Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device

The BBQ Pit
1

This annoying phrase has reared its ugly head again after the Glasgow incident.

IT’S A FUCKING CAR BOMB!!!

Stop giving shit stupid acronyms and bullshit names as a way of exerting psychological control and denigrating the enemy.

Just like in Iraq: “roadside bomb” works fine. “Improvised Explosive Device” is just stupid, but it simultaneously fulfills the military’s compulsive needs to give shit stupid acronyms and obscure the fact that they repeatedly fall victim to shit that people build in their garages. As if the “improvised” nature makes them less deadly.

It’s a FUCKING BOMB, people! Let’s move on.

And the media: I hate their stupid fucking inane questions following incidents like this when they interview anyone who can spell “counterterrorism”.

“This was a vehicle borne improvised explosive device, which al Quaeda has used in the past. Does this mean that AQ has committed this act?”

My answer: Yes, you stupid bitch. This means that bin Laden is personally behind this attack, because god knows no one else could ever marshal the resources to construct a VEHICLE BORNE IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE DEVICE. Especially in the United Kingdom…
“How important will forensic evidence be in this investigation?”

My answer: Not at all, dipshit. The police have no interest in trying to collect physical evidence while investigating a crime. You should be slapped.

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[QUOTE=CynicalGabe]
Just like in Iraq: “roadside bomb” works fine. “Improvised Explosive Device” is just stupid, but it simultaneously fulfills the military’s compulsive needs to give shit stupid acronyms and obscure the fact that they repeatedly fall victim to shit that people build in their garages. As if the “improvised” nature makes them less deadly.
[/QUOTE]

Meh, IED vs bomb seems to me a distinction worth making, at least early in the Iraq war. The fact that it was a homemade sort of thing rather then some sort of regular army munition tells you something about where it came from and who was doing the bombing. (also, I’d imagine that IED’s are less deadly then mass produced bombs, if nothing else I’d guess they’d have a higher rate of failure to detonate).

With you on the car thing though. I think we can assume that a car bomb in London is going to be improvised to one degree or another, so calling it an vehicle borne IED doesn’t serve any purpose other then to suggest without evidence that its somehow linked to violence in Iraq.

3

Also:
Stupid media and talking heads talking about Al Quaida’s “fingerprints”

Basically the assumption that any terrorist attack involving:

  • a car bomb
  • synchronized attacks
  • anything dastardly

MUST mean that the forces of bin Laden are behind it.

God knows, no other terrorist group could possibly acquire wristwatch technology that would allow two widely separated people to carry out an act at the same fucking time.

4

[QUOTE=Malodorous]
Meh, IED vs bomb seems to me a distinction worth making, at least early in the Iraq war. The fact that it was a homemade sort of thing rather then some sort of regular army munition tells you something about where it came from and who was doing the bombing.
[/QUOTE]

  1. Many of the Iraq “IEDs” are in fact made FROM military munitions such as free-fall bombs and mines.

  2. The only thing that it tells you about who is carrying out the bombing is that American troops are not, in fact, bombing themselves. AFAIK, figuring out who is behind ANYTHING in Iraq these days is a tricky science.

5

[QUOTE=CynicalGabe]

  1. Many of the Iraq “IEDs” are in fact made FROM military munitions such as free-fall bombs and mines.
    [/QUOTE]

Made from regular munitions, but they’re being assembled and used for a purpose they weren’t originally designed for. Otherwise they wouldn’t be improvised. Granted that doesn’t tell you a lot, but it does convey some extra information about the bombs. Once could conceive, at least in the early days of the occupation, that the attacks were coming from some sort of prepared guerilla military force that Saddam had trained and equiped before the war, the fact that the explosives were built on the fly suggest (though doesn’t prove, of course) that this wasn’t the case.

And also, I’d be suprised if home-made bombs are as effective as something a military mass-produced for the purpose, so thats also a difference worth noting.

6

Not quite sure why the US military chose to rewrite a perfectly good word that’s been current for decades, but they do seem to be fulfilling a stereotype about themselves, over here at least.

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[QUOTE=Malodorous]
Meh, IED vs bomb seems to me a distinction worth making, at least early in the Iraq war. The fact that it was a homemade sort of thing rather then some sort of regular army munition tells you something about where it came from and who was doing the bombing.
[/QUOTE]

But they’re not “improvised.” That’s not synonymous with “Not industrially made.” To improvise something is to make it without prior preparation, to do something extemporaneously. Obviously, many of the bombs being set off are prepared well in advance and in a lot of cases are quite sophisticated in design.

“Improvised Explosive Device” isn’t just unnecessary, it’s almost anyway inaccurate.

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[QUOTE=RickJay]
But they’re not “improvised.” That’s not synonymous with “Not industrially made.” To improvise something is to make it without prior preparation, to do something extemporaneously. Obviously, many of the bombs being set off are prepared well in advance and in a lot of cases are quite sophisticated in design.

“Improvised Explosive Device” isn’t just unnecessary, it’s almost anyway inaccurate.
[/QUOTE]

You’re talking about this deffinition:

But I’m pretty sure whoever coined the phrase IED had in mind this definition, which is at least as much a common usage:

In anycase, when people hear “Improvised Explosive Device” I’m pretty sure that they know what the speaker means, so I wouldn’t call it misleading.

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[QUOTE=Malodorous]

In anycase, when people hear “Improvised Explosive Device” I’m pretty sure that they know what the speaker means, so I wouldn’t call it misleading.
[/QUOTE]

It’s more “obfuscating”, “stupid” and “unnecessary” than it is misleading.

10

The car in Glasgow didn’t even explode, did it? I thought the latest chuckleheads just set it on fire and hoped that gasoline and “gas canisters” would get the job done for them. By all means, let us continue to face “terrorists” as effective as these.

11

Oh. I kinda thought “improvised” meant “using gasoline as a bomb is a new idea.” That explained the news that gasoline prices went up in response to the attempted attacks; demand shifted out in response to the discovery of a new use of the product; hence, price rose.

Please don’t kill me.

12

They should try to come up with a name whose acronym will spell CAR BOMB. Like maybe “Contained Anti-Regional British Ordnance Munition Blaster.” Lame, I know, but something like that.

13

Compact
Antipersonnel
Relativistic

Breaching
Ordnance
Mobile
B
Ok, so “relativistic” might be a bit much, and I’m missing the last B, but I’m convinced I’m on to something here.

14

Buggy?

15

“Vehicle” is so prejudiced against motorcycles, bicycles, the myriad other forms of transportation. That’s just realy offensive to me.

And “improvised”. :eek: You might as well say they have no plan at all. They don’t even have the capacity for planning. Don’t even have the capacity for thought. They’re just throwing shit together. Gerry-Rigged. N-word-Rigged. Could you BE more offensive?

And the LEAST offensive part, yet offensive nonetheless, is “bourne”. Like the vehicle (YOUR term :mad: ) is some kind of slave. “Yassah massah! I’s deliverin’ the goods jus’ like you’s all says!”
It’s Transportation Mode Cradled, Extremely Fast Expanding Material, Fully Engineered Triumph. :wink:

16

[QUOTE=if6was9]
“Vehicle” is so prejudiced against motorcycles, bicycles, the myriad other forms of transportation. That’s just realy offensive to me.
[/quote]

Nah, I think it includes bicycles, horse-drawn carts etc.

[QUOTE=if6was9]
"And “improvised”. :eek: You might as well say they have no plan at all. They don’t even have the capacity for planning. Don’t even have the capacity for thought. They’re just throwing shit together. Gerry-Rigged. N-word-Rigged. Could you BE more offensive?
[/quote]

Ah, no you see, because isn’t improvised theatre often very good?

[QUOTE=if6was9]
"
And the LEAST offensive part, yet offensive nonetheless, is “bourne”. Like the vehicle (YOUR term :mad: ) is some kind of slave. “Yassah massah! I’s deliverin’ the goods jus’ like you’s all says!”
[/quote]

No, don’t worry, sufficient people will mis-hear, or mis-read, it as “burn” and think that it involves a little stream. :slight_smile:

BUT, you see, I think you may have got to the bottom of this - the "improvised " bit. That is, it will be Edinburgh Festival time soon, and these drama-type people will stop at nothing for publicity, so, then, mystery solved. :slight_smile:

(Yes, I know, that is not true, and I am not happy at these bastards at all, but sometimes laughing at them seems a good option.:smiley: )

I can’t quite decide whether I want the chap they have got in hospital being treated for burns (dear me, imagine getting burned, how could that happen?) to die off now, or to live so that the police might get some use out of him.

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[QUOTE=CynicalGabe]
Compact
Antipersonnel
Relativistic

Breaching
Ordnance
Mobile
B
Ok, so “relativistic” might be a bit much, and I’m missing the last B, but I’m convinced I’m on to something here.
[/QUOTE]

As for the missing “B”, would it be just lovely if we got terrorists dimwitted enough to make that last “B” a “Boomerang”? :smiley:

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[QUOTE=Malodorous]
… they’re being assembled and used for a purpose they weren’t originally designed for. …
[/QUOTE]

I hope that doesn’t void the warranty.

19

[QUOTE=Schuyler]
I hope that doesn’t void the warranty.
[/QUOTE]

What option is THAT on the customer support phone menu?

20

Compact
Area-Reduction
Breaching
Ordnance
Moblile
Blast