uh oh

Pentagon Offers Zany Excuse for IED Foul-up

by Jacob Freeze

More than 1500 American soldiers have been killed by IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of these deaths wouldn't have happened if the soldiers had been riding in armored V-shaped vehicles. These things used to be called "Mine-protected Utility Vehicles/Rapid Deployable" (MUV-R), but now it's a "Mine Resistant Ambush Protected" vehicle (MRAP). The name changed because you can't call something "rapid deployable" when it still ain't there after 4 long years. Or can you?
As recently as October 2006, Senator Lindsay Graham was celebrating this foul-up as a brilliant success. "This is an example of where (the Pentagon) has gotten it right," Graham said. "They're doing it as fast as they can." (USA Today, 10/30/2006). It sounds like this problem just came up, and the Pentagon jumped right on it. hall
But even in March, 2004, when Rumsfeld visited Abu Ghraib, "military officials did not rely on a government-issued Humvee to transport him safely on the ground. Instead, they turned to Halliburton, the oil services contractor, which lent the Pentagon a rolling fortress of steel called the Rhino Runner." (M. Moss, NYTimes, 6/26/2005)
Nothing is too good for our boys at Halliburton, or the SecDef! But it has taken a very long time for the Pentagon to give anything like the same protection to the average grunt on the mean streets of Iraq. What's the excuse?
Unfortunately for the Pentagon, excuses for ultra-slow deployment aren't exactly easy to dream up, since MRAP vehicles have been deployed all over the world for decades. "The military in South Africa and Rhodesia have been using these vehicles for the past 30 years, steadily improving the technology," (Lt. Col. Gert de Wet, in a press release from USMC Camp Smith, Hawaii, June 24 2005) .........