You literally cannot make this stuff up. Apparently, Illinois Freshman Congressman Rep. William L. Enyart (Dem), came up with a great idea. He read an article last month in the The Washington Post about the US military’s multitude of camouflage patterns and intends to introduce legislation today that will require all of DoD to share a common camouflage pattern.
Apparently, living in a city where you regularly see military personnel from all services strutting around in their individually branded uniforms like so many third world militaries didn’t attract his attention. It took a newspaper article to garner his attention. Ironically, Rep Enyart retired just last year as a Major General from the Illinois Army National Guard where he served from 1982 – 2012. Prior to that, he served in the US Air Force from 1969 to 1973. Somehow, that didn’t wake him up either.
And it seems, he is oblivious to previous public law regarding camouflage and field uniforms. His proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act would require all of the services to adopt a common pattern by 2018 and would forbid any of them from producing a pattern for its own sole use. Horse left the barn on that one I’m afraid.
On one hand, I’m glad to hear about this new found interest Rep Enyart has for camouflage but I’m deeply saddened that, as usual, a Congressmen is going to run blindly uninformed into introducing redundant legislation. Instead, hopefully he’ll do a little research, take a look at what comes out of the Army Camouflage Improvement Effort and perhaps hold DoD’s feet to the fire on previous legislation.
I appreciate where his heart is, but I wish he was better informed, especially as he is a retired GO.
