Marines want probe into armored vehicle program

Marines want probe into armored vehicle program
delays
Story Highlights
Corps asks Pentagon to look into why specially armored vehicles were delayed

Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles arrived in large numbers in 2007

Internal report says earlier delivery could have prevented deaths, wounds

Suicide bomber kills 9 in northern Iraq, military says

From Barbara Starr
CNN

(CNN) -- Casualties could have been reduced by half among Marines in Iraq if specially armored vehicles had been deployed more quickly in some cases, a report to the Pentagon says.

Marine Corps spokesman Col. David Lapan said the Defense Department's inspector general wants to investigate the report's claims that bureaucratic delays undermined the program to develop the armored vehicles.

The program was designed to provide combat forces with Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles, known by the acronym MRAPs.

The Marine Corps requested an investigation last week after receiving Marine technology expert Franz Gayl's report.

"If the mass procurement and fielding of MRAPs had begun in 2005 in response to the known and acknowledged threats at that time, as the USMC is doing today, hundreds of deaths and injuries could have been prevented," Gayl wrote in the report.
go here for the rest
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/26/iraq.main/


How many lost their lives because of this? Got blown up? Ended up with TBI and PTSD?