warchests than the well-being of the men and women in our armed forces? Once they found out that the body armor was defective, they could have found another contractor. But no, they didn't. They must hate our soldiers.

Alternate Brain and YellaDog have all the details and the links.