Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
CNN
July 10, 2008
The Situation Room (CNN), 5:00 PM
WOLF BLITZER: They're the insurgents' weapons of choice in Iraq, responsible for terrorizing coalition forces and Iraqi civilians alike -- improvised explosive devices or IEDs. Now imagine something even more frightening -- flying IEDs.
Let's go to our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr.
She's watching this story for us.
A very disturbing new development on the ground in Iraq.
What's going on -- Barbara?
BARBARA STARR: Well, you know, Wolf, there has been so much talk about the security situation getting better in Iraq -- and it is. But still, new threats on the streets.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) STARR: Last month here in Baghdad's Adamiyah neighborhood, 18 civilians were killed and 29 wounded when a large explosion rocked the neighborhood -- one of the latest examples of yet another type of bomb being used by insurgents -- improvised rocket assisted mortars or I-RAMs.
MAJ. GEN. MICHAEL OATES, U.S. ARMY: There's an improvised munition, locally fabricated, not done by a person without skill and it's largely confined to the Baghdad area. It does concern us.
STARR: These I-RAMs are sometimes called flying IEDs. But these aren't the IEDS -- roadside bombs being planted on the roads. With these, insurgents line the back of trucks with launch tubes. Using Iranian-made rocket charges, they propel cylinders full of explosives, like mortar and tank shells, sometimes over walls more than 20 feet high -- the type surrounding U.S. bases.
OATES: It is, you know, a homemade multiple launch rocket system and it is very dangerous. And we attempt to -- we'll attempt to eliminate this threat.
STARR: This type of technology has been used before. A similar configuration may have been used by the IRA in a 1991 attack on Number 10 Downing Street. (END VIDEOTAPE)
STARR: Now in Iraq, already three U.S. troops have been killed by these so-called flying IEDs. But it is, again, Iraqi civilians, largely unprotected on the streets, that are suffering the most from these new killers -- Wolf.
BLITZER: But do the Iranians have their fingerprints over these new flying IEDs?
Are they providing this to the insurgents to kill Americans?
STARR: Well, I have to tell you, Wolf, that is what the U.S. military's trying to assess at this point. In several of the attacks using these, what they have found is Iranian origin 107-millimeter rocket technology and a growing belief that it's the so-called special groups backed by Iran that are behind all of this, fabricating these types of weapons and putting them out there.
Still no definitive evidence Tehran is directly behind it, but the fingerprint evidence, if you will, is growing -- Wolf.
BLITZER: I can only imagine the restraint a lot of these troops -- U.S. troops are going through right now in avoiding going into some of those Iranian bases and targeting where these kinds of weapons are being made. I assume the U.S. government knows pretty much what's going on. But that's -- that would escalate the situation pretty dramatically and it's clearly not going to happen, at least not now.
Barbara is over at the Pentagon working for us, as she always is.
July 10, 2008
The Situation Room (CNN), 5:00 PM
WOLF BLITZER: They're the insurgents' weapons of choice in Iraq, responsible for terrorizing coalition forces and Iraqi civilians alike -- improvised explosive devices or IEDs. Now imagine something even more frightening -- flying IEDs.
Let's go to our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr.
She's watching this story for us.
A very disturbing new development on the ground in Iraq.
What's going on -- Barbara?
BARBARA STARR: Well, you know, Wolf, there has been so much talk about the security situation getting better in Iraq -- and it is. But still, new threats on the streets.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) STARR: Last month here in Baghdad's Adamiyah neighborhood, 18 civilians were killed and 29 wounded when a large explosion rocked the neighborhood -- one of the latest examples of yet another type of bomb being used by insurgents -- improvised rocket assisted mortars or I-RAMs.
MAJ. GEN. MICHAEL OATES, U.S. ARMY: There's an improvised munition, locally fabricated, not done by a person without skill and it's largely confined to the Baghdad area. It does concern us.
STARR: These I-RAMs are sometimes called flying IEDs. But these aren't the IEDS -- roadside bombs being planted on the roads. With these, insurgents line the back of trucks with launch tubes. Using Iranian-made rocket charges, they propel cylinders full of explosives, like mortar and tank shells, sometimes over walls more than 20 feet high -- the type surrounding U.S. bases.
OATES: It is, you know, a homemade multiple launch rocket system and it is very dangerous. And we attempt to -- we'll attempt to eliminate this threat.
STARR: This type of technology has been used before. A similar configuration may have been used by the IRA in a 1991 attack on Number 10 Downing Street. (END VIDEOTAPE)
STARR: Now in Iraq, already three U.S. troops have been killed by these so-called flying IEDs. But it is, again, Iraqi civilians, largely unprotected on the streets, that are suffering the most from these new killers -- Wolf.
BLITZER: But do the Iranians have their fingerprints over these new flying IEDs?
Are they providing this to the insurgents to kill Americans?
STARR: Well, I have to tell you, Wolf, that is what the U.S. military's trying to assess at this point. In several of the attacks using these, what they have found is Iranian origin 107-millimeter rocket technology and a growing belief that it's the so-called special groups backed by Iran that are behind all of this, fabricating these types of weapons and putting them out there.
Still no definitive evidence Tehran is directly behind it, but the fingerprint evidence, if you will, is growing -- Wolf.
BLITZER: I can only imagine the restraint a lot of these troops -- U.S. troops are going through right now in avoiding going into some of those Iranian bases and targeting where these kinds of weapons are being made. I assume the U.S. government knows pretty much what's going on. But that's -- that would escalate the situation pretty dramatically and it's clearly not going to happen, at least not now.
Barbara is over at the Pentagon working for us, as she always is.
