I almost had a good laugh to myself when I read this earlier this morning.

(here's the link... from Military.Com,

and here's the more...colorful interpretation of it from DefenseTech.Org...   ...)

 

No, not a good chuckle about the loss of lives, but about how easily departments all across the government will shift and play the blame game.

"It's always someone else's fault", seems to be a common excuse for just about everything someone sees fault in anywhere in the government.

 

Personally, I wonder how much better off (or worse?) we'd have been going into Iraq if the procurement whores had gotten their heads out of each other's @sses (and hands out of each other's corporate-biased pockets) and actually bought us (US military) better gear sooner.

Heard all those years ago the hype about "preparing to fight the next war, now that the Cold War is over."

Just more false hopes to string us along?

 

Who are these think tanks, government advisory groups, and supposed expert military tacticians and strategic advisors that dictate on down to the procurement people the best systems to buy for Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines?

Somebody(s) obviously in that loop has been pawning themselves off to be much more experienced and expert in military fields than they've actually proven to be!

 

My real question is, had the USMC, Army, and either of the other services considered buying such gear earlier (pre-OIF), how quickly would it have been shot down by Congressional inquiry asking why such equipment was deemed necessary, based solely on speculative-but-unproven (again, pre-OIF) threats of IEDs and other ambushes?

 

(Funnier thing is, all this Not-Invented-Here crap that's thrown about left and right over any number of big defense contracts...but these MRAP designs, under older names, actually originated from South Africa, a country long on the US embargo list. Funny how times change, ain't it?

No, the people holding the reins over the procurement chain officials are just as much to blame...but then again, Congressmen and-women are, supposedly, without fault!)

my Armored humvee are doing fine thank you! I put in a armored humvve formation back 1994/5. there was development of a recon version and the successor the M-1117 asv. the M-1117 asv production facitities were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. now we have MRAP. can you imagine how many lives were saved by my Armored humvee, I remember one questionary that was put out to a unit that took high casualties in Iraq they said they could not even count the number of hits from snipers that the armored humvees armor stopped. think that a man for about every day of fighting

 

Sincerely,

 

keith