One of Ours

That's a planning failure of the most basic kind -- the failure to anticipate the threat. And I find it quite hard to believe, honestly, that the Army could fail to appreciate this kind of warfare after watching all of the brushfire conflicts of the 1990s. From Somalia to Chechnya, it was clear what kinds of wars we'd be fighting in the next century to anyone with a clue about history and the population trends that were moving towards urban centers. Moreover, as one of my NSRT colleagues points out, the Army recognized these trends and incorporated them into exercises at the Joint Readiness Training Center as early as 1993.

Roadside IEDs were a known threat, and the Army trained for it -- it just didn't buy the gear it needed to have to meet this threat effectively.