Who's Zoomin' Who?

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles," the soldier asked the Secretary of Defense.



"You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want to have. The Army is pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment," answered Donald Rumsfeld.



Hours later a Pentagon spokesman issued a statement that, to his knowledge, "every vehicle going into Iraq from Kuwait has at least 'Level 3' armor." What he failed to mention is that "Level 3 armor" means "armor locally fabricated for the vehicles' side panels." In other words, scrap metal strapped onto the sides ... just like the G.I. said. No bulletproof glass or armor against explosions under the floorboard, just some junk in the doors. About as safe as a good sized Chevy Blazer.



However, neither Rumsfeld nor the Pentagon offered any comment on the Marine who testified to a Canadian immigration court that the U.S. military regularly "murdered" civilians in Iraq and that he and his fellow marines shot and killed more than 30 unarmed men, women and children and even shot a young Iraqi who got out of his car with his arms in the air. "We killed the man. We fired at a cyclic rate of 500 bullets per vehicle. The company gunnery sergeant came running over and began yelling, 'You just shot a guy with his hands up.' "



None of the Iraqis they shot had suicide bombing materials in their vehicles, so why were they shot? "We were told to consider all Arabs as potential terrorists ... to foster an attitude of hatred that gets your blood boiling."



So lets see. We trump up some charges and send soldiers to invade a foreign country telling them that everyone there is a potential terrorist and deserves to die but we neglect to provide them the means to protect themselves. Who's zoomin' who?



The Globe and Mail (UK) - Killed Unarmed Iraqis, Marine Tells Hearing