- WASHINGTON ÷ The U.S.
military has misplaced defective suits meant to protect troops against
biological and chemical weapons, according to a congressional report. As
a result the defective suits could be distributed by mistake to U.S. forces
deployed against Iraq.
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- The General Accounting Office said the Defense Department
has lost track of at least 250,000 defective protective suits that were
being stored for U.S. soldiers overseas. The congressional watchdog said
more than 750,000 suits have been deemed as defective by the Pentagon.
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- The GAO said that the defects were discovered in 1996
during the U.S. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. Since then, the Pentagon
appears to have lost track of hundreds of thousands of suits, Middle East
Newsline reported.
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- "We have received no evidence they have found [the
remaining defective] 250,000 suits," Raymond Decker, a GAO director,
told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security.
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- Decker told the subcommittee that unless the defective
suits are located they could be handed out to troops being deployed for
combat operations. The military's Central Command has ordered thousands
of suits for troops being prepared for any war against Iraq. The regime
of President Saddam Hussein is said to have both biological and chemical
weapons.
-
- The Pentagon's Defense Logistic Agency asserts that it
has identified all the faulty suits.
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- http://216.26.163.62/2002/ss_military_10_21.html
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