The Marine

The USA mismanagement of the marines had Killed allot of soldiers in Iraqi. Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused turned down urgent request in 2005. From the battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles an internal military study concludes.

The study was written by a civilian Marine Corps official and obtained by The Associated Press and accuses the service of gross mismanagement that delayed deliveries of the mine-resistant and ambush protected trucks for the past two years. The cost was a driving factor in the decision to turn down the request for the so called MRAPs according to the study. On the stateside authorities saw the hulking vehicles which can cost as much as a 1 million dollar or more for each vehicles. AS a financial threat to programs aimed at developing lighter and more resistant to mine bomb and bullet resistant vehicles that were years from being built two years ago.

After Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared the MRAP the Pentagon's No. 1 acquisition priority in May 2007, the trucks began to be shipped to Iraq in large quantities. The vehicles weigh up to 40 tons and have been effective at protecting American forces from improvised explosive devices aslo knows as IED it is the insurgent weapon of choice. Only four U.S. troops have been killed by this bombs while riding in MRAPs. Three of those deaths occurred in older versions of the MRAPS.

Budget and procurement managers failed to recognize the damage being done by the IEDs in late 2004 and 2005 and were convinced the best solution was adding more armor to the less sturdy Humvees the Marines were using. Humvees even those with extra layers of steel proved incapable of blunting the increasingly powerful explosives planted by insurgents.
An urgent request in February 2005 for MRAPs got lost in the mail romm. It was signed by the 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 IEDs when a solution was commercially available to Hejlik who was the commander in western Iraq from June 2004 to February 2005 and he nver got the vehicles he wanted.

Gayl cites documents showing Hejlik's request was shuttled to a civilian logistics official at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in 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.