Pentagon Study Shows 80% of Marines Killed in Iraq Would Have Lived if Bush Admin Provided Enough Body Armor

A Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That 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.

Back in 2004 Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld why the Bush Administration hadn’t sent enough armor to service members serving in Iraq and why they had to weld scrap metal to their vehicles to protect them from roadside bombs. "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.

Rumsfeld replied that, "You go to war with the Army you have," not the one you might want, and that any rate the Army was pushing manufacturers of vehicle armor to produce it as fast as humanly possible. The company that supplied that armor then announced that they could send a lot more, but the Bush Administration hadn’t asked them for more. Then a reporter claimed that he had gotten Army Spc. Wilson to ask the question. The media then ignored the original question and jumped on the bandwagon claiming that the reporter had planted the question so we should all just ignore it. Right? The only problem is that Army Spc. Wilson said that the question was his idea and the reporter tried to talk him out of asking it and into asking a less provocative question, but he refused. The Lapdog Corporate Mainstream Media didn’t bother reporting that the reporter had lied, and now a Pentagon Report shows that the service member’s question from way back then could have saved 80% of the more than 2200 US lives lost in Iraq if the media had pressed the issue instead of ignoring it as the Bush Administration asked them to. Therefore the Mainstream Media is indirectly responsible for 80% of the US deaths since that question was asked by one of our men in uniform of the Bush Administration official in charge of the US Military. Rumsfeld is directly responsible, but the Cowardly US Press is indirectly responsible for 80% of our dead. Let me repeat: the Lapdog Corporate US Mainstream Media is indirectly responsible for 80% of our dead in Iraq because they failed to press issues raised by our men and women in uniform.

The Pentagon has been collecting the data on wounds since the beginning of the war in part to determine the effectiveness of body armor. The military's medical examiner, Craig T. Mallak, told a military panel in 2003 that the information "screams to be published." But it would take nearly two years for the Bush Administration to do so, and currently the Pentagon report is “secret.” So we're not actually supposed to know about it. I'm sure Bush will call for a Congressional investigation to find out who leaked the fact that his administration could have saved 80% of the US troops killed in Iraq if they hadn't been so cheap with body armor.

The Bush Administration has spent more than $300 Billion on the Iraq War with much of it going to well-connected corporations like Vice President Cheney's old company Halliburton. Too bad they weren't as free spending of our tax dollars when it came to protecting our troops as they were lining the pockets of their corporate cronies.

Who's supporting the troops exactly? Bush? I don't think so!

Support the troops: Impeach Bush!