The people laying the IEDs are usually nobodies who are paid to do it, or farmers who are threatened into doing it, or Taliban nobodies at the bottom of the food chain. In any event, they are never important people. The theory is that it’s preferrable to snatch these guys up and get intel to find a way up the food chain. That’s grunt stuff for the US forces.
If these guys are observed by Marine snipers, however, they’re dead, period.
I don’t know what the Brits do, but you would think all the allied forces would be on the same page.
Thanks, LH.