Fox 3
"Tony Blair and Gordon Brown killed these men.
Every advice they had were that snatch vehicles were a deathtrap, and other allied forces wouldn't have dreamt of equipping their troops so poorly."
That's where the truth behind these rulings lie. A commander in the field is always going to be constrained by the equipment available to him. His problem comes when, as in Iraq/Afghan they know the threat IEDs and they know the weakness, the Snatch L/R. Whilst I remember reading many press reports that these commanders were "leaking" that they were unhappy to the press, it strikes me that few, if any, made any real noises back up the chain of command. Perhaps they did and were rebuffed, hence the press leaks. At the end of the day, were the commanders doing their duty to their men, or the politicians like Bliar and McBroon. I know it's not a position I would ever like to be in. Unfortunately, despite today's rulings, the pollies will never take responsibility.
Smudge