The Pentagon is attempting to answer critics after a secret study found that up to 80 percent of the Marines who have died in Iraq from upper body wounds could have survived if they had been provided with high quality body armor which was available to the armed forces but not supplied to troops in Iraq.
Speaking at the Pentagon on Thursday, Major General William Cato of the Marines tried to answer critics who were outraged by the findings of the study.
'There is nothing more important to the Marine Corps than protecting Marines,' Cato claimed.
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) was outraged by the report and said it was due to the Bush administration's 'incompetence.'
Army Major General Jeffrey A. Sorenson attempted to answer that claim. In an interview with ABC News, Sorenson said, 'To say incompetence I think is probably not accurate. However we have continued to evolve and the evolving of that is an effort that takes an enormous amount of testing, engineering, design to make sure that the soldiers can get what they need.'
The Army is now placing new orders for shoulder armor and says that all troops will have them by the end of this year.
Marine Sergeant Jared McNerney claimed that some troops choose not to wear their body armor even though it is available to them because it is hot, heavy and makes it hard for them to maneuver.
'I'm in the infantry,' McNerney said. 'Most of the time I'm climbing over walls, jumping through windows, kicking down doors, I need the most mobility with most protection I can get which was the setup I had right here. If I put those [shoulder protectors] on, I can barely extend my arms over my head. I can't climb a six foot wall, hop over it, hop a fence, jump through a 3-foot window. There's a lot of stuff I have to do with my arms, that's the reason I choose not to wear my shoulder pads.'
The bottom line remains that the secret study shows that American soldiers were sent into war without the best protection available to help save their lives. For the families of American troops maimed or killed in Iraq, the purchase of better body armor comes far too late to save their loved ones.
