Well, it wasn't the missile that caused their deaths. Strictly speaking, it was the explosion of the missile.

Well, wait. It wasn't the explosion - technically, it was the impact of the pressure wave on their bodies that caused ... well, no. Really, it was the fact that their organs stopped working after impact of the ... well. If you really want to be accurate, it was the fact that metabolism ceased to be practicable after their organs stopped working.

Well, no, actually, the fact that their mental processes depended on their metabolism - that was really the cause of their... Well, no...

At this point we are already used to these trashy titles. There is no logic reasoning game to play; simply the bad faith in the title must be mentioned. And considering that the death of 28 persons is involved, it's in poor taste.

More technically information on the math behind the failure. http://www-users.math.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/patriot.html

If you are going to be pedantic, you might want to be very careful about what you write... How do you figure it would be more accurate to say that the clock error "could have prevented death?"

It would depend on whether they were relying on it to work or not.