It takes most people more than a year to graduate from the the U.S. military’s explosive ordnance disposal school. With good reason: bombs are beyond dangerous, and defusing them is a whole lot more complicated than “pulling the red wire.”
Which is why I cringe every time I hear about some newbie trying to play bomb squad hero. This NPR story, of a beyond-incompetent Iraqi EOD team, has to be the most cringe-worthy case I’ve heard yet. Because the only thing dumber than randomly shooting at a bomb is randomly kicking it and tossing it around.
Someone, stop these fools, before they get themselves killed.
…an Iraqi explosives team are on the case.
The Iraqi police start shooting at the potential bomb, hoping to set it off. But to no avail. The convoy continues to sit and wait. An hour passes. As Sgt. Lord watches, the Iraqi police move closer to the suspected bomb.
In this case, the first IED turns out to be a fake. To the surprise of the American soldiers, this emboldens the Iraqi police who are now focusing on the second suspected bomb.
“Oh, he kicked it,” says an American soldier watching.
“The second one must have been safe,” Lord says, “because they went over to it, kicked it over, and then threw it across the road. Ay yi yi.”
An hour and a half after first stopping, the convoy moves on. (emphasis mine)
These guys are sure working hard for their Darwin Awards…
Aren’t you supposed to shoot explosives to destroy them? Supposedly AMRs can be used for EOD I believe (using HE-I rounds?).
This defently shows how poorly president bush leads his country. How many more facts do you need?
There are times when taking a controlled shot might be a good idea. But randomly popping off rounds at a potential bomb? Like Haninah said, Darwin Award time.
This appears to be what you might call ‘a training issue’…!
You really have to hope that the rest of the Iraqi military is better trained and disciplined — and has more common sense — or we might as well hand the place over to the insurgents right now.
In “One Bullet Away,” a trainer in SERE tells then-Lt. Nate Fick, “Getting mind-****ed once is the best way to make sure it won’t happen again.” I imagine something similar may be true of bomb squads. If any of them live through the process, that is.
The far less charitable explanation is that the Iraqi bomb squad knew that it was a dud because they said amongst themselves, “We didn’t put one there, did we?”
@Edward:
Or, to continue your train of thought, “We DID put that one there, to impress those foreign press folks, and we know it’s a fake.” Either way…
I don’t see where it actually mentioned an Iraqi EOD team…I’m pretty sure that first line is a joke.
Either way, yeah, they’re definitely incompetent, but we already knew that about the IP.
Hmmm.
An elite suicide bomb disposal squad.
They must have some kick-ass recruitment perks…
There’s a video on Liveleak of a group of four guys trying to pry a 155mm-howitzer-shell based IED out of the ground with their gun stocks.
Of course, it goes off – while some guys are overhead in a helicopter recording everything with their IR camera.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=18f_1201000704