This story from Fox News:

Web Site Kicks Sand in Faces of GIs in Iraq Asking for Mats to Ease Hardship of Sleeping on GroundTuesday, January 23, 2007

An American GI assigned to one of the harshest posts in Iraq had a simple request last week for a Wisconsin mattress company: send some floor mats to help ease the hardship of sleeping on the cold, bug-infested ground.

What he got, instead, was a swift kick from the company’s Web site, which not only refused the request but added insult to injury with the admonition, “If you were sensible, you and your troops would pull out of Iraq.”

Army Sgt. Jason Hess, stationed in Taji, Iraq, with the 1st Cavalry Division, said he emailed his request to Discount-mats.com because he and his fellow soldiers sleep on the cold ground, which contains sand mites, sand flies and other disease carriers.

In his email, dated Jan. 16, 2007, he asked the Web-based company, registered to Faisal Khetani, an American Muslim of Pakistani descent:

“Do you ship to APO (military) addresses? I’m in the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Iraq and we are trying to order some mats but we are looking for ships to APO first.”

On the same day, Hess received this reply:

“SGT Hess,

We do not ship to APO addresses, and even if we did, we would NEVER ship to Iraq. If you were sensible, you and your troops would pull out of Iraq.

Bargain Suppliers
Discount-Mats.com”

Khetani on Monday told FOX News that the person responsible for the email reply had been fired. The Web site, meanwhile, has been temporarily taken down.

Hess emailed that he has since found two mat suppliers willing to ship to an APO address in Iraq.

I would hope that Discount-mats.com would quickly go out of business due to a boycott. If you want to do business in the US (a business tht would probably be next to impossible to set up in his own country due to a patronage system), then you had better not be insulting our troops. I wish Sgt. Hess had indicated which countries would ship to the soldiers, so those businesses could be rewarded with more American business.

Perhaps we can all email our good friends at Dicount-mats.com and let them know our displeasure - oh right, they took down their site.

I guess I have to also wonder why our troops aren’t provided with mats? My father had a cot while he was trapsing throught the jungles being bombarded and strafed daily in the South Pacific, and in this day and age, we can’t get beds to our troops?

Michelle Malkin had a piece on this yesterday. Iraqi and American soldiers sleeping on the ground en masse to keep warm. Not a good way to keep up morale, Mr. Bush.

Link to story from Michelle Malkin can be found here.

Link to Fox story can be found here.