A skeptical look at N.Y. Times story in today's Chronicle

The Chronicle's Big Front Page story today is this New York Times piece on inadequate body armor supplied to Marines in Iraq:

A secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the Marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon largely has declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.

Jay Tea over at Wizbang blog points to a post by Confederate Yankee who says the Times piece is misleading:

By design, the Times article shows an inaccurate picture of the Interceptor system provided to the Marines, based upon a false premise. This study only looked at fatalities, those Marines killed by upper body wounds while wearing vests. It excluded all the times where Interceptor vests worked as designed and the Marine survived.

This is akin to judging automobile safety by looking at only wrecks resulting in fatalities, as oppose to those wrecks where fatalities were prevented by good automotive design.

Here we have another instance of bloggers providing a needed counter-balance to Big Media reporting, and we can now decide for ourselves how much credence should be given to the Times' story.

Posted by Anne Linehan @ 01/07/06 11:58 AM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (1)

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