The Pentagon didn’t develop such a fleet because championing the vehicles wasn’t seen in the ‘90s as a “good career move,” said John Pike of Globalsecurity.org.
Please tell me I didn't read this right! Please tell me that no one in the Pentagon thought more about their careers than the lives of the troops! They knew about this in the 90's but "thought" ground war was a thing of the past? How stupid are they? The Cold War ended. What did they think the "enemy" would do considering the biggest threat this nation faced was terrorism? Did the Pentagon actually think that rag tag terrorists would come up with an Air Force? Maybe they thought they would just use unmanned drones to hit the people they wanted to kill? We got hit by civilian aircraft and what was the response the Pentagon came up with? Ground wars! They sent these Humvees into Afghanistan and Iraq knowing about the fact they were seen as "deathtraps" and did nothing to adapt them first or come up with something better.
If they use the excuse that Afghanistan was a rush job, they've had years to correct the problem after. There was no need to rush to hit Iraq and they have no excuse for not doing the right thing before they sent in the first Humvee into Iraq. Neither nation had an active military. The only weapons they had were guns and bombs. Did the Pentagon think they were up against people that would place nice and follow the rules of engagement? How many lives were lost because of this? How many limbs were blown off because of this?
Who has been put on trial for any of this?
Humvee vulnerabilities were long known
By Tom Vanden Brook - USA TODAY
Posted : Wednesday Feb 4, 2009 6:22:35 EST
WASHINGTON — Army and Marine Corps officials knew nearly a decade before the invasion of Iraq that its workhorse Humvee vehicle, was a “deathtrap” even with armor added to protect it against roadside bombs, according to an inspector general’s report.
Reports distributed throughout the Army and Marine Corps after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the Somalia conflict in 1994 urged the development of armored vehicles to avoid the devastating effects of roadside bombs and land mines, but the Pentagon failed to act, the report says.
The Pentagon didn’t field significant numbers of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles until 2007, more than three years after roadside bombings began to escalate in the Iraq war. The conclusions of the 1991 and 1994 reports were not included in the one-page summary of the inspector general’s findings released in December.
The inspector general’s full report was later posted on a Web site by the Center for Public Integrity, a government watchdog group.
click link for more and prepare to scream.
