Recently, four soldiers died here in the Logar. Their death was caused by an IED blast, that in a differant vehicle, they would have all easily walked away from. I cannot give specifics about poundage or what type of vehicle it was but I will say that they are really cool and shiny! And that, I'm sure, is why the Army bought it. There were no blast tests done to see what kind of attack it could take. There was no testing for roll-over survivability. The Army said, "OOH! Piece a' candy!" They decided to go ahead and buy hundreds of thousands of these vehicles without even doing any tests of there own. And did they ask the soldiers what they wanted in THEIR vehicles. "Soldiers? EH... What do they know about what they need?" Why is it that the Army feels that it knows what I need better than I do. If were asked what I needed, there  would a whole list of things that could be improved upon. I could go on for days about the different upgrades and how make them happen cheaply and efficiently. (after all when you sleep three hours a night you end up with a lot of free time on your hands.) Naturally only a hand full of my ideas would be accepted for what ever reason but that's a far supirior plan to, "Let's buy this peice of shit and make those guys use it."

Soldiers are dying because some guy who sits in an air-conditioned office thought it looked nifty.