Shortage leaves Iraqi babies holding up their own diapers

One day a few months ago at some undisclosed location in Iraq, Staff Sergeant Michael Kozlowski discovered that the American invasion had imposed a huge hardship on Iraqi mothers and babies. In addition to the casualties, food and water shortages and open sewers, he notice that babies were running around naked.

Through a translator he inquired about this strange sight and learned that a safety pin crisis had hit the war-torn nation. The few boxes of pins left were in the hands of the elite categories of society.

Sergeant Kozlowski decided to try to do something about it, and he put in a requisition for just a case of safety pins. That’s only 100 gross per case, or 14,400 pins, but he knew it would be enough to take care of his area of operation. It seemed an easy solution. Wrong. Boeing is the current contractor for military issue safety pins, and their design hasn’t even been approved by Congress. 

Sergeant Kozlowski tried petitioning his superiors. All he needed was someone to carry an extra box on his way over for a maybe a third tour of duty. Unbelievably, the TSA wouldn’t allow more that one baby’s worth of pins on any plane. Even Vice President Dick Cheney ignored requests to help Iraqi babies. He heard that Barack Obama might be able to bring pins if he visits Iraq, but Sergeant Kozlowski didn’t get his hopes up. “What has that guy even done in the US? We don’t need speeches or change, we need pins!”

“It’s hard to believe,” said Staff Sergeant Michael Kozlowski, “that with all the money the US is pumping into Iraq it could be so hard to get Iraqi moms some safety pins. But that money has to go for pipeline repairs and paying off the police,” he said. 

In Iraq, where disposable diapers were never in favor, moms always counted on safety pins being available to hold up their babies’ cloth diapers. But none has been imported since 2004. And now they’re all gone. 

Sergeant Kozlowski had an idea: Why not ask for help from back home directly from regular citizens? It had worked before with body armor, so why not safety pins? Because no one uses safety pins anymore except a few hippies and hipsters in Vermont and Brooklyn, it turns out.

Then it hit him that even though all US babies wear disposable diapers, there was still a rich source for pins. Amateur bike racers.

“I remembered seeing some spandex-wearing bike guys in our town park throwing out these numbers with up to 8 safety pins still attached. What a waste! Babies over here need those pins, and those guys are tossing them out.”

Bike racers aren’t really regular citizens, but he had to try. So Sergeant Kozlowski started sending emails to everyone he could think of. Eventually Agence France-Presse got wind and ran a story, which was picked up immediately by VeloNews, and now the plea goes out here on VelocityNation.com 

“I call it trying to win their hearts and behinds,” Sergeant Kozlowski said. “My boys are not only shooting bad guys, we’re trying to be family friendly and take care of babies when we can. Over here it’s just not normal to see naked babies. We have to try to help if we’re going to win this war. “

Whether you’re tossing your pins each week, hoarding them in your tool box or glove compartment or leaving the to hang on your wall of race numbers from top-20 finishes, please consider doing your part. Pins can be mailed or delivered to your local National Guard unit, from where they’ll be delivered 10 at a time to the Iraqi babies who need them more than you do. And if you want to grab a few extra from the registration table next weekend, we wouldn’t blame you for your good deed.