I'm very bitter about my son's fate. He left behind a wife and daughter he never saw. I am proud of both my sons service in Iraq and Afghanistan. And If I was younger and able would have been happy to serve again.
Radical Islam must be stopped. The animals responsible should be put down like the rabid dogs they are. Until that comes to pass not a single one of us will be safe. If the fight brings itself to my door no quarter will be shown. I will hoist the black flag and eliminate as many as possible before my demise.
“As a father of a Marine KIA due to an IED that was in an unarmored Humvee I’m not pleased that more isn’t being done.”
My condolences, and profound respect for your son and family.
I don’t know what’s right here. There’s probably another side to why we don’t roll them out faster. There must be some kind of tipping point where resources devoted to IED defence would save more lives if applied to offense, but I don’t know why expediting 10 thousand more of these million dollar MRAPs wouldn’t make sense. If nothing else, it would revive Detroit.
Thank you for your son’s service.
It’s profoundly disturbing that the Pentagon has taken so long to respond to the IED threat, while private companies such as Blackwater (not the only one) have had MRAPs in Iraq since at least 2005 when I was there. Saw them at the Glass Palace at BIAP, at the Anaconda PX, and they were featured in Robert Pelton’s article about Blackwater in the April 2005 Popular Mechanics. Always manned by professional shooters, not soldiers.
Here’s another article from that time, showing that the problem is by no means a new one:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/26/news/armor.php
Road to Iraq proves slow for safer vehicles
Critics assail procurement procedures
By Michael Moss
Published: MONDAY, JUNE 27, 2005
When U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq last year to tour the Abu Ghraib prison camp, U.S. military officials did not rely on a government-issued Humvee to transport him safely on the ground.
Instead, they turned to Halliburton, the oil services contractor, which lent the Pentagon a rolling fortress of steel called the Rhino Runner.
U.S. State Department officials traveling in Iraq use armored vehicles that are built with V-shaped hulls to better deflect bullets and bombs. Members of the U.S. Congress favor another model, called the M1117, which can endure 12-pound, or five-kilogram, explosives and .50-caliber, or 12.7-millimeter, armor-piercing rounds.
Unlike the Humvee, the Pentagon’s vehicle of choice for U.S. troops, the others were designed specifically to withstand bigger attacks in battlefields like Iraq with no safe zones. Last fall, for instance, a Rhino traveling the treacherous airport road in Baghdad endured a bomb that left a crater six feet, or two meters, wide. The passengers walked away unscathed.
“I have no doubt should I have been in any other vehicle,” wrote a U.S. Army captain, the lone military passenger, “the results would have been catastrophically different.”
...
Bless you for your son’s sacrifice, and prayers up for your family.
Nothing makes me madder than small, bean-counting men deciding against the recommendations of the commanders in the field in order to shave a few dollars off the budget, when it is clear that lives of brave patriots are in the balance. To my mind such small men and the men who aid and abet them are traitors to this country and there ought to be a commensurate penalty paid for all responsible.
Such economic traitors are today making deals with those who would kill us. ChiComs, Muzzie oil barons.
May God give us the strength to find our enemies — both without and within.