An arm and a leg

Multiply that times thousands, toss in thousands of deaths, and you get the cost of politicians putting their careers ahead of their jobs.

The military knew in 1994 that humvees were, as they called it, a "deathtrap."
However, while considering a different fleet of safer vehicles,
The Pentagon didn't develop such a fleet because championing the vehicles wasn't seen in the '90s as a "good career move," said John Pike of Globalsecurity.org. The military had spent hundreds of millions on Humvees and drawn-out ground wars were seen as a thing of the past, he said. (usat)

And, of course, that brilliant strategist and great humanitarian Donald "Go to war with the Army you have" Rumsfeld and his cronies ignored the boys on the ground in 2005.
Combat Development Command did not create a plan to field the vehicles or obtain funding for them despite receiving an urgent request from field commanders in Iraq for MRAPs in February 2005.(usat)

Its all under investigation now, but I imagine there are a lot of pretty bold men and women that had the balls to defend their country (even if many of them didn't realize what that meant) wishes they would have investigated it up front.

The military politicians in the pentagon in pursuit of the American dream at the cost of thousands of other Americans' Dreams...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.