A Failure of Leadership

This morning, Kirk at Gnostinews brought my attention to a Knight Ridder report. Two top Marine Corps officers acknowledged Tuesday that they waited two months to issue a contract for armor kits to protect the undersides of Humvees after promising to do so earlier this year.

Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Gen. William L. Nyland, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, and Brig. Gen. William D. Catto, the chief of Marine Corps Systems Command, attributed the delay to a "lack of leadership." They assured the committee that all Humvees and military trucks that the Marines used in Iraq would be adequately protected by December

Catto, who has oversight of all Marine Corps equipment issues, took the blame for the delay. "This is a lack of leadership on my part for not paying more attention to that specific contract," he said.

Nyland also accepted fault, but said increased production of armor kits in the United States had made up for the shortfall.

"I acknowledge that we took our eye off the ball on that contract," he said. "But we had a parallel course at the same time ... and we have in fact now almost 400 underbodies on the ground for the purposes of installation at the unit level."

At least 34 Marines have died from improvised bombs in Iraq this year, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks and classifies casualties based on Defense Department news releases. Overall, 155 American military deaths have been attributed to such bombs so far this year, more than half of U.S. combat fatalities.

So, of course I hopped over to OpTruth to see what the serving soldiers and veterans of Iraq there think. Well, Perry Jefferies also has a story, this time from the Boston Globe:

Marine Corps units fighting in some of the most dangerous terrain in Iraq don't have enough weapons, communications gear, or properly outfitted vehicles, according to an investigation by the Marine Corps' inspector general provided to Congress yesterday.

The report, obtained by the Globe, says the estimated 30,000 Marines in Iraq need twice as many heavy machine guns, more fully protected armored vehicles, and more communications equipment to operate in a region the size of Utah.

The Marine Corps leadership has ''understated" the amount and types of ground equipment it needs, according to the investigation, concluding that all of its fighting units in Iraq ''require ground equipment that exceeds" their current supplies, ''particularly in mobility, engineering, communications, and heavy weapons."

The official report also says that, even if all Hummers were up-armoured (and it's sheerly murderous that they haven't by now) they are wearing out fast in any case. The Corps will need another 650 soon and "despite an agreement with the Army to repair broken vehicles at a maintenance facility in Kuwait, the Marine Corps had not scheduled any repairs as of last month."

Every single one of the Marine Corps M-1 battletanks in Iraq, at around $10 million a pop, are also past their "replace by" point.

Incredible. I'm not sure what the military codes say about what action should now be taken against Gens. Nyland and Cato I'm sure the Marines on the sharp end have a few ideas.

Perry Jefferies, a veteran First Sergeant from Texas who fought in Iraq, has this to say:

Yes-men in leadership positions that don't demand the proper equipment for their forces should not be seen as 'team players' or 'good resource managers' but as career-climbers willing to sacrifice their troop's safety for a good rating or career-boost. Sure, the Marines are great at sucking it up and driving on, but with money leaking from all decks of the ship in Iraq, it is incomprehensible to me that the command is not demanding the replacement vehicles, parts, and weapons necessary to protect their force in the best way possible. There is always enough dollars for the next contract or even bonuses on the cost-plus contracts, why should the Marines out in the wild west have to deal with less than the best. This is a betrayal of the sacred responsibility to protect the Marines on the ground.