Bush and Rumsfeld are Letting These Kids Die!
This is beyond my usual wise-ass remarks or sarcasm. This is just damned sick and disgusting.
Today's New York Times points out a secret pentagon finding that "as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials."
Here's a link to that article. There's more in there to make your blood boil.
Today's New York Times points out a secret pentagon finding that "as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials."
Here's a link to that article. There's more in there to make your blood boil.
posted by Anonymous at 2:31 PM
2 Comments:
it's part of a long litany of neglect and incompetence. first, we were going to be greeted as liberators, despite ample warning from scholars and an overwhelming amount of evidence from the past that there WOULD be an insurgency and a dangerous one; second, when the insurgency did materialize, right on schedule, the army brass said yet again that they didn't know much about counterinsurgency, even though they had years of experience, good and bad, dating back to our own experience as guerilla fighters in the war for independence. and rumsfeld, of course, didn't seem at all concerned that the troops lacked the proper tools to keep themselves alive--remember? he told that questioning soldier, and all of us, that "you go to war with the army you have." some parents took it upon themselves to buy body armor for their serviceman/woman. It's beyond me how the planners of this war can face themselves in the mirror in the morning.
my question is, where is the outrage? not only is there virtually no outcry about casualties or improperly equipped soldiers, but there's no particular concern evinced for the terrible harm we've inflicted on thousands and thousands of iraqi civilians, or for the terrible things done to detainees at abu ghraib or guantanamo or bagram air base, afghanistan, to say nothing of the "black prisons." sure, some of these guys are probably bad guys, but don't they at least deserve some kind of hearing before a judge, some kind of legal protection, SOMETHING?
we are a nation of laws, as i used to tell skeptical soviet citizens. we are more on the side of human rights than not, i would always continue. i can't say that any longer, and i wouldn't dare try. you can only wish that our leaders felt the same reticence and adjusted their conduct accordingly. i'm not putting money on that happening anytime soon.
Members of the radical right are responding to this by putting out stuff saying that some soldiers don't like body armor at all. It reminded me of that old commercial where some guy comes on and says, "Seatbelts? They're too confining." The commerical then showed a picture of this guy in a body cast after a wreck.
My thinking is that even if some soldiers don't like body armor, they should at least have the option of being able to decline using the best stuff we can give them.
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