General Zinni on Sixty Minutes

In message , Chad Irby
writes
In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:
How many IEDs do you think have been detonated or disarmed?

Quite a few, but most of them have been made out of much smaller devices
or just plain old plastic explosives.

It takes a lot of work and more skill to make an artillery shell into a
remote-detonated bomb, compared to using the other materials they have
available.

How difficult do you believe it is to fill the fusewell of an artillery
shell with plastic explosive and insert a detonator linked to (for
example) a garage door-opener receiver?

Making an RPG into an IED is much, much easier (a piece of
string tied to the trigger), and they have a *lot* of those.

However, an RPG's warhead is measured in ounces and has a relatively
poor fragmentation effect: artillery shells have payloads of pounds and
are *designed* for area fragmentation.

An "IED" isn't always made up of normal explosives, anyway. Cans full
of gasoline, a grenade tied to the gas tank of a bus sitting by the side
of the road, fertilizer and diesel in a plastic bag... there's a lot of
different ways to make them.

Yes, I know - they were an ongoing risk.

Interesting experience: checking out a white van parked on double yellow
lines (illegally, if there's no direct US equivalent) but a look through
the windows shows it's full of fertiliser bags.

Glad I was just the guard that day: and *very* glad that the driver ran
out of a house, saw the armed soldiers examining his van (probably not
in that order), and stuttered "I'll move it! I'm going!" and raced off.

Artillery shells are popular, but with all
of the explosive crap sitting around in undiscovered bunkers in Iraq,
there's a wide variety to choose from.

So, again, what's your estimate of the number of IEDs found to date?

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk