U.S. Military Short on Bomb Teams in Iraq

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
40 minutes ago


BALAD RUZ, Iraq - Fingertips fiddling with a joystick, boyish face glued to a screen, Kyle Churchill could have been a kid deep into a video game. But this was a dangerous business, in a deadly place, and the U.S. Army was depending on him.

A hundred yards away, at the end of a fiber-optic tether, Churchill's robot was examining a roadside bomb, sending video close-ups back to his armored Humvee. With the robot's "hand" poised, and Churchill at the control console's dials, he would soon begin the delicate job of disabling the device.

The 23-year-old explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) specialist had been in Iraq only a few weeks, but he was already an indispensable U.S. team member — an Air Force "blaster" on the Army front lines, a bomb-disposal expert in a country with plenty of bombs and too few experts.

Attacks by Iraqi insurgents using improvised explosive devices, IEDs, almost doubled last year, to 29 a day, leading President Bush last month to describe the remotely detonated bombs — buried on roadsides, disguised as rocks, hidden in debris — as "the principal threat to our troops."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060407/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_disarming_bombs

The DOD is pushing navy and air force personnel into bomb squads. Lots of excitement there I suppose.

There are just not near enough to go around. It takes years to train a good bomb tech, an there has not been time.