Ambulance bomb 'was huge'

News24 via AP ^ | November 11, 2003

[Kaslin]

Baghdad - Iraqi police have discovered an ambulance packed with 450kg of explosives and United States officials on Tuesday praised the find as an indication of the potential capabilities of the newly created force.

On Monday evening, officers noticed the ambulance driving through a crowded district in the capital, became suspicious and called for the driver to stop, said Major Hakim Razak Kadim, a district commander of the Iraqi police.

The ambulance raced away, but crashed into another vehicle and its occupants fled on foot, Kadim said.

The vehicle's occupants fled before they could be arrested, Kadim said, adding that officers were still looking for them and that it was not clear if they were linked to any particular resistance group.

US forces have trained about 40 000 Iraqi policemen and are keen to hand over some of their duties to the new force.

Police rushed to the vehicle and found the back packed with explosives, including four 155mm artillery shells.

An electrical cord ran from the front of the car to the back where the explosives were located, said Colonel Kurt Fuller of the 82nd Airborne division.

At a United States military base in Baghdad, reporters were shown the white vehicle on Tuesday.

'Would have destroyed a building'

Outside the ambulance were the four 30kg howitzer shells. The fuse at the top of one had been unscrewed and plastic explosives were crammed inside, which soldiers said would have detonated the explosives.

Next to the shells were crates of plastic explosives and hard, yellow cylinders which were packed with explosives extracted from mortar and artillery shells.

Fuller said the makeshift bomb would have done "a tremendous amount of damage. It would completely destroy a building. It's a huge bomb".

Brigadier-General. Mark Hertling of the 1st Armoured division said the incident showed the importance of the local knowledge of Iraqi policemen.

"I'm not sure my paratroopers would have realised something was wrong with the ambulance," Hertling said.

"It's another indication of how the Iraqi police are seeing Baghdad."

"This is a great victory, a great day for you," he said to Kadim.

[sit-rep]

I have always heard the 2000lbs of anfo story. Your 1800 kg of high explosive is honestly a first. Learn something new everyday I guess...

[OneTimeLurker]

Doesn't it depend on the contents of the bomb? Wouldn't for example, 450 KG of plastic explosive would yield different than 450 KG of a fertalizer type bomb?

[blam]

"Ok showing my stupidity here what does IIRC stand for?"

If I recall correctly. (took me forever)

[scab4faa]

LoL thanks I would have never guessed that one..

[r9etb]

Welcome to counter insurgency Freepers.

"Welcome to Uday and Qusay's fun palace," is more like it.

The tactics you suggest would only make things worse, because they would reveal us to be both foreigners and Saddam's successors.

[CougarGA7]

That's true. It's all calculated to a "TNT equivalent" The yield of ANFO for example is .8 TNT equivalent (.8 something, I don't have the exact number in front of me) So, a ANFO device weighing 4500lbs would be equivalent to 3600 lbs of TNT.

[kevao]

Hugh. Vey seriesly hugh.

[LikeLight]

Is there anything sweeter than playing by the rules and STILL kicking the other guy's butt? That's what makes us different, that's why it still means something to be an American.

[mishka]

> Is there anything sweeter than playing by the rules and STILL kicking the other guy's butt?

Very sweet. As long as we DO kick the other guy's butt.
And some people are trying to stop that from happening.

I just don't want our headstones to read "they followed the rules".
We don't have to jump straight to torture! But we can't worry about keeping our enemies up at night with our annoying guns either. I know we CAN win, I'm just not sure we ARE winning, or winning quickly enough. I'm sorry, you roll up a truck full of explosives to MY driveway, you get what it takes to keep the next one from coming. I didn't start it.

[livius]

IIRC= If I recall correctly (which I usually don't).

[beelzepug]

[It is really frustrating playing by all these "rules", ]

And our own Army wants to court martial an American officer less than a year from retirement for firing a couple of shots in the vicinity of a prisoner to get him to talk in order to save American lives. High ground, my backside!

[theirjustdue]

"The detonation rate of anfo is inferior to that of munitions explosive."

Actually, Ammonium Nitrate explosive, which has a very slow rate of detonation (approx. 9000 fps), is superior to higher velocity explosives in certain applications. That's why it is used almost exclusively for cratering and often used for destroying bunkers and buildings.

High explosive, such as C-4 (approx. 26,000 fps), is much more effective in cutting and breaching, but lb. for lb., does not have near the tremendous pushing effect that a slower explosives has.

Whether inferior or superior all depends on the application intended, however, when improvising as the Iraqis have been doing, they are more than likely just using what is readily available.

[foreshadowed at waco]

If we want to merely extract information, torturing a person's family might be useful but it is a tactic that Saddam used frequently and it inspired not just fear but also hatred and rightly so.

I would line up a suspect's family and ask them what Saddam would do to his family in order to get information--after he answered I would tell him that the people of the USA are not barbarians--that we do not torture and kill innocent people to achieve our goals--that we believe it is immoral to do so--I would then ask them if they wanted to continue to live by Saddam's rules or if they were willing to accept mercy for their family in exchange for cooperation--I guarantee that we'd not only get a lot of information but we'd also get a lot of positive responses from the Iraqi people.

Where there is hatred, sow love...that doesn't mean be a naive idiot...it can also mean display strength but see the big picture and be prepared to exhibit mercy...kindness need not be viewed as a weakness if the person wielding it uses it wisely.

[MD_Willington_1976]

Here's a FYI for those interested

http://www.ordnance.org/explosives.htm

All the goods on things that go BOOM

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Thanks for the ping, blackie. CENTCOM downplayed this. Wonder why.

IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE DEVICE FOUND IN AMBULANCE ~ CENTCOM 
~~~

Ambulance w/ "IED" big enough to bring down a building.
~~~

If you want on or off my Pro-Coalition ping list, please Freepmail me. Warning: it is a high volume ping list on good days. (Most days are good days).

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

There is one other thing about explosives, the time of
explosive front.
With hi-explosives it is in the microsecond range.
fertilizer based explosives are nearer 1 millisecond.
A fertilizer bomb is much less powerful in the open air.

[TERMINATTOR]

We have no idea how many people may have been tortured to get the tip to check that ambulance. Maybe none, maybe lots. If they were tipped off as a result of torture, they chose well.

[blackie]

Ambulance w/ "IED" big enough to bring down a building ~ Bump!

[Go Gordon]

Please remove me from the Iraq ping list. Keep up the great work, but its just too high volume for me. Thanks...Go Gordon.

[CougarGA7]

And don't forget that the peak pressure drop off is basically a cubed root function, so the pressure peak that a target gets hit with drops quickly relative to distance. (But it's not the peak that kills you, it's the impulse.)