Pentagon "Missteps" - Troops Die

Regular readers know I have been following the debacle over properly protecting soldiers in the front line since well before a single brave soul stood up and asked embarassing questions of Donald Rumsfield at a "meet the troops" session in Iraq. Over the weekend, the New York Times had this long but essential article on how inefficiency and incompetence at the Pentagon led to unneccesary shortages in body and vehicle armour.

In all, with additional paperwork delays, the Defense Department took 167 days just to start getting the bulletproof vests to soldiers in Iraq once General Cody placed the order. But for thousands of soldiers, it took weeks and even months more, records show, at a time when the Iraqi insurgency was intensifying and American casualties were mounting.

By contrast, when the United States' allies in Iraq also realized they needed more bulletproof vests, they bypassed the Pentagon and ordered directly from a manufacturer in Michigan. They began getting armor in just 12 days.

Since military doctors have estimated that at least half of all casualties in Iraq were do to inadequate provision of armour, the Pentagon is responsible for the deaths of 750 or more of it's own servicemen. Someone's head should roll for this and the man in charge is Donald Rumsfield.

And while we are on the subject of military "missteps" read the post I found at OperationTruth, the veterans of Iraq group, which reports a Baltimore Sun article that:

Since at least a month before the war in Iraq began, medical experts in the Army and other services have called on the Pentagon to equip every American soldier in the war zone with a modern tourniquet...cost would not likely exceed $2 million, or about two-thousandths of a percent of the $82 billion proposed for the war this year. Yet many of the nation's soldiers - tens of thousands, some doctors and Army medical officials estimate - continue to enter battle without tourniquets. And some bleed to death from battlefield injuries that would not be life-threatening if a proper tourniquet were available

I wonder how many other servicemen have died because they lacked a bandage? Just don't try to tell them "you go to war with the medical kit you have, not the medical kit you want". Brian Hart at OpTruth has this to say:

The army hasn't issued or fielded them to all units in combat despite recommendations to do so by their own medical boards. Hard to believe that a $20 tourniquet and a $35 QuikClot hemostat can't be issued to every army soldier in combat but can be issued to all marines. Army presently hasn't issued the purchase orders because they can't make up their mind what kind of pouch to put it in. Someone should go to jail over this.

So what were the brave desk-soldiers doing instead? Well, one thing was procuring a new Claymore mine system which can be remotely detonated from miles away. The military has refused to answer questions, though, about how they will ensure it only blows up bad guys and not innocent civilians, since it must be pretty hard to tell from miles away.

Victim-detonated Claymore mines are prohibited by the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which has been agreed to by 152 nations but not the United States:

One year ago, on February 27, 2004, the Bush administration announced the outcome of a lengthy review of U.S. landmine policy, rejecting U.S. accession to the Mine Ban Treaty outright. The new policy reversed a 10-year pledge by the United States to eliminate all antipersonnel landmines. Instead, the Bush administration opted to retain self-destructing and self-deactivating antipersonnel mines indefinitely.

Given the number of times this administration has broken America's honourable word by backing away from treaties the US had agreed to sign or outright breaking already ratified treaties, why should they think the international community has any faith in their word when they make other pronouncements?