Posted on 09/16/2007 4:13:36 AM PDT by RedRover
I’m feeling sea-sick looking at that picture. :-) Interesting way to look at the triggerer issue. Great idea. I agree the taxi would be in a more difficult position to trigger the IED. However, there’s always the possibility of “luck” and that they had four chances to hit a vehicle.
You mention the alleged “trigger house” (to the North) would be blocked by buildings on the north. What about if they were on the roof? Seems like a lot of these houses have flat roofs that are easily accessible.
Logically, the general location of house 1 makes the most sense. What can also be noticed in looking at these pictures, is house 1 would likely have known about the placement of the IED in the first place. The IED was placed in the road and paved over to match the rest of the road. I’m assuming this would have taken some time and made a bit of noiese to tear up the original pavement and redo the pavement. Even at night, it would be hard to believe it wasn’t noticed.
Remember GE ( GoogleEarth ) exaggerated the slope, it’s possible they could see, but the only real clear shot we can see is the 25m before.
Re. the taxi - true. As far as I know, nothing was found in it to indicate they had triggered anything.
“they could have found much better positions to park ( like up on that slope where they could see )” I’m not sure what you mean here. If they had anything to do with the triggering (even acting as spotters), I would agree their location would not be ideal. But setting of an IED is a crime of opportunity. Nobody knew when the Marines would be coming down this road since they tried to vary their routes. Just because someone isn’t in the prime position doesn’t mean they wouldn’t take that chance. The taxi occupants may have been insurgents readying to take part in later combat. They may have been additional spotters for the position of the convoy. They may merely have been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had nothing to do with anything.
It’s interesting that we’ve heard nothing from NCIS on their background. Where did their families live? What was their occupation? Did NCIS ever check to see if they were enrolled in the college that they were allegedly returning from that morning? Also, as far as I know, their families weren’t paid solatia payments (compensation for unintended casualties). There’s a black hole of information on the taxi occupants from both sides (at least available to the public).
From what I’ve read it looks like the Convoy passed the “Safe house” on the way to Haman’s group, spent some time there, then went back. This probably happened pretty regular, and there are only so many roads you can take.
A good bet would be someone from the safe house saw them go down, ( on a motorcycle perhaps ? ) and went up to position himself if the convoy took that route going back. Might have repeated it a dozen times waiting for the chance. They would have known exactly the best place to be. The taxi spot was just about the worst place to be.
The graphics couldn't be of worse quality, but if you enlarge them you can make out the text and possibily some of the landscape. Ultimately, I'd like to recreate what's here with images from Google Earth.
It looks as if this had been faxed, otherwise it would be of great interest - With work, I could match up a few features, but I don’t see anything that would make that worthwhile, since I can see nothing that would mark any locations.
There are a couple of interesting things in the captions, like bad guys from the Blue car heading to an island ... the only island around is right by the location I found for BlueCarMeets Taxi.jpg
I’ll send you some things, but I don’t see anything worth putting up.
Strange that the White Taxi is not mentioned at all.
The enemy Killed and wounded figures don’t seem to match at all either.
I’ll send you some things, but I don’t see anything image worth posting yet.
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