CIA could have detonated IED's in bomber's hands but chose not to

If anyone has any questions why we can't win in Iraq, remember, it's because of our weak President and his attempts to keep liberals from attacking him.  The rules of non-engagement, the trials of our soldiers for defending themselves, the use of them as meat shields rather then having the will to kill the enemy, and our unwillingness to attack the source of insurgent weapons and supplies in Iran are all clear examples of Bush's incompetence.  This may be the one of the most egrigous examples of a lack of leadership that I've ever seen...

There may be an unlimited supply of explosives in Iraq, but there is not an unlimited supply of people who know how to wire the detonators. In 2004, CIA operatives in Iraq believed that they had identified the signatures of 11 bomb makers. They proposed a diabolical -- but potentially effective -- sabotage program that would have flooded Iraq with booby-trapped detonators designed to explode in the bomb makers' hands. But the CIA general counsel's office said no. The lawyers claimed that the agency lacked authority for such an operation, one source recalled.

There are technologies that would allow us to detonate every roadside bomb in Iraq by heating the wires in the detonators to the point that they triggered an explosion. But these systems could severely harm civilians nearby, so we're not using them, either. "In our system, we often are not given credit for the fact that we are very concerned about collateral damage," Meigs said.

We wrote the book for the insurgents, in a sense. By arming and training the mujaheddin in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets in the 1980s, we created the modern dynamics of asymmetric warfare. That extends even to the fearsome armor-piercing "explosively formed penetrators," or EFPs, that we have accused the Iranians of supplying to Iraqi insurgents. The CIA referred to these tank busters as "platter charges" in the days when we were covertly helping provide them to the Afghan rebels.


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