"Think of it as evolution in action."

- Oath of Fealty, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Holy crap, Randy! That was quick! A great book. I just reread it last week.

Karma never looked so beautiful.

FUCK ISLAM!

That was fucking hilarious. Those rag-wearing, goat-fucking primates blowed up real good.

I'm still laughing.

Four more we won't have to worry about. May they rest in pieces...

I'm curious though why the pilot referred to them as "volunteers". Is that some kind of slang for sheethead?

I'm curious about the "volunteers" comment myself. Is it possible that these were locals who were helping to disarm an IED? If that's the case then it goes from victory to tragedy real quick.

They were local volunteers trying to disarm an IED. I saw this about a month ago with an explanation. If they were insurgents the Apache would have taken them out.

And they call the USA stupid.

Than again look who we picked to run for president.

I was also wondering why he didn't smoke them from the get go and then the dude at the end. Sucks to be them I guess.

On a side note The Supreme Court just fucked us all and gave the fuckers in GITMO the right to habeas corpus in the USA. WTF!!!

I actually like the idea of potentially releasing the prisoners. Before we release them though, we should surgically implant a GPS tracker wrapped in bacon. Then, after they're long gone, hire a bunch of bounty hunters. Its open season baby!

Denny - great post. Darwin in action. lovely.

Paul - can we put a bit of C4 in that implant?

Yeah, They were the good guys trying to disarm an IED. Sucks.

It especially sucks to be that guy that walked up right when the IED went off. He had some REALLY
bad timing.

Denny, those are Iraqi volunteers working with the US that are disarming IEDs, not Jihadist trainees.

Sad indeed that they lost their lives.

TexasBelle-
You're about six comments late and a few beers short...

If you all can tap into a similar clip 7 or so to the right it is much clearer and 3 minutes long and explains everything....
sad to say they kinda call it friendly fire of sorts and then they want a med evac to come and help but there is nothing to save...let alone find

Daaaaayum! As a person who has unfortunately been too up close and personal with a pressure plate IED, that is nothing but divine Karma!!!

Oh man. I just realized that they were ISF and and were trying to disarm an IED. I'm sorry about that.

That was great. Reminds me of the year I just spent in Iraq. For those who remember my unit was responsible for finding the IED's from the air. If I ever fly in another airplane it will be too soon. Well, the equipment wasn't entirely up to the task so intead we had to try and find the people when they were placing them and call in the attack helos to blow their asses up. It was great fun.

Lumpy - question. why would we try to manually disarm these? why not have a helicopter or some kind of protected artillery blow these things up from a safer distance once identified?

Why not get prosper to do it?

Patrick:

I dunno why these guys are manually dismantling it themselves. The ISF should know better. One can only assume they didn't have the forethought of contacting our troop or didn't have a means to and just decided to do it on their own. I don't now the full story here, they may look like ISF but could really be putting one together. Some of those guys are crooked as hell, I've seen it.

As for US forces we have the Buffalo. It is a large armored vehicle that has a mechanical arm for clearing IED's out of the holes or whatnot. Once removed they are not dismantled but are then set to be detonated on the spot by the EOD guys. I have seen airstrikes on IED's but not those of the roadside variety. HBIED's (House Born IED: essentially a house rigged with explosives and booby trapped) are taken care of from the air. Those are fun to watch too.

Lumpy

thanks. facinating on the HBIED. I beat CD to the punch and found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFyg2WSwqTY

that will wake up the neighbors. And truly, thank you for your service.