I am pleased to see that some relatives of some soldiers killed in Snatch Land Rovers in Iraq and Afghanistan are to sue the Ministry of Defence.
From the beginning of the fighting, I have been astonished by the continual use of snatch landrovers in an environment where the enemies main weapon were roadside bombs!
Clearly these vehicles are vital equipment, as the MOD claims, and they are appropriate for the jobs that they perform, again as the the MoD maintains.
In fact the only problem with them seems to be that they offer very little or no protection to being blown up! My personal view is that it is very cynical of the MOD to exclude this minor detail(!) when defending their use in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The use of theses vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan should, in my view, have been stopped as soon as it was realised that our soldiers were going to be targetted and that that there were going to be casualities (and I mean killed and injured).
The investigation into all aspects of the Iraq war must include the MOD reasoning in using these vehicles for as long as they did, and this whole debate should be in public.
My only concern is that if legal action is started by some of the families who have lost relatives, then this would give an excuse to Gordon Brown and the MOD to exclude this whole subject from the 'public' enquiry into the war.
Keywords: afghanistan, enquiry, government, iraq, labour, land rovers, snatch, soldier, soldiers, war