MRAPs

Here are a series of articles on Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles from USA Today. The Pentagon balking at safer vehicles. The changes in the design of the vehicle. This is a very interesting article. Make sure you watch the video. One soldier's account of an attack. Finally the article on the request from the Pentagon for money to fly the MRAPs to Iraq.

The Pentagon now wants additional money so MRAPs can be flown directly to Iraq. Troops will get these life saving vehicles in hours instead of weeks. Usually they are sent to Iraq by ship.

I guess the question has to be what took them so long to come up with this idea.

This quote sums up my feelings on this:

Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, attributed the need to fly the vehicles to Iraq to bad planning. Pentagon leaders didn’t push for better protected vehicles because they believed the war would be short, he said. “It’s ridiculous that it took this long to send MRAPs,” O’Hanlon said. “It’s an example of wishfulness and politics getting in the way of protection for troops. It’s a bad mistake verging on the unconscionable.”

Why isn't everything possible being done to protect our troops from IED? Why is the government relying on only a few manufacturers of these vehicles? Why isn't one of the idled car plants taken over and converted to build the MRAPs? Why is it in this war the only people that feel its effects are the members of the military and their families?