Chilling

“The Whole House Is an IED!”

Deadly new insurgent tactic in Iraq.

Harrowing report in this morning’s Wall Street Journal: In Tahwilla, one of Al Qaeda in Iraq’s last major strongholds, insurgents have a fiendish tactic—rigging abandoned houses with explosives and trying to draw troops inside. In this piece, reporting an incident from the summer, soldiers from the 1st Armored Division's 1-6 Infantry Battalion find an empty home that seems too perfect—large and cool, with a walled backyard. Soon they discover copper wires running into the property. Turns out the mousetrap is filled with artillery shells, bombs, and barrels of explosives. The soldiers escape, narrowly averting what a colonel calls “an al-Qaeda grand slam."