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Actually, the practice of using hidden/planted IEDs has had a terrible civilian casualty ratio which is why the United States does not use this tactic. That's not to say every single instance has harmed civilians, many IEDs in Iraq only killed Americans. But as a practice it's not considered good to flood public/civilian areas with hidden explosives, that is a terrorist tactic.
That’s because many IEDs are improvised bombs in a crowded marketplace in Mogadishu or Baghdad that kill 50-300 civilians alongside a handful of security staff or military personnel. As far as I know there’s zero evidence of a casualty ratio anywhere near that in this case.
FYI these were improvised bombs detonated in crowded marketplaces. That's why I said they are terrorist tactics. This is not a tactic the US has engaged in in its war on terror.
I don’t know, is there not a difference between carpet bombing a shopping mall that a target is in and killing a thousand civilians and precision droning his car, killing the occupants of his vehicle and an unfortunate motorcyclist nearby, but otherwise nobody else? I think the CIA would probably fairly argue there is.
Has the CIA done this in the war on terror? No, it hasn't. You know who has done this? Insurgents and Mossad.
The US was apparently not even in the loop on this operation, also making this another demonstration of Israel's insolence. The CIA would not have approved of this attack and it has not done similar attacks in its own War on Terror.
I would vastly prefer that it did. I would much, much rather they attempt to eliminate a terrorist with a half-ounce of high explosive than a twenty-five-pound warhead. I would much rather they deliver that explosive by secreting it into a target's personal items, rather than aiming a hundred-pound supersonic missile at some part of a building from ten miles away through a low-resolution thermal camera.
You are consistently playing language games. These aren't "IEDs" any more than a hand grenade is an IED. This isn't "terrorism" any more than any other state-sanctioned use of force is terrorism. The CIA probably would not have approved of this attack, but that is not to the CIA's credit; they've routinely approved of far, far more objectionable attacks. This is doubtless very inconvenient for the US government, and is a great example of why we should not be involved in any of this, but that doesn't actually make the attack itself objectionable on any fundamental level.
The purpose of an IED is to deceive people into thinking a bomb is an ordinary object. A hand grenade is a weapon of conventional warfare. Why are you so loathe to admit that this is obviously an IED, and not a hand grenade? Why detach yourself so much from reality? To pretend like this is just another chapter in the military history of hand grenades is just laughable. It's unprecedented.
No, the purpose of an IED is to have an explosive device, hence the majority of the name.
Improvision is because of a limitation of parts, not a preference. Hence why IED-utilizers prefer to use military-grade explosives when they have access to them rather than make their own explosive mixtures, and why belligerants per to use non-improved EDs when they have access to those.
The purpose of boobytraps is to conceal danger in seemingly harmless things. But boobytraps and IEDs are different things, and when given an option most boobytraps will use non-improvised explosive devices to get the booby. Boobytrapping is the method of employment, not the thing being employed, just as IED refers to the thing, not the method of employment.
If you want to condemn the Israelis for boobytrapping Hezbollah gear, sure, go ahead. But they didn't use an IED to do it.
The term came into existence to describe the bombs made by the IRA, which was based on a preference of presentation. Things like suitcases boobytrapped to explode were what gave IED its name. A boobytrapped pager with hidden explosives is obviously comparable to a boobytrapped suitcase with hidden explosives, and the name "IED" was made to describe those things as opposed to conventional weapons.
This isn't just a wordplay either- the US and CIA haven't done anything like this. The IRA has. The insurgency in Iraq has. It obviously falls under that category of mode of waging warfare.
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The CIA isn’t facing an enemy which has a viable, if unlikely, path to destroying the US (it doesn’t handle nuclear policy between great powers).
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