thedrifter
01-10-06, 10:12 AM
01.10.2006
Good Morning America Puts Howard Stern over 300 Marines' Lives
SFTT
Jan 9, 2006 -- On Saturday, Michael Moss of the New York Times released a story reporting 80% of dead Marines shot in the torso would have lived with minor modifications to their body armor - namely adding side panels costing $260 a set. A similar ratio of Army soldiers was projected times 3 in number. Counting the Marines alone, 300 should be alive today but aren't.
The pathology study took two years, because the Marines didn't pay $107,000 to prepare the report.
In November 2004, we stood with the Desiato family as they buried their son Travis – our son's high school friend – who was shot through the side panels in Fallujah.
In September 2005 we went to Newburyport to attend the funeral of Lt. Derek Hines, who was shot through the shoulder, the bullet ricocheting unobstructed left to right through his body.
And we remembered our son that was shipped to Iraq in the summer of 2003 without a full set of plates and was hot-swapping plates with another.
$260 bucks and two years delay equals 300 marines unnecessarily dead and perhaps two times that in Army soldiers who should be happily at home having served their country and having had their country serve them.
But it didn't -- the procurement system no longer works, unaccountable bureaucrats knowingly allow inferior designs to win contracts, testers deliberately skew results at labs and Marine officers in Washington would rather hide a problem than fix it. And this will continue killing another couple of hundred Americans in 2006 unless prevented.
So Soldiers for the Truth (www.sfft.org/) got the secret report and published it and then the New York Times supported it with more research. The Marines say this exposes troops to harm but the fact is the troops know the weak spots and so do the insurgents who have been instructing their snipers to target them. The only ones left in the dark are the American public and Congress.
After the story in the NYTs broke on Saturday, January 7th, we were researching the facts heavily when about 2 PM Good Morning America's Weekend Edition calls and asks us to race down to a local ABC affiliate and discuss the report with GMA for a Sunday morning airing. Now we feel that the troops deserve the best America has to offer and they deserve it now, so we went down to ABC by 4 PM.
We taped a 15 minute segment which we were told would be edited down to about 10 minutes for the next day. It was an excellent segment. Alma and I aren't new to this and we've learned to be concise and to the point. That Good Morning America could get the word out to 6 million viewers is important. It means that the country will know and hopefully people will ask their congressional representatives why their sons, husbands and daughters aren't getting the right equipment now.
Without public outrage on matters like this, the Pentagon doesn't solve the problem – its easier for it to just cover it up. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.
It's a matter of priority not money and the fact is body armor and vehicular armor save lives but they aren't glamorous like new fighter planes and they aren't as profitable. No high paid lobbyist will be called forth by overpaid defense contractors to support these lifesaving programs because there isn't enough money in it. There isn't any glory for the generals either. A one star general doesn't make two stars by helping soldiers dig for scrap metal in landfills or raising the cost of body armor when his superiors say it isn't needed.
The risk of allowing news agencies to pre-tape their segments is that you don't know how they edit them. They can make you look like an idiot if they want to or they can reduce you to trivia. Alma had done a live taping on Good Morning America in December 2004 to counteract Rumsfeld's "you go to war with the army you have" comment so we expected the best from GMA.
Sunday morning comes and Good Morning America does a couple of minutes regurgitating the NYTs piece then they cut to us, and reduce a 10 minute interview full of detail and knowledge in Q&A format to a 30 second clip. "****. Damn." we screamed at the TV in rage. Then to make matters worse they cut to some 'defense expert' who says that soldiers can't be wrapped in a cocoon. No **** Sherlock. After GMA cut to a commercial and I stopped swearing we wondered what happened. What pre-empted this important news article? What could possibly be more important than 300 marines?
When Good Morning America came back on they said that they had bagged a big interview with Howard Stern. Howard Stern just got several hundred million dollars to switch to satellite radio. Howard rambled on and on about himself, his self importance to the world of potty-humor and his candor at wishing the director of the FCC death from cancer he has contracted. So we were preempted for this?
Never have I seen such an obvious pre-emption of life-saving news by entertainment --celebrity over heroism. The lives of 300 marines should pre-empt Howard Stern's self-promotion but it doesn't.
I fear it reflects the priority of average Americans who don't have skin in the game in Iraq or Afghanistan. The reason 300 Marines died because of sub-grade body armor is that people really don't care – American's don't bother to care, they don't want unpleasant news, Congressmen are too busy taking kickbacks to investigate the report which the Marines kept secret, lobbyists are too busy making a fast buck selling overpriced Cold War weapons to Generals who forgot what it was like to put a hand on a sucking chest wound, to actually risk their careers doing something worthwhile for America.
If this country had to fight WWII today, it would lose. We can only hope that our enemies are more incompetent or self absorbed than we are.
God help us help ourselves.
Brian Hart is the founder and editor of the Blog "Minstrel Boy." He began writing it after his son PFC John Hart, a paratrooper in the 173rd Airborne Bde. was killed in Iraq two years ago while manning an unarmored Humvee. Brian and Alma have been relentless advocates for obtaining the appropriate equipment for America's war fighters ever since and deserve far more recognition than they have either sought or received. Minstrel Boy can be seen at minstrelboy.blogspot.com.
Ellie
Good Morning America Puts Howard Stern over 300 Marines' Lives
SFTT
Jan 9, 2006 -- On Saturday, Michael Moss of the New York Times released a story reporting 80% of dead Marines shot in the torso would have lived with minor modifications to their body armor - namely adding side panels costing $260 a set. A similar ratio of Army soldiers was projected times 3 in number. Counting the Marines alone, 300 should be alive today but aren't.
The pathology study took two years, because the Marines didn't pay $107,000 to prepare the report.
In November 2004, we stood with the Desiato family as they buried their son Travis – our son's high school friend – who was shot through the side panels in Fallujah.
In September 2005 we went to Newburyport to attend the funeral of Lt. Derek Hines, who was shot through the shoulder, the bullet ricocheting unobstructed left to right through his body.
And we remembered our son that was shipped to Iraq in the summer of 2003 without a full set of plates and was hot-swapping plates with another.
$260 bucks and two years delay equals 300 marines unnecessarily dead and perhaps two times that in Army soldiers who should be happily at home having served their country and having had their country serve them.
But it didn't -- the procurement system no longer works, unaccountable bureaucrats knowingly allow inferior designs to win contracts, testers deliberately skew results at labs and Marine officers in Washington would rather hide a problem than fix it. And this will continue killing another couple of hundred Americans in 2006 unless prevented.
So Soldiers for the Truth (www.sfft.org/) got the secret report and published it and then the New York Times supported it with more research. The Marines say this exposes troops to harm but the fact is the troops know the weak spots and so do the insurgents who have been instructing their snipers to target them. The only ones left in the dark are the American public and Congress.
After the story in the NYTs broke on Saturday, January 7th, we were researching the facts heavily when about 2 PM Good Morning America's Weekend Edition calls and asks us to race down to a local ABC affiliate and discuss the report with GMA for a Sunday morning airing. Now we feel that the troops deserve the best America has to offer and they deserve it now, so we went down to ABC by 4 PM.
We taped a 15 minute segment which we were told would be edited down to about 10 minutes for the next day. It was an excellent segment. Alma and I aren't new to this and we've learned to be concise and to the point. That Good Morning America could get the word out to 6 million viewers is important. It means that the country will know and hopefully people will ask their congressional representatives why their sons, husbands and daughters aren't getting the right equipment now.
Without public outrage on matters like this, the Pentagon doesn't solve the problem – its easier for it to just cover it up. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.
It's a matter of priority not money and the fact is body armor and vehicular armor save lives but they aren't glamorous like new fighter planes and they aren't as profitable. No high paid lobbyist will be called forth by overpaid defense contractors to support these lifesaving programs because there isn't enough money in it. There isn't any glory for the generals either. A one star general doesn't make two stars by helping soldiers dig for scrap metal in landfills or raising the cost of body armor when his superiors say it isn't needed.
The risk of allowing news agencies to pre-tape their segments is that you don't know how they edit them. They can make you look like an idiot if they want to or they can reduce you to trivia. Alma had done a live taping on Good Morning America in December 2004 to counteract Rumsfeld's "you go to war with the army you have" comment so we expected the best from GMA.
Sunday morning comes and Good Morning America does a couple of minutes regurgitating the NYTs piece then they cut to us, and reduce a 10 minute interview full of detail and knowledge in Q&A format to a 30 second clip. "****. Damn." we screamed at the TV in rage. Then to make matters worse they cut to some 'defense expert' who says that soldiers can't be wrapped in a cocoon. No **** Sherlock. After GMA cut to a commercial and I stopped swearing we wondered what happened. What pre-empted this important news article? What could possibly be more important than 300 marines?
When Good Morning America came back on they said that they had bagged a big interview with Howard Stern. Howard Stern just got several hundred million dollars to switch to satellite radio. Howard rambled on and on about himself, his self importance to the world of potty-humor and his candor at wishing the director of the FCC death from cancer he has contracted. So we were preempted for this?
Never have I seen such an obvious pre-emption of life-saving news by entertainment --celebrity over heroism. The lives of 300 marines should pre-empt Howard Stern's self-promotion but it doesn't.
I fear it reflects the priority of average Americans who don't have skin in the game in Iraq or Afghanistan. The reason 300 Marines died because of sub-grade body armor is that people really don't care – American's don't bother to care, they don't want unpleasant news, Congressmen are too busy taking kickbacks to investigate the report which the Marines kept secret, lobbyists are too busy making a fast buck selling overpriced Cold War weapons to Generals who forgot what it was like to put a hand on a sucking chest wound, to actually risk their careers doing something worthwhile for America.
If this country had to fight WWII today, it would lose. We can only hope that our enemies are more incompetent or self absorbed than we are.
God help us help ourselves.
Brian Hart is the founder and editor of the Blog "Minstrel Boy." He began writing it after his son PFC John Hart, a paratrooper in the 173rd Airborne Bde. was killed in Iraq two years ago while manning an unarmored Humvee. Brian and Alma have been relentless advocates for obtaining the appropriate equipment for America's war fighters ever since and deserve far more recognition than they have either sought or received. Minstrel Boy can be seen at minstrelboy.blogspot.com.
Ellie