Commenter JayR, (whose comment I had to reformat) in this post provides a slew of links to news stories in which people say they've been buying body armor for loved ones going to Iraq.

First, no one was buying the military's Interceptor body armor off the Internet unless it was stolen -- the Pentagon was buying all of that as it came off the assembly line.

Second, all of the stories listed by JayR occurred either in 2003 -- except for one that was in Jan. 2004. By Jan. 2004, everyone going to, or stationed in, Iraq was supplied with the Interceptor body armor.

Let's go back to Kerry's statement Thursday night:

I've met kids in Ohio, parents in Wisconsin places, Iowa, where they're going out on the Internet to get the state-of-the-art body gear to send to their kids. Some of them got them for a birthday present.

President Bush has always gotten sniggers for his malapropisms, but Kerry is definitely more eloquent. Can JayR, or anyone else, provide me with evidence that soldiers, Guardsmen, Marines have gone out and purchased body armor on the Internet since Feb. 2004?

Of course, the kicker for this entire debate is that while those on the left decry the fact that when the war started the military didn't have enough of the latest body armor, John Kerry famously voted against the $87 billion supplemental (after he voted for it) that helped purchase it.