CNN INSIGHT 23:00 ET August 15, 2005
The Use of Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a thinking and adapting adversary. They are thinking and adapting. The vehicle-borne improvised explosive device is a very tough device to thwart and so, sure, we work on it every day.
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN HOST: IEDs are the number one killer of American troops in Iraq today. According to the Iraq Index Project, 44 U.S. soldiers wee killed in Iraq I the first 10 days of August alone. During the same time, 80 Iraqi police or soldiers were killed by insurgents. That's about 8 every day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Hello and welcome to INSIGHT.
The U.S. military officials in Iraq say they are stopping about 40 percent of roadside bombs before they explode, but as Alex Quaid now reports in this extraordinary story, it is a tough and dangerous job. We should warn you, there are some disturbing scenes in this story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ALEX QUAID, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It begins with breakfast at Abu Ghraib Prison and ends with a -- this is just another day for the marines of Dragon platoon, a weapons company from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
GUNNERY SGT. JEFF VON DAGENHART (ph), U.S. MARINE CORPS: Son of a bitch. Well, welcome to freaking Iraq.
QUAID: Their mission started before dawn. Gunnery Sergeant Jeff Von Dagenhart (ph) and his men hunt IEDs, improvised explosive devices.
DAGENHART (ph): Everybody keep their head down.
QUAID: They've hit 22 in two weeks, but only minor injuries so far.
DAGENHART (ph): (UNINTELLIGIBLE), all right? Everybody got me?
Freaking bunch of weirdoes.
QUAID: On parole, daylight breaks. Gunny Dagenhart (ph) is already suspicious. This is how his marines battle the insurgency, searching for hidden explosives, one car, one person at a time.
Next on their beat, Abu Ghraib Prison. We go inside the wires. Behind blast barriers and under watch towers. I talk with Dagenhart (ph) while his marines go to chow.
(on camera): What is it that you're checking for? What is the danger?
DAGENHART (ph): The vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.
QUAID: What is that?
DAGENHART (ph): It's usually just like they pack the wheel wells full of C4, TNT, maybe a couple of 155 shells or 125 tank round shells.
QUAID: So the actual vehicle becomes the bomb.
DAGENHART (ph): Is a bomb. We've run across three here in the last week.
This is where all the bad stuff originates around here.
QUAID (voice-over): The marines call this area a car bomb factory and say insurgents blend in with the locals.
DAGENHART (ph): Kalashnikov?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
DAGENHART (ph): How many?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One.
DAGENHART (ph): Show me.
QUAID: They search house to house.
DAGENHART (ph): Check upstairs.
Don't trust anybody. Even if they're nice and offer you tea, you go up on the roof and find 50 weapons.
QUAID (on camera): This nice lady has offered some tea already.
DAGENHART (ph): Yes. You go into some of these houses and see pictures of Osama bin Laden and you're like, oh, OK; or Zarqawi. You start checking a little bit more.
QUAID (voice-over): He hopes his platoon's presence keeps bomb- builders off guard.
DAGENHART (ph): Open the hood and trunk. Open them up.
QUAID: Without a translator, it's volume and gestures.
DAGENHART (ph): What's your hurry? What's your hurry? Freaking slow down. Slow, slow down.
QUAID: It may seem funny, but it's deadly serious. This crater is from an IED, improvised explosive device.
DAGENHART (ph): That hit us yesterday. Good training, huh?
QUAID: Which is why the marines also train Iraqi recruits.
DAGENHART (ph): Lots of booms lately. Boom! Boom!
Twenty-two in two weeks. Twenty-two. Language barriers. It's all good, right.
QUAID: They race to where something has been sighted.
DAGENHART (ph): Fasten your seatbelts, gents. Johnson, keep your eyes down. Ahunt (ph), look to the left (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Look hard left here. I'll look right. Shell, shell, shell, find me a shell.
QUAID: Between here and those cars may be an IED.
DAGENHART (ph): Find me a green bag. Keep your head down. No hole dug. No nothing.
The trigger man is going to be to our right over here, and I see a car. Let's go ahead and eyeball that, and have your gunner scan to the right, see if you see a trigger man.
QUAID: They see something between the traffic.
DAGENHART (ph): There is a dude standing where that supposed IED is. Can you tell if he's got anything on him? What is he holding there, Smith? Can you see it? What's in his gut? He's in his pocket right now.
QUAID: Dagenhart (ph) zeros in on him --
DAGENHART (ph): See how he's holding his freaking shirt?
QUAID: -- his finger on the trigger.
He turns out to be just a shepherd.
DAGENHART (ph): A guy playing shepherd over here with some sheep and he's standing right where the supposed IED is.
QUAID: This typical day is only halfway through.
Gunnery Sergeant Jeff Von Dagenhart (ph) and his marines have hit 22 IEDs, improvised explosive devices, in two weeks.
DAGENHART (ph): I took some shrapnel in the leg and thank God for gear, because I took a piece here, in my holster, and then I got shrapnel across my leg. It's healing up now. It's all good. My helmet, you can see my helmet, my eye, through here.
QUAID (on camera): Good thing you had these things on.
DAGENHART (ph): Oh, yeah. Yeah.
QUAID (voice-over): Some in his platoon bought extra protection on their own.
DAGENHART (ph): He's not playing around. That's SAPI here, SAPI here.
QUAID: Everything helps since their daily mission is hunting for bombs.
DAGENHART (ph): You get used to -- when we first got here it was, like, paranoid. You know, where is the holes, oh, my God. And now it's just like, if it's going to happen, it's going to happen.
QUAID: It does, on the important main supply route between Fallujah and Baghdad.
DAGENHART (ph): We've got some (EXPLETIVE DELETED) here, go ahead and hold everybody up. Abandoned vehicle. I don't know how freaking one missed. Hoop a loop on this bitch. No license plate.
QUAID: Dagenhart's (ph) marines secure the area.
DAGENHART (ph): We're just looking for trunks that are ajar, windows that may have been shot. Doors welded shot. Key holes that are taken out. Ignition wires that are ripped apart. Wires coming out of the vehicle.
QUAID: They don't see anything.
DAGENHART (ph): You want to go check it? I don't know. Boom. I don't know.
QUAID: They decide to push it off the convoy route with an up-armored HMMWV when it happens.
DAGENHART (ph): (EXPLETIVE DELETED) Get out! Get out! Get out! Get your ass back! Get your ass back!
QUAID: This is what the military calls a vehicle-borne IED; translation: car bomb.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you okay?
DAGENHART (ph): They say they saw somebody running down there.
QUAID: Someone watching and waiting for the right moment, the marines say, detonated it remotely.
DAGENHART (ph): Son of a bitch. Well, welcome to freaking Iraq.
QUAID: Amazingly, nobody was seriously hurt.
DAGENHART (ph): Hurry up before that 50 cal starts cooking.
Leave it there! Leave it there, because that's 50 cal ammo, and everything is going to start cooking.
QUAID: Ammunition can blow, causing casualties, or be salvaged by insurgents.
DAGENHART (ph): Ammo! Ammo!
QUAID: Dagenhart (ph) worries there may be a second bomb timed to target the recovery.
DAGENHART (ph): We're going to have a secondary if we don't get the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) out of here.
QUAID: HMMWV driver Lance Corporal Jason Hunt tells me he thought he was going to die, then walked by me to pull security while his platoon deals with the situation.
LANCE CORPORAL JASON HUNT, U.S. MARINE CORPS: Pretty close. I consider myself lucky.
QUAID: Gunny Dagenhart (ph) says it's just another day hunting for bombs and bomb-builders.
DAGENHART (ph): We're going to eventually kill them. At least in this little piece of the pie. I don't know how we're going to get them, but we're going to get them. I would rather have a vehicle blown up than a marine.
QUAID: Alex Quaid, CNN, near Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq.
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HOLMES: We have to take a break now on INSIGHT, but when we come back, the growing sophistication of the types of bombs being used by Iraqi insurgents.
Do stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL WARE, "TIME": It's described as a shaped charge, so that when it explodes, the focus of the energy can be targeted towards the vehicle or anything else. So it's got the effect in up-armored HMMWVs and even in the heavy armor of punching through like a fist through a wall. This is the most sophisticated device we've seen in the IEDs in Iraq so far.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: The improvised explosive devices used by insurgents in Iraq today are far more sophisticated than they used to be, even capable of piercing the side of an armored vehicle.
Hearing there from Michael Ware of "Time" magazine.
Welcome back.
Not only are the bombs smarter. So too are the insurgents, it appears. U.S. military officials say insurgents are studying previous attacks, learning from their mistakes. And even planting fake bombs in order to study how U.S. troops react.
Joining us now from Washington to talk more about this is John Pike with GlobalSecurity.org.
John, good to see you.
What is making them better at it? And how are the bombs better?
JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: Well, I think that that is one of the fundamental differences between sports and war, that in war you can keep changing the rules. And basically the enemy is studying how we have been responding, how the coalition forces have been responding, to the bombs that they were using, and every time the coalition, the Americans, come up with an effective response to the old type bomb, the insurgents figure out how we're doing it and come up with an improved version of it.
So what you've seen, for instance, is that in large convoys the American forces are using jammers to jam the cell phones that are being used to detonate these bombs. That's one of the reasons that these vehicle bombs have become more prevalent, is that it is a way to get a really large amount of explosive up close to the convoy where the jammer is not going to be able to stop it if it's driven by a suicide bomber.
HOLMES: Also, too, they're getting more technologically advanced, are they not, using things like infrared instead of cell phones and the like?
PIKE: Well, they saw that this warlock jammer was jamming the communication system, their cell phone system, and so they're going to remotely detonated devices, using infrared communication system, possibly using other types of wireless systems, looking for different parts of the spectrum that the American forces are not jamming yet and going to devices where they can be detonated somehow or another remotely but the Americans can't jam it.
HOLMES: Of course, there is an endless supply of munitions in Iraq. I remember clearly at the end of the war one of the amazing sights was the completely unguarded ammunition dumps where tens of thousands of artillery shells were kept and are now turning up in IEDs.
PIKE: Well, unfortunately, there is no shortage of ammo in Iraq. The joke was that before the war it was an ammo dump with a government and after the war, for a while, at least, it was an ammo dump without a government. And so as the American forces started armoring up their vehicles, making them more resistant to a single artillery shell, the insurgents came back with the obvious response of going to two artillery shells.
More recently, they have been detonating very large explosives under culverts, and that's something where you're going to need hundreds of pounds of explosives to be effective, but if that's what they have to do, apparently they're prepared to do it.
HOLMES: And more sophisticated design, too, John. What is a shaped charge?
PIKE: Well, with a regular explosive, you're going to have the explosion and, more importantly, these big chunks of steel, flying off in every direction. The good news, from it standpoint of the Americans is, that means that most of that lethality is wasted if you're detonating a roadside bomb.
But with the shape charge system, it's basically almost like firing a canon shell directly at the target. That shape charge is sending out essentially all of the shrapnel, all of the explosive force, directly at the target as it drives by. Enormously difficult to counter.
HOLMES: And how much damage will it do?
PIKE: Well, I think that we've seen with some of these vehicles, these marine vehicles that have been destroyed, killing the marines inside over the last week or so, heavy armed vehicles, vehicles that weigh 15 or 20 tons can be thrown up into the air and ripped apart.
HOLMES: Concerning -- a couple of things that are concerning, it seems to me that there is on unusual level of cooperation now between Shias and Sunnis when it comes to fighting this insurgency. Also, there is talk of some of the technical knowledge by groups like Hezbollah being seen in these bombs.
PIKE: Well, certainly, I think that over the last six months or so, as the sophistication of these devices has improved, you begin to think that maybe this is not something that is being cooked up in somebody's backyard in suburban Baghdad but rather it's possibly technical capabilities coming across the border from Syria, particularly from some elements in Iran as well, that fear that if the new Shia government in Iraq gets to be too powerful and influential, they're going to be a rival to Tehran.
HOLMES: John Pike, GlobalSecurity.org, always good to see you. Thanks, John.
PIKE: Good to see you, Michael.
HOLMES: We do have to take a break here on INSIGHT. When we come back, we're going to talk about a lack of proper body and vehicle armor, how that is leaving U.S. troops increasingly vulnerable during attacks.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES (voice-over): More than a year ago, the Pentagon realized that the ceramic plates in vests worn by most soldiers in Iraq could not stand up to the new bombs insurgents were using.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We needed to make sure that we got our troops additional body armor, for themselves as well as for the trucks that they were using.
HOLMES: Recent reports say the Pentagon is lagging behind in delivering most of that upgraded armor.
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Welcome back to INSIGHT.
Just one pound, less than half a kilo, of C4 explosives packed in a shaped charge, which we were discussing before the break -- it is capable of piercing 7 inches, that's about 17 centimeters, of steel.
But as Barbara Starr now reports, it is not just the power of the bombs, it is also the strength of the armor protecting the soldiers that makes the situation for the U.S. troops so deadly.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Pentagon is shipping improved armored vest plates to Iraq at the rate of 20,000 a month, but it could be sometime before all the troops have the new gear.
The army is adamant that soldiers and marines already have the best armored vest protection there is. All troops in Iraq do have the current armor plates inside their vests.
COL. THOMAS SPOENR, U.S. ARMY: What we do is we add what is called a small arms protective insert, or SAPI plate, if you will, into a pocket in both the front and then there is already one here in the back, you'll see.
STARR: But the improved plates --
(INTERRUPTED FOR BREAKING NEWS)
KEN ROBINSON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: -- a huge challenge for them because the majority of the attacks that they're occurring now are these small hit-and-run attacks, these hidden attacks, not an enemy that comes out and fights them. So it's an enormous challenge.
HOLMES: And, of course, it's a very difficult battle, isn't it, because the insurgents are changing their tactics. The issue of shape charges, as we were discussing before the break. They're going to go through a Bradley fighting vehicle if they're powerful enough.
ROBINSON: And the enemy gets to vote. He gets to choose the time and the place, and Iraq is a big country. There is a large requirement to be maneuvering. So it's really a very tough thing, counter-insurgency.
HOLMES: It's amazing over there at the moment, I know, again, from experience, it's about 125 degrees Fahrenheit, 46 degrees C. It's very hot. Yet you're seeing soldiers now wearing collars, wearer shoulder pads, that they would never have worn earlier in the war.
If you were in the field right now, what would you be wanting?
ROBINSON: I would be wanting what is issued to CNN, which is pretty darn good. Our AKE body armor, which you and I have both worn in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hopefully an upgrade that these soldiers are now getting.
The improved body armor that is being designed is excellent. The problem is, it just can't be made quick enough.
HOLMES: Concerning.
Ken Robinson, always good to see you, CNN military analyst. Thanks, Ken.
ROBINSON: Thank you, Michael.
HOLMES: All right. That is it for this edition of INSIGHT. I'm Michael Holmes. The news does continue.
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