Editorial

 Kansas City Star

 March 1, 2000

 The Pentagon has brought criminal charges against several executives of a bankrupt company that allegedly sold faulty protective suits to the Department of Defense. As the criminal case runs its course, we're left wondering why it took the government five years to determine the extent of the problem with the suits, which were supposed to protect troops against poison gas and biological weapons.

 Many of the suits were so defective that they wouldn't have adequately protected the men and women using them. Even so, 120,000 of the 778,000 suits were transported to Bosnia for use by troops in that country.

 At that point, officials knew the suits were flawed, but in the military's rating system the flaws were considered "major" but not "safety-of-life critical." Subsequent investigation, however, determined that the cuts, holes and stitching irregularities were indeed "critical." The Pentagon has ordered military commanders not to use any of the suits except during training.

 The company, Istratex, received nearly $49 million fulfilling orders for the suits, called "battle-dress overgarments." What's chilling about this case is that investigators say company executives knew many of the suits were defective and fooled Pentagon investigators by switching well-made suits for defective ones during quality-control checks.

 The executives were charged with making false claims, fraud and conspiracy to defraud the Pentagon. Prosecutors, however, have permitted them to plead guilty to lesser charges.

 What would it have taken for the prosecutors to treat this as the atrocity it is?

 Since the executives were accused of knowingly taking steps that could have placed American military personnel in grave danger, that sounds like treason, which carries a slightly stronger penalty than the sanitized charges to which these executives pleaded guilty.

 All of this occurred so business executives could make an obscene profit at our military's expense.

 Where was the Pentagon in all of this careless handling of American troops? Where was Congress in its ostensible oversight role? Why do Americans even bother with considering enemies abroad when they can be effectively destroyed by slipshod profit-mongers at home?

 The guilty manufacturers are scheduled for sentencing in April. Any judge worth being called an American should consider nothing less than maximum sentences for these heartless profiteers.

Perhaps, for starters, the judge could get creative and sentence these executives to taking breathing exercises in a training gas chamber protected by nothing better than their own faulty gear.

Now, it's up to Congress to demand answers of the Pentagon for being so long in discovering the dangers in these faulty suits. If a few top brass need to be cashiered to get the point across, it should be made clear that commanders have few higher duties than ensuring the safety of their troops.