Among the things you'd think the highly sophisticated U.S. military would be really good at is providing the necessary tools for its troops - especially during a time of war. One assumes that when the decision is made to invade a country, all the preparations would have been completed before the invasion.

Unfortunately for the men and women serving in our armed forces in Iraq, those assumptions have been proven to be incorrect.

We have commented in the past on the Pentagon dragging its feet with regard to equipping U.S. soldiers with bullet-proof vests and additional armor for their Humvees, which as originally outfitted are not up to withstanding the rigors of roadside bombs. The problem has only gotten worse, according to an internal investigation of the Pentagon's war-time procurement policies.

There is, for example, the case of the vests. A few weeks after the invasion of Iraq, things were going so well that the Pentagon canceled an order for an additional 50,000 ceramic inserts for bullet-proof vests. Shortly after that, when it became clear that insurgents were going to be a deadly problem for under-protected U.S. soldiers, an order was sent out for 20,000 vest inserts.

U.S. allies came to the same conclusion about the need for more vests, placing an order directly with the manufacturer in Michigan. The allied troops got their vest inserts in less than two weeks. U.S. soldiers didn't get theirs until almost six months later.

Why? The military's inspector general said it was because of procurement foul-ups within the Pentagon's bureaucratic maze. Officials at the Michigan armor company said they kept getting conflicting orders from Pentagon officials. The work would start, then be stopped when one military official trumped the orders of someone else.

Military officials seem to be a little too laid-back about this situation. The general responsible for providing equipment to soldiers in the field said the 167-day wait for vests was "fairly responsive." That comment mirrors Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's unfortunate response to a soldier who asked for more armor, that "you go to war with the army you have ..."

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Frankly, there is no call for such remarks, and there is no need for the world's premier fighting organization to be ill-equipped to wage a planned war, then stay under-equipped as the danger in the battle zones increases.

Poor or inadequate equipment is costing U.S. lives in Iraq. Americans won't accept a dysfunctional Pentagon as an excuse for that.

March 9, 2005