Thursday, January 12, 2006

Fire Rumsfeld

The Pentagon awarded Point Blank Armor, Inc. a $500 million dollar contract to supply our military with armor, yet 18,000 of those vests have been recalled because they did not meet ballistic test standards. Additionally, the New York Times recently revealed a secret Pentagon study that found "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 extra body armor." Meanwhile, David Brooks, owner of Point Blank Armor, isn't letting the inadequate armor keep him awake at night. In fact, he recently threw his daughter a $10 million dollar birthday party with some of his profits.

Someone needs to be held accountable for the inadequate armor. Well, Jonathan Tasini agrees, and points the finger at Rumsfeld.
This is the way the Administration shows its support for the troops? It's ironic that the people who can't be bothered to provide the right equipment to save the lives of hundreds of soldiers run around attacking the call for immediate withdrawal of the troops as a danger to morale. If you ask me, my guess is that the average Marine's morale might be hurt a bit more knowing he may get killed because the civilian leadership sent him to Iraq without decent armor than by the people trying to bring his ass home now--alive.

So, my campaign has launched an on-line petition to ask for the immediate firing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Sign the petition at: www.tasinifornewyork.org/firerumsfeld

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If he was fired today it wouldn't be soon enough, but I'll take what we can get. And what I'd like to see is that man gotten the hell out of the Defense Department and packed off to some corner basement office where he could never hurt anyone ever again.

expatbrian said...

This record of poorly supplying the troops is nothing new. Same thing was common when I was in Vietnam and I'm sure has been before and since. The last president and administration that truly cared about the common soldiers was Kennedy. He ofcourse was a democrat and a former wartime soldier himself.

Kathy said...

Lapopessa, I agree, but sadly we'll still be losing soldiers daily until this inept administration finds a suitable replacement. Unfortunately, Bush seems to depend on cronies instead of qualified people.

Expatbrian, thanks for a comment with moral authority to back it up. It's maddening for us here in the US to be engaged in a war run by multiple deferment men with no conception whatsoever of what its like for our soldiers.