The stupidity of people who make decisions for the military never ceases to amaze me. The M2 is not obsolete. It is still one of the most potent armored taxis on anybody's battlefield. If we ever wind up in another general war (you know - that thing the CONVENTIONAL Army is supposed to be able to fight and win) it'll survive and meet mission better than anything that was developed for the Iraq/Afghanistan debacles. (Cross-country movement as part of an armored column tends to put the IED threat pretty low.) I certainly don't want to face enemy armor in an MRAP/MATV/Stryker/etc. And I really want to know where the budget to develop its mythical replacement is coming from. (DAMN - just getting started and I'm out of Woody! Again!  )
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A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (42B.C)
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