Agree that IEDs are not new. I lost one friend and had another severley wounded in southern Lebanon in early 1988. Car bombs, roadside bombs, remote fired RPGs etc were all in the tool kit for the factional fighting there.

What I particularly like about your comments above was the point that old TTPs remain in the tool kit. New TTPs do not mean emptying the toolkit. But that is a hard lesson that many have to learn the hard way.

Reference your screen name, a close friend of mine Dr. SJ Lewis, and I were roomies for a couple of years in the mid-80s. Sam was working on a special study on the Jedburgs and a number of them (I should say a handful given their life expectancy as Jedburgs and their ages by the mid-80s) came by for interviews and chat. Let's just say they had large cojones.

Sam's study is at http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resour...ewis/Lewis.asp if you have not seen it.

Best,
Tom