Armor? We don't need no stinking armor.

Apparently, the reason so many American troops and vehicles in Iraq have fallen victim to the insurgents' "improvised explosive devices" is that the Pentagon was too inept to foresee a need for body and truck armor, to procure it from capable contractors, and to distribute it properly. Why isn't this the scandal that eats the Administration? American men and women are dead because of it. Some support for the troops, that.

And why isn't the Pentagon - whose leaders love the tiresome 1990s business jargon about being "lean" and "agile" - forced to act like a company, to do more with less, to be efficient, to compete, and so forth? It seems hideously shameful that while Americans are living under the threat of a privatized ( = destroyed) social safety net, the generals needn't fear the bureaucratic equivalent.