Actually, I Do Have A Job

Thinking about my last two posts I realize I have been a prissy whiner. First about RAMs and then about the HORRIBLE LACK OF CHEESE! Well poop has been known to occur so I better just deal with it. Currently, my issue of the moment is IBA (Individual Body Armor) You all may have read about how congress is complaining about starting a war without everyone having IBA which consists of an interceptor OTV (outer tactical vest) and two SAPI (small arms protective insert) plates. Actually, it would appear to me that we started the war with plenty of IBA for everyone, we just declined to issue them to the people who were going to war. When I was doing my pre-deployment training at the CRC the central issuing facility had a cubic shit ton (that is an order of magnitude greater than the cubic butt ton) of IBA, it was just most of us didn't qualify to get them (they were only issued to Army personnel going to Afghanistan or Iraq. Navy, Air Force, DoD civilians, DoD contractors, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts were issued the old style flak vest. In fact, I personally was reluctantly issued an interceptor OTV because they did not have an old style vest that would fit my six foot three inch two hundred pound frame. They would not let me have the SAPI though. Damned if a Navy guy would get those! In fact, they pulled them out of the vest right in front of me. I would have been really concerned if people were regularly shooting at us out here but at the time I felt plates should go to guys in Iraq and the Stans since there were folks out there that didn't have them. Now I wish I had them. It is not that the bad guys aren't trying to get their licks in out here, it seems that they just have not been able to overcome their cowardice. Sooner, hopefully later,, better yet never, they might actually grow some balls and do something nasty. Congress recently told DoD that everybody in the CENTCOM AOR shall have IBA to include DOD and contract civilians. The way the system should have worked is that everyone sent to the CENTCOM AOR should have been issued IBA by their parent major command BEFORE they were sent to theater. However, the parent commands decided that they wouldn't foot the bill for IBA and expected their troops to be issued IBA by CENTCOM. (National Guard was particularly bad about this) Navy and Air Force still weren't issuing anybody IBA so what you ended up with was many units and individuals without IBA in the combat zones while there was a cubic shit ton of IBA back in the rear. Since Congress directed DoD to ensure everyone had IBA, DoD directed CENTCOM to find out how short they were and provide them, so CENTCOM directed the three CJTFs i.e me to find out how short each task force was and provide them numbers back so they can procure. So I am scurrying around directing subordinate units (poop rolls down hill and luckily I ain't on bottom any more) to report their shortages to me so I can tell CENTCOM who can tell Congress and they will write a check. I did this in October but it took CENTCOM so long to compile the data that they decided it was too old so now I am doing it again. The one thing I know for sure is that I will never see those SAPI plates for my vest prior to my rotating home, most likely I won't need them but if I did I might get a little irritated.

Oh and by the way, there was no cheese at dinner tonight either!

TO THE TYRANT NEVER YIELD