Still criticizing Vote Vets ad, FactCheck.org's Jackson falsely claimed, "There has never been a vote on body armour"
An October 30 BBC News online article reported that FactCheck.org director Brooks Jackson was "particularly irritated" by a recent television advertisement criticizing Sen. George F. Allen (R-VA). The ad in question -- produced by the newly formed group Vote Vets -- asserts that Allen voted against a Democratic amendment that would have increased U.S. National Guard funding for modern body armor. "There has never been a vote on body armour," Jackson told the BBC, echoing a September 20 FactCheck analysis of the ad he co-wrote with FactCheck researcher Justin Bank, in which they deemed the Vote Vets ad "false." The BBC further quoted Jackson stating that the April 2003 amendment -- sponsored by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) -- "did not include a word about body armour, and not a word was said about body armour during the debate."
But as Media Matters for America noted in response to FactCheck's September 20 analysis, Jackson's assertion that "[t]here has never been a vote on body armour" is false. Allen opposed an October 2003 amendment offered by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT), which would have provided additional funding explicitly for body armor. Moreover, Landrieu repeatedly stated on the House floor that the bill would ensure that National Guard soldiers had "helmets" and other "force protection" equipment intended to "minimize causalities." And in a March 26, 2003, press release, Landrieu further explained that the bill "targets shortfalls identified by the National Guard and Reserve in their Unfunded Requirement lists," including the "shortage of helmets, tents, bullet-proof inserts, and tactical vests."
From the October 30 BBC News article:
Mr Jackson says he was particularly irritated by a commercial created by VoteVets.org which is being run against several Republican senators, including George Allen of Virginia.
It shows a soldier firing at two dummies, one wearing a "Vietnam-era" vest and another wearing "modern body armour".
Bullets penetrate the old vest but not the new one, and then the soldier accuses Sen Allen of voting against giving troops the armour they need.
The problem, Mr Jackson says: "There has never been a vote on body armour."
Fine print at the end of the commercial cites a Senate vote, but Mr Jackson said the amendment in question "did not include a word about body armour, and not a word was said about body armour during the debate".
VoteVets has defended the accuracy of the commercial.
Please don't turn this into another 200 post thread with links and cut&pastes from military manuals on the technical definitions of body armor vs. helmets vs. tactical field wear...
Please, please, for the love of...
the amendment itself, as near as i can tell, doesn't specifically identify body armor. it identifies iraqi reconstruction costs, and troop costs, which presumably would include body armor, but doesn't specify what those troop costs include.
arguably, one could make the case that, in the absence of specificity, allen didn't vote against providing funds to outfit the troops in body armor. it's a thin argument, but one nonetheless.
however, as i recall, one of the main points made in the factcheck post was that money wasn't an issue, available manufacturing capacity was: it was all in use at that time, running 24/7, churning out body armor as fast as they could.
unlike the armor for vehicles, which was held up, because of funding, with manufacturing capacity available, merely awaiting contracts to be used.
at least, that's my understanding.
i sent mr. jackson an e-mail, when they first posted about that ad, referring him here, to your post in rebuttal. whether he came and read, i have no clue.
has already been debunked on this issue a number of times.
Hardly.
your weak and flailing attempts at rebuttals are no more debuniing than a canoe is an aircraft carrier
is that a press release is not part of a debate. factcheck asserted that body armour was not mentioned during the debate. Just me guessing.
Why does George Allen hate America?
...hate the our troops?
Brooks responded to a VoteVets email on September 26 after their Factcheck article came out:
Update Sept. 26: VoteVets.org co-founder Jon Soltz writes in a memo dated Sept. 23, and received here by email at 10:08 pm Sept. 25:
Soltz: The sacrifice the fallen made during that time calls for much more respect from groups such as FactCheck.org, which only serves to muddy the waters of what should be, and is, a very clear vote in Congress.
We disagree. However much Soltz may wish there had been "a very clear vote in Congress" on body armor, there wasn't.
Nothing in his two-page memo changes the fact that body armor was not mentioned in the amendment in question, or in the debate. If any senator thought this was a vote about body armor, they were strangely silent at the time.
Most importantly, Soltz simply misstates history when says; "Eventually, Congress did appropriate funds in October of 2003, and shortly thereafter, body armor started to make its way to the troops in Iraq." In fact, as we have shown, body armor was making its way to Iraq months before that, using existing funds.
As the Government Accountability Office reported, when the Landrieu amendment came up in March 2003 the Pentagon had already increased its orders for body armor roughly 10-fold and was buying it as fast as suppliers could produce it. Approving Sen. Landrieu's amendment could not, therefore, have called forth a single additional vest or ceramic plate.
This is all documented in the archives at factcheck.org.
Is that our government, sent our sons and daughters, into harms way, without the equipment they needed. Senators, like Allen, have consistently allowed the needs of our troops to be underfunded. If we can send hundreds of thousands of weapons to the Iraqis, with no registration, or any way to track them, then we could have made sure the people fighting this war had proper body armor.
After all, these weapons that we sent to the Iraqis, along with the missing munitions from Al Qua-qua are being used to kill Americans today.
Will FactCheck.org explain to me why the Bush administration entered inadequately prepared into a war for which it chose the time and place? No attack was imminent. If the Pentagon had, in fact, increased its orders for body armor in March 2003, why did war begin BEFORE troops were adequately supplied? The answer is all too obvious: the Republican Party wanted a war president for the 2004 presidential election — and could care less how many young Americans died in the enshrining of one.