In 2007, then-Senator Joe Biden was responsible for getting Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles for our troops in Iraq. You can read about it in this contemporaneous article from Defense-Aerospace magazine.
Biden, who was chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote an amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization Bill to spend $23.6 billion to replace its vulnerable Humvees with MRAPS.
This was essential because roadside bombs were responsible for 70 percent of the casualties in Iraq and MRAPS were needed to protect the troops.
This was a fight Biden had long been having with Robert Gates, George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense, who didn’t want to put all that funding into the MRAPs. Biden put it this way:
When our commanders in the field tell us that these Mine Resistant Vehicles will reduce casualties by sixty-seven to eighty percent, I cannot understand why the Administration’s wartime budget request falls far below the stated needs of our folks on the ground. Providing our troops with the best possible protection should be a shared top priority.
When American lives and limbs are on the line, giving anything less than 100 percent is not enough. As long as we have a single soldier on the front lines in Iraq, or anywhere else, it is this country’s most sacred responsibility to protect them.
Biden spent six months arguing about this with the Bush administration, writing this amendment and rustling up support from both sides of the aisle so he could get it passed. In the end, he was able to get Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Robert Casey (D-PA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) to co-sponsor his amendment, making it likelier to pass (which it did).
It passed and it saved lives.
Check out this amazing Biden ad to hear about it from a soldier on the ground:
Joe Biden put the safety of our troops first because he sees protecting the brave men and women who serve our county as our highest obligation.
Joe Biden is a great president.
Is there still more work to be done? 100%! Lots more work. But Biden has done so much more than many people guessed could be done. He deserves a lot of credit. AND he deserves to be re-elected.
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These posts are written by Goodnewsroundup (Goodie),
edited by Matilda Briggs, supported by 2thanks and WolverineForTJatAW,
and reinforced by several other notable Kossacks!
As with all good things, it takes a village.