Operation Air Conditioner (www.operationac.com.) was started by parents of troops over in Iraq to raise money and buy small, inexpensive (under $100) air conditioners to send over to the troops. Over 2,000 air conditioners have been sent, but many have not arrived because the Department of Defense says the large boxes are "clogging the military postal system" after about half the air conditioners arrived in Iraq. Someone in the Department of Defense then said that the a military aircraft would be used to fly over the rest, but then someone else (no one is providing names at the Department of Defense) said the air conditioners did not have a high enough priority. So it took no small amount of bad publicity before someone higher up the food chain said "go" to prevent a of the troops from continuing to work at night, and try and sleep during the heat of day. This was not a problem for the Department of Defense officials making the decisions on what gets shipped, as was pointed out to them. Meanwhile, Operation Air Conditioner is starting to send space heaters over to the troops for the chilly (at night, anyway) Iraq Winter. Actually, in northern Iraq it gets very cold, and there is even some snow and ice.
