Officials within the United States Marine Corps are taking issue with some choice remarks made by the Senate’s leading Democrat this week.

On Tuesday morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the Senate floor to commemorate the lives of seven U.S. Marines lost Monday in an explosion in his home state of Nevada. But after pledging his support for the military and the families of the fallen Marines, Reid went on to use their deaths to rail against sequestration. “Mr. President, it’s very important we continue training our military, so important. But one of the things in sequester is we cut back in training and maintenance,” Reid said Tuesday. “That’s the way sequester was written. Now, the bill that’s on the floor, we hope to pass today helps that a little bit,” he concluded.

Unnamed officials in the Marine Corps responded with sound criticism of Reid, telling NBC News that Reid’s comments were “nothing but pure political posturing on the backs of those dead Marines.”

WATCH:

You opened that segment with a soundbyte from Senate Majority Leader Democrat Harry Reid expressing his condolences, but also during that statement, there was an implication there that under sequestration, when budgets are cut, we may see more of these that it may put the Marines and others–and soldiers under risk because of the budget cuts. Now, I can tell you, Marine Corps officials this afternoon are taking a strong exception to what Harry Reid implied, saying that this exercise for example was planned well in advance, had nothing to do with the budget cuts, there were no corners cut, and if they couldn’t afford to have all the safety precautions into place, they wouldn’t do the exercise. In fact, one Marine Corps official told us a short time ago that he considers this nothing but pure political posturing on the backs of those dead Marines.