Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

1. The Body Armor Scandal - NBC is Scaring Families into Buying their Own Body Armor that Doesn't Work
2. The Gonzales Pseudo-Scandal - Democrats are Firing Blanks
3. Restarting Iraqi Industries -Get Ready to Buy Iraqi Made Clothing at your Local Retailer Soon

The Body Armor Scandal - NBC is Scaring Families into Buying their Own Body Armor that Doesn't Work

Imagine you have a son, daughter, husband, wife, brother, or sister about to be sent off to fight in Iraq. You have seen every night on the evening news horrific scenes of snipers, IED's, car bombs, insurgents, the whole bloody mess that is Iraq to the mainstream media. You want to protect your family member as they go into a terrifically dangerous situation. Then you see on a Thursday night NBC news program, Dateline NBC, a segment in which you hear that the Army is deliberately keeping specially designed Dragon Skin body armor away from soldiers. Your outrage goes to 11, based on the reporting you see. I'm going to play a portion of the segment with Lisa Meyers, senior network correspondent for NBC. It is a very convincing report. But then I'll come back with an even more convincing story from the army that will make your blood boil.

Play clip.

The only trouble is, the testing that NBC paid for does not accurately represent the procedures the army uses to assess the effectiveness of body armor. What you can't see from the podcast, is that all the shots the German lab fired were at a 90 degree angle to the vest. None were to the side or back, only the front of the armor. Obviously, insurgent snipers take shots at all sides of our soldiers, not just the front. The army tests with much greater rigor, and includes temperatures that reflect the battle conditions, the route the vests take to battle, and the experience of the soldiers. What NBC bought and paid for in Germany was a sham test, probably designed by the manufacture of Dragon Skin to show off their product. I use benchmark testing all the time in my job as a salesman for IT equipment. We try to duplicate customer's environments. But less scrupulous vendors will rig a test with an unrealistic configuration or test suite to show their product in a better light. Naive customers may not know the difference.

Now listen to portions of the Pentagon press conference, in which Brig. General Mark Brown describes the testing that body armor has to pass before it is deployed in the field, and the results of testing Dragon Skin under much more difficult circumstances than the German lab that NBC bought and paid for as the general says. Thanks to the Pentagon for the audio.

Play clip.

Pinnacle, the company that makes Dragon Skin, has been trying to bypass normal Pentagon procurement processes and testing. They have refused to participate in a competitive bidding process, preferring to get the news media to do their marketing for them. And now it looks like they have been encouraging families to hold bake sales for body armor. This is a scandal, and Pinnacle should be driven out of business for using soldier's families fears to sell a poor quality product. Throw the bums out, I say.

The Gonzales Pseudo-Scandal -Democrats are Firing Blanks

I listened to about four hours of the House Judiciary Committee hearings on C-SPAN last week, and I have to say that the Democrats clearly were missing their target. The key problem, of course, is that a simple disagreement over policy or administration of the Justice Department, is not an example of a criminal offense, no matter how many Democrats object to those decisions. The Administration did itself no favors by not clearly specifying why the US Attorneys were fired from day one. Their poorly chosen defense that they were fired for performance reasons only made people wonder what performance they were talking about. And all the Democratic ranting that the firings were done to stop investigations of Republicans, or to start new investigations of Democrats, is a specious argument. You can cherry pick individual investigations that were underway under a specific US Attorney who was later fired, but what about the other investigations that are not being talked about? This is a case of selection bias. If you are only looking for certain evidence, you might be able to find some, but that doesn't mean that you have provided a fair and complete representation of what actually happened. In the case of the San Diego attorney Carol Lam, the Democrats looked for an investigation that was underway in her district, and found one of congressman Duke Cunningham in the San Diego area. When she was asked to resign, they simply put two and two together and got four hundred: Gonzales Must Resign.

The same thing is going on in the matter of Deb Yang, a US Attorney who resigned from the Justice Department to take a lucrative job in the private sector. Listen to this exchange and see if you can detect the selection bias, and the utter lack of relevance to the Attorney General. The Democrat asking the questions is designated Democratic Attack Dog Linda Sanchez. She is firing blanks at Attorney General Gonzales with this line of questions.

Play clip.

Sanchez is trying to assemble a house of cards, out of a personal decision of an attorney, to make a pile of money working for a private company. There is no crime here, and since Gonzales had nothing to do with her decision to leave, or the law firm to hire Yang, Sanchez has no leg to stand on. The other Democrats at the hearing were similarly unable to score any points.

Restarting Iraqi Industries -Get Ready to Buy Iraqi Made Clothing at your Local Retailer Soon

I was invited to a Pentagon blogger's conference call last week with Paul Brinkley, the Pentagon's undersecretary for Business Transformation. His job is to restart the industrial base of Iraq, specifically the light to heavy industries that have languished during the insurgency campaigns. This clip starts off with his explanation of what needs to happen to be successful in Iraq.

Play clip.

I wish Mr. Brinkley good luck in is endeavor to rebuild the industrial base of Iraq, and get people back to work. 50% unemployment is not a recipe for success.

That's it for now, Podcatchers. This is Charlie Quidnunc reporting from beautiful Helena, Montana, by coincidence, the home of Bake Sales for Body Armor.