Delay in armored trucks blamed for U.S. deaths

[Contrary1]

Another day, another story that makes me weep. How do these people sleep at night?


Author: Marines made flawed decisions in sending protective gear to Iraq

WASHINGTON - Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes.

The study, written by a civilian Marine Corps official and obtained by The Associated Press, accuses the service of "gross mismanagement" that delayed deliveries of the trucks for more than two years.

Cost was a driving factor in the decision to turn down the request for the MRAPs — an acronym for mine-resistant, ambush-protected — according to the study. Stateside authorities saw the hulking vehicles, which can cost as much as a $1 million each, as a financial threat to programs aimed at developing lighter vehicles that were years from being fielded.

<snip>

An urgent February 2005 request for MRAPs got lost in bureaucracy. It was signed by then-Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, who asked for 1,169 of the vehicles. The Marines could not continue to take "serious and grave casualties" caused by bombs when a solution was commercially available, wrote Hejlik, who was a commander in western Iraq from June 2004 to February 2005. Gayl cites documents showing Hejlik's request was shuttled to a civilian logistics official at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in suburban Washington who had little experience with military vehicles. As a result, there was more concern over how the MRAP would upset the Marine Corps' supply and maintenance chains than there was in getting the troops a truck that would keep them alive, the study contends..."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23188032/

[ConsAreLiars]

1. Well. actually, the deaths are a result of being sent into Iraq, not the gear.

A mission intended to enslave others is a crimnal act, and those who get sucked into participating in such a crime should not be surprised if those they would conguer fight back. The gear is not the reason they are being killed. The fact that they are a part of a genocidal slaughter of an innocent people is what gets them targeted for as dirty a death as their victims can manage.

[Angela Shelley]

2. In agreement with ConsAreLiars.