US OK'S $23.6 BILLION FOR NEW VEHICLES

Now, we're all for keeping our troops safe; in fact, the best way to keep them safe is to keep them home, protecting our borders ... But no matter anyone's opinion on the Iraq War, Guantanamo Bay and other hot issues, like whether or not a US Senator might bend down to pick up a piece of used toilet paper in an airport's public bathroom, we say give our troops whatever they need to stay safe, to win whatever wars we send them to fight, and, just maybe, make the armed forces attractive enough so we can stop hiring $1,000-a-day mercenaries to protect our own Secretary of State. But even we were caught askance when we saw this article in Automotive News, and we knew you'd find it interesting, too. After years of supplying our troops with enough coffins, uh, we mean, Humvees to do their jobs, we've all seen that no matter what the politicians might say, these vehicles are not able to withstand attacks from roadside bombs, or what we all know as "IEDs", "Improvised Explosive Devices". Now, we know that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (remember him?) told a military audience in Iraq, while answering a question from a soldier wondering why he and his fellow troops had to strip metal from previously blown-up trucks to try and upgrade and uparmor their own Humvees, that, "You don't fight a war with the army you wish you had, you fight it with the one you've got". And we all saw what happened to Don Rumsfeld ... Thank goodness. Finally, it appears that those in DC think that, yes, it might be a good idea to send vehicles to Iraq that are already upgraded and uparmored (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, or MRAP, pictured). And you know what it's going to cost? Almost $24 Billion. Here's the article:

The U.S. Senate on Monday (Oct. 1) approved $23.6 billion in additional funding for mine-resistant armored vehicles as part of a mammoth defense spending bill for the 2008 fiscal year that began Monday. The bill passed by a vote of 92 to 3 and now heads into conference negotiations with the House of Representatives.

As written by the Senate Armed Services Committee, the $648 billion bill already included $4.1 billion for Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, whose V-shaped hulls can dramatically reduce U.S. troop deaths from roadside bombs. But senators approved an amendment by Sen. Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, that adds $23.6 billion in funding for the vehicles. That funding level would allow the U.S. Army to replace all of its up-armored humvees in Iraq with MRAPs, Biden said.

He said roadside bombs are responsible for 70 percent of U.S. troop deaths in Iraq, and MRAPs could reduce those deaths by more than two-thirds. The Pentagon has already funded or requested 8,000 MRAPs, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week asked for $11 billion more to expand MRAP purchases. MRAPS can hold four to twelve people and their hulls protect soldiers better from explosions than up-armored humvees.


MRAP contractors include: -- Navistar International Corp.'s International Military and Government LLC;
-- Force Protection Inc., which is partnered with General Dynamics Corp.'s Land Systems business arm;
-- a General Dynamics Canadian unit; -- BAE Systems Plc; -- Oshkosh Truck Corp.; -- closely held Protected Vehicles Inc. of North Charleston, South Carolina.

Now, is it just us, or is there some really good reason that we don't see any CAR COMPANIES in this  list? Maybe the folks in Detroit could teach these military contractors a thing or two about bringing in a project on-time and on (or even under)-budget ... and one which works right, too, which might even be backed-up by some kind of warranty. But when you're a military contractor and have been sucking at the tit of the American public for so long that anything UNDER a billion dollars is too small to even talk about, I guess I can understand why "Detroit" doesn't enter into this discussion at all.

All we really have to say is ... WHAT THE HELL HAVE THEY BEEN WAITING FOR?