Pentagon I.G. Faults Pentagon On I.E.D. Preparedness
By Steve Hynd Tuesday Dec 09, 2008 8:00pm
What Donald Rumsfield failed to mention when he famously said that America had to "go to war with the army it has" in response to criticisms from soldiers about a lack of armor is that the US went to war with the army it couldn't be bothered upgrading.
The US Marine Corps asked the Pentagon's inspector general to perform the audit after coming under fire for setting aside an urgent request from field commanders in 2005 for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored vehicles.
"DoD (Department of Defense) was aware of the threat posed by mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in low-intensity conflicts and of the availability of mine-resistant vehicles years before insurgent actions began in Iraq in 2003," the audit found.
"Yet DoD did not develop requirements for, fund, or acquire MRAP-type vehicles for low-intensity conflicts that involved mines and IEDs," a summary of the report said.
"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," it said.
Heads should roll for this, even now, including those in charge of Marine Corps procurement, the Corps itself and Rummie as top man at the DoD at the time (and we all know where the buck eventually stops). Their inertia and lack of action even long after it was obvious what was needed led to hundreds of unnecessary deaths and tens of thousands of wounded, ruined lives. We're talking about at least half the entire butcher's bill from Bush's military adventures. This isn't a matter of history to the crippled, the dead and their families and justice demands accountability.
Can servicemen even bring a class action suit? I'm thinking about if the powers-that-be won't respond appropriately, which I highly doubt they will.
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but maybe it's time for another Bonus Army.
Like jumbo shrimp....
MRAP's are too big to patrol alleyways. Baghdad is a city of alleys.
The U.S. will never suppress the insurgency. The U.S. needs to leave Iraq so that Iraqi's can settle their own fate whether it be nationhood or a splintered state.
And by leave that means no proxies and no proxy war to mirror Saigon 1973-75.
Cernig, you go to war with the idiots that 49% of you have elected and the S.C.O.T.U.S. has ruled in favor of, not the candidates who you wanted (who had most votes, and the most clues). Those idiots appointed idiots then cherry pick their intelligence, and promote yes-men who support the policies of continued lunacy and ideology. In this way, when you're saying "you listen to the commanders in the field" it all makes for a self-contained circular logic. What more did you expect? Competence?
So we get all pissed over a Gov who is a CROOK, wire tape him for trying to sell a Senate seat, most likley go to prision for years, BUT the people who lied to go to war, DID NOT SUPPORT THE GI's, with the tools to keep them SAFE. To me this is nothing more than MURDER. Sending our GI's to a war that bush has wanted befor he was APPOINTED TO. A JOB HE DID NOT WIN WILL WALK AWAY WITH ALL HIS BUDS AND NEVER PAY FOR ALL THE PAINE HE HAS PUT THIS COUNTRY THROUGHT. THAT IS FUCKED UP!
Clinton's fault.
it was Clinton's fault.
You didn't expect any of Shrub's crew to actually take responsibility for anything, did you?
Look. Let's face it. The folks who run our government and the world
really could care less about the soldiers or the workers. If we/they have to face hardship/difficulty/suffering/death >>> who cares??
They don't. As long as they can go on living their lives in oppulence and leisure and not have to think about or confront the deaths of the underlings - so be it.
Get used to it. This is the wave of the near-term future.
so much for 'supporting the troops' from the neo-con dog shit.
I wonder why it took so long to get this IG report out. I know when I was civil service and we get a IG complaint we had so many days to answer a IG report. Especially if the complaint comes from a senator or a congressperson. Something stinks about this. Shame on the government for not taking action to do something about it. I wonder how wives, parents, sisters, brothers and children feel about this report knowing their soldier didn't get the protection they should have gotten. To bad the relative can't sue. If they could you watch how the government would have fixed the problems. The Bush administration has the blood of those dead GIs on their hands. I hope Bush drinks himself to death. I honestly don't know how this administration can live with themselves the way they have ruined this country.
Because they do not give a shit. In all my years working in Az prision you see the mind set of inmates(most of them) bush and his team have the same mind set. I would say about 70% of all the assholes in washingtion have the same mind set. It's ALL about them. This will only stop when the American people stand up.good luck with that!
... the army that you *and your allies* have." But this was all about $$$$$, so the Bush Admin. made sure they didn't participate at profitable levels.
That war mongering bastard Rumsfeld has no shame. He now enjoys retirement sucking back good whisky and wine, eating the best food living the life of a wealthy arsehole. No thoughts for the tens of thousands of lives he ruined, the shit face. He must have crawled out of his own rectum, no mother would bear such evil.
toooooooooooooooooooooo true bud
Yes, all those 'PRO-lifers' certainly know how to 'support the troops'.
Of course, as usual, all this will be just a blip on the screen....and Congress will just continue to act like they care about 'accountability'...
Hopefully, I'll be around long enough to see this administration slapped down with at least some of this stuff....
(I really really do believe in Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, ...etc....)
It's hardly a surprise that this was the case, but what I don't get is why they didn't spend money on it.
And what I mean by that is that we're talking about a military-industrial complex, administration, and nation that spends absolutely preposterous amounts of money on absolutely anything and everything the blows stuff up, shoots something, or stops something from blowing up or shooting something else. MRAPs and their kin obviously fit into a number of those categories and are nice and expensive. So why on earth didn't some military contractor gin up plans for some, slap an extravagant pricetag on it, then find a nice friendly congressperson to convince that the military absolutely needs several thousand just in case, so that millions of dollars could go to said contractor and a factory in said congressperson's home district.
I mean, seriously, it sounds like an absolute given. And it's not like you can even use the argument "they only care about money, not troops' lives"--these cost PLENTY of money, and it would have been a big fat excuse to spend more of it, something the military absolutely loves.
It's like they go out of their way to buy only the most useless weapons/defenses. Maybe they have better profit margins or something. Either that, or the brass who hold the purse strings are so stuck in a fantasy Tom Clancy-inspired Cold War mentality that they couldn't even fathom the need for something other than space-based weapons. Another PNAC legacy, it would seem.
And no, even I won't buy any "they weren't trying to lose" conspiracy theories--these people are craven and stupid, but they don't like insurgents to make them look like girly men in front of the entire world.
"the US went to war with the army it couldn't be bothered upgrading"
We knew that at the time. That's why we were so outraged at Rumsfeld.
They did it on the cheap and it cost a lot of lives. But no one would listen. Every time we spoke up, we were accused of "not supporting the troops."
this was just a big video game. The only concern was how to make money off of this thing not the soldiers, they are expendable!
The whole bush administration is just like the Illinois gov blagojevich, just in it for the money.
Dick chenny the dick said after the supremes appointed them that they had won the election and they deserved the riches that came with it.
Remember Paul Oneil bush's first treasury secretary said at the very first national security meeting that bush ended the meeting by telling everyone to fine him some way to get into Iraq!
This was before 9/11!
We have had the very scum of the earth in our government for the last thirty years, but it is worse today then ever before!
The regular army was a cost center. Halliburten was the profit-maker.
Priorities, people! The purpose of war is to make money.
Providing MRAP's for the troops would have been costly and left less money for no bid contracts to Halliburton, Blackwater, and all the other defense contractors with their hands in the taxpayers' pockets. This Administration was willing to pay big money to the mercenaries at the expense of the taxpayers, but considered troop losses as collateral damage. They lacked the political courage to spread the sacrifice beyond the military, a relatively small potion of the population, knowing that to burden the public at large with the sacrifice and cost to ensure the job was done properly would provoke a huge backlash of sentiment against their policies. And they rationalize their lies by creating doubt regarding the availability of the facts upon which they based their decisions.
... supposed to be a surprise to anyone?
This story has been right under the media's noses - we wouldn't have the 'army you have' quote from Dumsfeld if the accusations of shorting our troops hadn't been laid out. But no one followed up. No one looked at the numbers.
This isn't even 20-20 hindsight. Bloggers apparently have more common sense than the Washington establishment and the media.
What, no IUD's?
To the Pentagon, the soldiers are not individuals with friends, families, and lives. They are cogs in a war machine that have always been expendable. I bet many in the Pentagon are happy that we've ONLY lost 4,000 soldiers in this occupation.
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