Resourceful, desperate militants turning to household materials to make explosives

[unhappycamper]

From left, First Lt. Dan Pitchford, 25, of Dassel, Minn. and Capt. David Ihrke, 32, of Houston, both members of the 47th Explosive Ordinance Disposal Company, show off their collection of seized enemy weaponry, including homemade grenades and a homemade rocket launcher, just left of Ihrke, at Camp Falcon, Baghdad.


Resourceful, desperate militants turning to household materials to make explosives
By Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, November 25, 2007

BAGHDAD — U.S. soldiers are reporting finding more and more roadside bombs packed with homemade explosives instead of artillery rounds, indicating that Iraqi insurgents may be be running out of military-grade ammunition.

“All the good stuff is gone or getting close to being gone,” said 2nd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry (Stryker) Regiment intelligence officer Capt. David Dehart, whose unit has secured a large swath of southern Baghdad since September.

“There are not these large 152 mm or 130 mm (artillery rounds) lying around anymore. No anti-tank mines have been found in our area. There are no these days.”

The homemade explosives are not nearly as effective, the 30-year-old Raleigh, N.C., native said. “That has led to a reduced ability for the enemy with IEDs,” he said.

Insurgents appeared to have a plentiful supply of military ordnance looted from unsecured Iraqi ammunition dumps and hidden in caches throughout the country. But according to 2nd Squadron commander Lt. Col. Myron Reineke, many of the artillery rounds recovered from caches by his unit in the last three months were corroded.

“That leads me to believe there is not a lot of restocking. My opinion is that (the enemy) has a supply problem,” he said.


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50501

[RC]

1. What happened to the story of Iran supplying the "Insurgents"?

Another day, another lie from this administration.

[Eagle_Eye]

2. What ever happened to the 380 TONS of explosives at al-Qaqaa

It would seem to me 377 tons of HE could make roadside bombs for next couple of decades. How did they run out so quickly?


http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/25/iraq.explosives/index.html

[rakeeb]

3. Sadly, just based on what's already been used in IED's and

what's been captured in houses and cars, that 377 tons represents a very small fraction of what has been made readily available over the last few years.

[Eagle_Eye]

4. You missed the point

Right after the war started, there was a frenzy of speculation about Iraq's stockpile of explosives. People here in DU blamed bush for losing control of tons and tons of explosives, which implied the MILITARY was incompetent and was unable to control the situation in Iraq.

Well, the dire predictions about what would happened to the estimated 650,000 tons of explosives in Iraq did not come true.

It looks like the military did a good job of handling the situation after all.