Thursday, April 01, 2004
False Alarm on an IED
We stop on the road to set up security for traffic control point. The first thing we do is look for IEDs. I spotted a plastic trash bag with wire about 15 meters away. Two senior Soldiers got about 5 meters away from it and the one who's been here for about a year said it looked like one and described it as a black trash bag with a wire running out of it back into a compound (residents sometimes have walls around their houses that make them look like compounds). Instead of falling back 300 meters like we were supposed to, we sat their 15 meters from it and radioed in the report. One Soldier asked "Should we be using the radio so close?" The response, "It doesn't matter.". A few weeks ago, we saw a presentation slide showing Soldiers in a vehicle like ours radioing in an IED report right next to an IED and thought how screwed up can these guys be? One thing is, you don't want to be close when it goes off. Another thing is that you don't want to use a radio near because that could set it off.
Explosive Ordnance Disposal was called, but cancelled after one of the translators, perhaps tired of waiting, investigated further and found that someone had actually used a trash bag for trash in Iraq.
The food here is good. Lots of choices.
We stop on the road to set up security for traffic control point. The first thing we do is look for IEDs. I spotted a plastic trash bag with wire about 15 meters away. Two senior Soldiers got about 5 meters away from it and the one who's been here for about a year said it looked like one and described it as a black trash bag with a wire running out of it back into a compound (residents sometimes have walls around their houses that make them look like compounds). Instead of falling back 300 meters like we were supposed to, we sat their 15 meters from it and radioed in the report. One Soldier asked "Should we be using the radio so close?" The response, "It doesn't matter.". A few weeks ago, we saw a presentation slide showing Soldiers in a vehicle like ours radioing in an IED report right next to an IED and thought how screwed up can these guys be? One thing is, you don't want to be close when it goes off. Another thing is that you don't want to use a radio near because that could set it off.
Explosive Ordnance Disposal was called, but cancelled after one of the translators, perhaps tired of waiting, investigated further and found that someone had actually used a trash bag for trash in Iraq.
The food here is good. Lots of choices.
