Totally agree, and the performance has been measured. We even had an outside vendor come in and measure as well. The conclusion was we do not have enough disks handling the IOPS we put against the database. What I meant by the hardware/softwre thing was that person thinks that the networks guys should take care of any hardware problems, even when they dont know anything about SQL Server.
It is just kiindof humerous now cause at most places i have been once you show enough proof on where the problem lies you would expect to at least move in the right direction to fix the issue.