The deadly roadside attack by insurgents yesterday in Iraq leaving 14 U.S. Marines dead identified a persisting weakness in the Bush administration’s post-war Iraq efforts: the inability to provide up-armored vehicles to all our troops in Iraq.

The AP reports that the 14 Marines were riding in a “lightly armored vehicle.” This description indicates the Marines were not equipped with the many varieties of up-armored vehicles which were specifically designed to provide the best protection available against roadside bombs. The Marine Corps Inspector General recently concluded that “a quarter of the Second Marine Expeditionary Force’s Humvees lack sufficient armor to protect troops against roadside bombings.”

In June, the New York Times reported that one of the most heavily equipped humvees, the M1117 (the so-called “Rhino Runner”), lost its funding prior to the invasion of Iraq, and the Defense Department has been excruciatingly slow to reallocate the necessary funding. While Secretary Rumsfeld was equipped with the Rhino on a recent trip to Iraq, soldiers are still driving around in largely-unprotected vehicles. As proof of the Rhino’s abilities, the Times wrote:

Last fall, for instance, a Rhino traveling the treacherous airport road in Baghdad endured a bomb that left a six-foot-wide crater. The passengers walked away unscathed. “I have no doubt should I have been in any other vehicle,” wrote an Army captain, the lone military passenger, “the results would have been catastrophically different.“

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Last week, there was a big buzz about a little name change. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that, after lengthy consideration, the Bush administration would stop referring to the “global war on terror” (GWOT) and start talking about the much cuddlier “global struggle against violent extremism” (GSAVE):

In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the nation’s senior military officer have spoken of “a global struggle against violent extremism” rather than “the global war on terror,” which had been the catchphrase of choice. Administration officials say that phrase may have outlived its usefulness, because it focused attention solely, and incorrectly, on the military campaign.

But then there was this Monday’s Homeland Security Meeting, in which President Bush criticized the switch, going so far as to say that “no one had checked” with him before deciding on the change. (This admission reportedly led to a rather awkward silence.) And now, this morning’s papers report on a speech the president gave yesterday in which he publicly overruled his senior advisers, further distancing himself from the new slogan (he used it zero times) and referring to the GWOT five times. “Make no mistake about it,” Bush insisted; “we are at war.”

Glad to see that the administration is showing a unified front.

– Conor Clarke