The federal fiscal year ended on September 30th, Fiscal year 2008 (FY2008)started on October 1st. As they tallied the books for FY2007, a unit in the Marine Corps ended their year with a $1 million surplus. That is news by itself; I am sure you have heard it said of organizational budgets, "Use it or lose it." The unit's bean-counters probably knew several months ago that they would end up with approximately $1 million unspent. Therefore, we can assume that this was a planned event and that the General in command here is a risk-taker.
Lieutenant General Richard Zilmer, Commanding General, Third Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF)
To provide some context for you: The III MEF is a large unit. It is an infantry division, an Air Wing, and a logistical support group (supply, food, medical, communications, transportation, etcetera.) That equates to tens of thousands of people. When I was a fire team leader in a Marine rifle squad, responsible for four Marines, the Commanding General of III MEF was eight levels of bureaucracy above me.
When I read about how the III MEF is relinquishing $1 million of their budget to provide for the safety of Marines in Iraq, I got a warm, fuzzy feeling at first. Believe me, the III MEF could have spent that money in Okinawa at headquarters in the blink of an eye. There is never enough money to go around in a Marine Unit; many units have to trim their training schedule due to lack of funds. When you have thousands and thousands of Marines, aircraft, buildings, acres, vehicles, and assorted other military possessions, a $1 million can get spent in a heartbeat. Moreover, the budgetary powers that be may view this move as a signal that they can send III MEF $1 million dollars less in FY2008 since they didn't need it in FY2007.
The warm, fuzzy feeling did not last long. I got pissed, quickly. It is calendar year 2007. We entered Iraq on March 20, 2003. We still do not have enough protective equipment in Iraq? We are still begging for vehicles that are less susceptible to Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's)? Marines in Iraq have to rely on the charity of other Marine Units in order to be safe and effective?
I do not agree with the sentiment that BushCheneyPowellRumsfeldRice should have anticipated the insurgency. It should not have caught them by complete surprise, but I can understand if they did not send thousands of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles on the first wave to Iraq. Even so, it should not have taken long for them to realize the value these vehicles would provide.
When did the insurgency start? At what point should we have realized that IED's detonated during convoy would be the greatest threat our military would face in Iraq? I will bet both of those events occurred in FY2003, prior to October 2003. In FY2008, we should be wondering how we are going to get the hundreds of un-needed MRAP's out of Iraq because we sent too many.
I re-read the article again. I noticed a few more words, clarifying the situation. The $1 million is not going to purchase the MRAP's, it is going to fund the transportation of the vehicles from the manufacturer to Iraq. The way I interpret this sentence, the vehicles were not going to get to Iraq as quickly before the $1 million; the III MEF has simply sped up the delivery of the vehicle's.
According to the CIA's World Factbook, the United States spent $2.66 trillion in 2006. I am sure we spent more than that in 2007, if I know my President. God only knows how much we will spend in 2008, regardless of our revenue (we will spend hundreds of billions of dollars more than we receive--don't try this at home.) We have thousands of our finest men and women dying in vehicles unnecessarily, thousands more lose eyes, arms, legs, functions, and capacities; a better vehicle design will preserve lives, limbs, and potential.
WE ROUTINELY RUN BUDGET DEFICITS, WE WRITE BUDGETS IN THE TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS. WE CANNOT FIND $1 MILLION DOLLARS TO SPEED THE DELIVERY OF VEHICLES THAT SHOULD HAVE ARRIVED FOUR YEARS AGO? WHO IS RUNNING THIS CIRCUS?
I think that General Zilmer is sending a message. A unit giving up $1 million dollars is rare; I would venture to say it almost never happens. You don't make 3 stars by being a generous altruist. It takes a savvy political mind, ruthless strategy, and a warrior's spirit. Therefore, his decision is so far out of the ordinary that it will require people to take notice. The message I think he is sending is that if no one else will do the right thing, he will risk his budget and career to do the right thing. I hope that message received in the Pentagon shames them into spending more on safety and less whatever they are wasting our money on this week.
The U.S. Defense Budget was $439.3 billion for FY2007. That does not include money earmarked specifically for the Global War on Terrorism, which was $67.9 billion in FY2006. Therefore, III MEF's $1 million is just a drop in the bucket; that moeny could have come from anywhere with little effect on the big picture. The cost of the MRAP's, especially if you spread it out over four years, is just a few drops in the bucket.
Were the MRAP's too expensive when compared with a tin-foil Humvee. What does it cost when a Humvee is blown by an IED, versus the cost if an MRAP suffers a similar fate? Is it really cheaper to just operate unarmored or after-market modified Humvees?
Obviously, the Humvee contained people. Try to calculate, in dollars, what our nation lost when those people encountered an IED. For the ones who die, we lost the investment we made in their training and education. We also lost the tax revenue they would have generated over a lifetime. You need to factor in tranportation and burial costs, plus payment of benefits to survivors. We won't even try to calculate the potential loss of their talents, ideas, and what their offspring might have accomplished.
For the ones who survive, we need to calculate the cost of their rescue (medevacs are expensive), medical treatment over years, the cost of their VA entitlement, the cost of their lost productivity during recovery and after, and any lost tax revenue we may expect from their new handicap.
Why wouldn't we have Iraq over-run with MRAP's right now? I can only assume it has something to do with money. I guarantee that if you made any conservative estimate on the figures above, you could justify the cost of MRAP's easily. Many city budget have included various armored vehicles which will probably (hopefully) never receive a scratch and only see action in training and parades. Why can't we do the right thing in Iraq? Why do Marine units in Okinawa have to send money to expedite equipment for Iraq that should have been delivered four years ago?
One more set of questions, in case you still think that our military and political leaders are doing a great job. Are the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles a new technology? Were the IED's a new technology when we first encountered them in Iraq? No, this is a threat that America has been prepared to deal with since World War I, and the technology of protecting troops has not advanced all that much over the years. You have newer allows of steel, but they existed in 2003 when the first IED blew up. You have newer research to calculate the ratios of space, armor, and angle, but we could have done well with the data available in 2003.
Iraq is a safer piece of real-estate in 2007, just as the MRAP's get "expedited" there. These MRAP's will get someone promoted, and maybe the administration will convince some people that this late gesture was, in fact, a great step in securing Iraq's future. I think that is a slap in the face to every spouse, child, and parent of a military hero who lost limbs or lives to IED's in unprotected Humvee's. The arrival of MRAP's in Iraq in 2003 would have meant that we lost much less than the thousands of Americans who died in a vehicle from IEDs. MRAP's in 2003 would also have rendered IEDs almost ineffectual; the insurgents would have had to employ a different tactic. If we had MRAP's as the primary mode of transportation in Iraq in 2004, we would be talking about the war in Iraq in the past-tense. It would be all over now, and we would have Iran cowering at the thought that they were next.
The article that got me all riled up:
III MEF returns $1 million to fund Marines in Iraq
Oct. 5, 2007; Submitted on: 10/05/2007 12:30:34 AM ; Story ID#: 200710503034
By Lance Cpl. David Rogers, MCB Camp Butler
CAMP FOSTER, OKINAWA, Japan (Oct. 5, 2007) -- When III Marine Expeditionary Force ended up with an unexpected budget surplus at the end of fiscal 2007, MEF leaders quickly found a great way to spend it: invest it in the safety of Marines in Iraq.
III MEF returned $1 million in operations and maintenance funding to Headquarters Marine Corps recently to help fund transportation costs to expedite the shipment of new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles to Iraq.
The MRAP vehicles are built with a special V-shaped hull and raised chassis to provide improved protection from mines and improvised explosive devices, according to Marine Corps Systems Command.
“Getting armored vehicles to Iraq is an urgent requirement that’s got to happen,” said Col. Kevin King, the III MEF comptroller. “This is a bill the Marine Corps must pay, and that trumps plasma screens and other less-essential items. We also had our Regional Contracting Office operating essentially at capacity with existing contract requests without dropping another million dollars on them at the 11th hour.”
III MEF received $4.6 million in late fiscal year 2007 as reimbursement for money spent on Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pacific Command-directed exercises.
“We weighed several options, but it came down to executing against an identified Global War on Terrorism bill vs. identifying new requirements and quite possibly being unable to obligate those funds, certainly not on anything as important as the MRAPs. This issue was discussed with the MEF CG and Chief of Staff and the guidance was that it made sense to give up the funds for a higher priority,” King said.
U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, Jr., spoke about the importance of getting the MRAP vehicles to Iraq during a congressional proceeding March 28 in Washington D.C.
“That statement that these MRAPs provide four to five times more protection than up-armored Humvees is not my estimate,” Biden said. “That is the judgment of our military leaders.”
Biden added that Gen. James Conway, Commandant of the Marine Corps, wrote a message March 1 to Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, discussing his requirements to have MRAP vehicles in Iraq.
“Multi-National Forces – West estimates that the use of the MRAP could reduce the casualties in vehicles due to (improvised explosive device) attacks by as much as 80 percent,” he said.
III MEF is scheduled to receive five of the MRAP vehicles for training purposes in the near future.
http://usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/377C5192A08EF2968525736B0018C591?opendocument
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