U.S. BDU's for sale... in Iraq.
 

While watching the news last night on NBC they had a story about the fact that some markets in Iraq have BDU's for sale. More than just BDU's though. They also had other equipment like bullet-proof vests and some weapons. They got them from Iraqis who left the new defense force , and probably other places. This could be a threat to U.S. forces if the insurgents catch on.

you can buy BDUs and flak vests on Ebay. i was actually going to buy a flak vest, for shits and giggles, but it was a bit too expensive for a gag.

actually, BDU's are in short supply to begin with. Since so many people were deployed to desert theaters all at once, logistics couldn't handle the demand for new desert BDUs. so, some peopel got non-desert BDUs, were told to deal with the worn ones a little longer, or just went out and bought their own form private companys. some soldiers buy from private companies to begin with anyway, since they are apperently better quality then issued ones.

altho, i was under the impression that hte Iraqi Security forces were using the existing weaponry. But i guess AK-47s being for sale in Iraq isn't big news :)

haha, i even heard form a guy who bought an Anti Aircraft Gun in Iraq! And he knew a guy who bought a tank. (probably at a real deep discount. like, for a case of liquor to some iraqi who had salvaged an old peice of equipment) Those darn inport laws prevented them form taking their "war trophies" home tho. :-\

Each camp actually has an "amnesty box". No one is really going to stop you carrying a captured AK around in your HMMWV in Iraqi, but its a no-no to take them home.

Then again, it was on NBC, and they tend to blow things out of proportion. It just sounded like they had acess to so much stuff.

well, i don't doubt they get there hands on stuff.

first rule of gorilla warfare: be familiar with the weapons of your opponants. that will eb your main supply.

not that that rule applies to these guys so much. they don't kill or capture enough of us to get our weapons. but they have had some sucess with hitting supply lines.

its not much to be worried about. i saw a picture of a pile of guns form Veitnam, sometime in the 90's. they had all sorts of weird shit. bolt action einfeilds, German MG34s captured by the soviets in WWII and given to the VC!

abou teh only thing that would worry me is the ballistics vests. an AK or an M-16 doesnt reallly matter which one you use (especially in the hands of a shitty marksman, like an iraqi insurgent), but protective armor is a great asset (that requires no "skill" to use.) but looting shit form us still doesn't give them an advantage. Materially, america always wins. We're too damn rich.

actually zeth, it's spelled guerilla. Came from the type of warfare instituted by the Spanish against Napoleon. Has nothing to due with our more primitive anscestors :)

i'm sure it was only a few disgruntled soldiers who threw up their arms because America wasn't showering them with riches and happiness. And the media simply had a field day with that isolated incident.

Regardless, American soldiers are trained to deal with troops in body armor. That's why we double tap enemies. two in the chest, one in the head. Seeing a few terrorists in body armor isn't going to turn the tide of the situation in Iraq, at the most they will try posing as American soldiers and blowing someone important up when they get close. But we've been anticipating that kind of stuff for a while now. I'm not terribly worried

oh, and there's nothing wrong with being too rich. It's better than going in there and getting spanked like the Russians when they invaded Afganistan.:)

proofreading? whats that?

Death to the grammar Nazis!


It dosent help the supply of the BDU's when they keep whordes of it in supply wharehouses, not issueing them. Also when they issue them to people who dont need them cause they arnt going to the desert ;)

I don't really think the main issue is body armor, I think the uniforms are much more of a concern, American soldiers come from diverse backgrounds, with no set ethnicity who's to say the man of middle eastern descent in one of our uniforms is with us or against us? Iraqi's penetrating our command areas and blowing themselves up would not be too good not that they need to go to so much trouble, all anyone who really wanted to harm us would need to do is get some uniforms, some decent looking weapons and stage an attack on civillians.

It'd be pretty suspicious, one man, no armor, no weapons, none of the modern equipment walking up to a base, not looking like a soldier, not talking fluent English, not knowing any standard military procedure (like who to salute).

not that it COULDNT happen. but I don't think that’s much of a threat.

actually, I don't think anything in the original post is much of a threat. Most of our casualties come form roadside bomb ambushes anyway. Not effective combat troops.

the smilie was ment to signal that it was all in good humor. I'm not really a grammar nazi, I just felt like sharing that rather useless tidbit of history :)