Armored troop carriers called unsafe for duty

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By Sara A. Carter

Capt. Thoreen said he understands what his men have had to deal with.

It's hard for the soldiers "to keep their spirits up when they've lost good friends, but we find a way to press on in memory of them," he said. "They don't give up, and they're there for one another. These are some of the best men I've ever had the privilege of serving or knowing."

As for the Stryker, Capt. Thoreen acknowledged, "It's a dangerous ride."

"You can't worry about getting struck by the IED too much, or you become fatalistic," he said. "You can't be consumed with it. ... There's just as much danger trying to secure the area we're in. It's a mission we believe in. We have to. We've lost too many good men already."

Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, commander of the 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, said what he needs most is more "ISR capabilities," meaning intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to glean information from drones and human sources.

He said he understands the concerns of his soldiers, but "it's up to the American people to answer whether the lives already lost are worth the cost so we can accomplish the objective of the mission."

Sgt. Rabidou said he still gets "jittery" whenever he hears an explosion. "We train, train, train to do the right thing to stay alive. There's not a lot we can do for an IED. It's like a game of chance - sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're not.

"It's the most dangerous ride of my life; for that matter, anyone's life. Guess that's why people started calling it the Kevlar coffin."

Earlier in the week, at Kandahar Air Field, a young soldier said he was terrified of being deployed to his Stryker unit.

"Honestly, I'm going, but I don't want to go," said the soldier, who asked not to be named to avoid problems with his superiors. "I want to at least have a fighting chance. There's no enemy when you're sitting in a box. You can't fight what you can't see when you're sitting in the Kevlar coffin."

Shaun Waterman in Washington contributed to this article.