Two items on our Official-Vehicle-Of-The-End-Of-Civilization roundup today:
60 Minutes has reported that U.S. Army Humvees in Iraq are a menace, not just to everyone else on the road, but the passengers as well:
Lacking the proper steel plating to protect soldiers from enemy mines and rocket propelled grenades, they had been jerry-rigged with plywood and sandbags. “They were called cardboard coffins,” Preston [the mother of a National Guardsman in Iraq] says.
The news here isn’t that the Bush administration rails against every criticism of its policy as “not supportin’ our troops” and then treats those same troops with lethal neglect at every turn. Not at all, and just what kind of friend of the United States would I be if I even suggested that?
No, the news here is the plywood, sand and carboard. After years of thinking that SUVs are environmentally unsound, we suddenly learn the ones they’re shipping to Iraq are actually biodegradable! Kudos, AM General Corporation!
Meanwhile, Ford has decided it’s time China took on a greater share of the struggle to make Antarctica a tropical paradise. They’ll be shipping over a few thousand
Ford Escapes, known in China as the Ford Maverick. (This, in much the same way that Marlboro cigarettes are marketed overseas as Lucky Health Sticks.)
Right now, the agreement only involves a few thousand vehicles. But imagine a day when every one of China’s one-and-a-quarter billion people can drive one of those behemoths. Kind of warms your heart – along with the polar ice caps.
