Military drops the ball on No. 1 soldier-killer

GOP SENATOR RAPS MARINES FOR LACK OF BOMB RESISTANT JEEPS

Military commanders in Iraq asked for bomb-resistant jeeps in 2005; Marine leaders decided armored-Humvees would suffice. They didn't, and roadside bombs became the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops.

Says a Republican U.S. Senator and a new Pentagon study to the brass: YOU SUCK!

When it comes to the military, it's easy to adopt stereotypes about the right and left, to fall back on thinking that says Democrats and liberals are anti-war, anti-military slacker types, while the Republicans are all about serving the country and God bless the flag and bomb 'em all and let God sort 'em out...

Those modalities make it all the more fascinating to watch the military get dissected by a Republican leader like U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.

More here:

Republican senator lays in on Marines, military

The controversy centers on "MRAP" jeeps that military commanders requested back in 2005 to protect soldiers from roadside bombs, like the one that killed an old college chum of mine in Afghanistan in May. The Marines dragged their feet and the jeeps never arrived; the bombs quickly became the primary weapon in Iraq and the main killer of American soldiers.

Some telling quotes from the AP article:

QUOTE:

"As a result, the department entered into operations in Iraq without having taken available steps to acquire technology to mitigate the known mine and IED risk to soldiers and Marines," the report said.

This is the report's most "damning conclusion," Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a critic of the military's wartime procurement practices, said Monday. "It appears that some bureaucrats at the Pentagon have much to explain to the families of American troops who were killed or maimed when a lifesaving solution was within reach," Bond said in an e-mail to the AP.

Here's another choice tidbit:

The February 2005 urgent request for 1,169 MRAPs was signed by then-Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik. The Marines could not continue to take "serious and grave casualties" caused by IEDs when a solution was commercially available, wrote Hejlik, who was a commander in western Iraq from June 2004 to February 2005.

Yet despite the stark wording of Hejlik's plea, the request was mishandled and eventually lost in bureaucracy. The inspector general puts most of blame on officials at Marine Corps Command Development Command. Headquartered at Quantico, Va., the command decides what gear to buy.