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Yes, it’s yet another political video, but life leaves time for little else. I’m just now getting around to finishing off the footage I gathered in Charleston, and I figured I’d knock out this press conference so I can move on to the more fun video post: the Charleston highlights reel. Stay tuned.

Quicktime version.

Sen. Joe Biden held a press conference in Charleston, SC on July 23 before the CNN-YouTube debate, where two local companies had on display examples of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPVs). The Biden Amendment to the Iraq war funding supplemental passed in May included funding for accelerated procurement and deployment of these vehicles, which are four to five times safer against IED attacks, which account for 70% of our casualties in Iraq.

One of the vehicles on display was a Buffalo Class III MRAPV (the most heavy-duty of the MRAPVs, intended for bomb disposal work), built by Force Protection, Inc. Last Thursday, two new Buffalo vehicles were loaded onto a C-5 and shipped to Iraq.

The troops who participated in loading the vehicles yesterday told local media that they feel their job is important, because the MRAPs have been proven to save lives in combat. “It’s absolutely critical. It saves lives every day when they have them,” Air Force Master Sgt. Jared Breyer, with the 437th Airlift Wing, told ABC News.

To me, the money quote is this:

…and [these small companies] are not about to go out there, nor should they, go out and ramp up their work force, ramp up their facilities, without having a contract knowing they’re gonna be able to build these vehicles. And I would say to those who say, “No, no, no, let’s not build the vehicle until we’re definitely sure we have the capacity,” what’s the downside? You put the money out front, you challenge the industry to move faster, and they don’t get every single vehicle you wanted built by the date you wanted. So, maybe you have to say, it’s okay to pay some of the bills next year. I might not like it, but I can live with that; what I can’t live with, what I can’t live with is Americans coming home in body bags, missing literally limbs, missing parts of their bodies, and coming home with this severe brain trauma. That’s the part I can’t live with.

That would just boil the blood of some of your most Free Market or Die type folks, who would rather wait for some “entrepreneurial spirit” to bootstrap their way to some venture capital, build the perfect product, and through “competition” let the “market forces” create a fair price on the perfect product, all the while troops are out there in vehicles that don’t keep them as safe.

Tags: joe biden, mrap, mrapv, charleston, force protection