Hi Pat, you're right really. For the job it was designed to do, ie not look too aggressive and provide a reasonble level of protection against small arms, it was fine. It had a decent engine (Landrover 3.5 V8) and was easy to drive, especially if you were used to normal military landrovers. Having been in several crowd control situations in a snatch, where we were facing petrol bombs and perhaps the occasional firearm, the snatch was fine.
As you've rightly said, it wasn't designed to stand up to the massive roadside IEDs and suicide car bombs that have been encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan. The simple fact is that the British Gov't went into Iraq in 2003 thinking that once Saddam was toppled that would be the end of it. In Sierra Leone in 2000 and in the early days of Op Telic the British were patrolling in soft skin open top rovers quite happily. They weren't at all prepared for the insurgency that occured after Saddam.
In 2003 I was still in the Army and in N. Ireland. We had two Snatches in the Signal Squadron that I was in, and one of them was commandeered for use in Iraq. In my opinion the deployment of Snatch to Iraq should only ever have been a stop-gap until better vehicles were available. It's appalling that it's taken 5 years to get stuff like Mastiff and upgrades to Warrior and Challenger.
I was going to rant a bit more, but I think I'll shut up now
