The Washington Monthly's monthly journalism award.

Joseph Tanfani, Tom Infield, Carrie Budoff & Edward Colimore

"How U.S. failed GIs" Philadelphia Inquirer, April 10, 2005

Two years after the United States first invaded Iraq and promised to amp up American industrial production to provide enough armor for troops on patrol a team from the Philadelphia Inquirer took a look at a critical question: Why was it that our troops still had insufficient protection?

Though all military vehicles in Iraq now finally have some sort of protection, a third are armored only with "crudely cut sheets of steel, inadequate by the Army's own standards. "The inquirer found that, although the Pentagon has blamed the failure on "everything from steel shortages to America's industrial decline 'the shortage has far more to do with the military's own bumbled planning.

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