Things that go BOOM!

10:30 Baghdad time (did you ever grow up thinking, I'll become an expert at spelling Baghdad?) and Daniel just returned from patrol. He said they had another 'incident.'

Intelligence had informed them there was a house booby trapped with an IED (improvised explosive device). They arrived and cautiously cleaned the house. Nothing. Revision of intelligence - it was a different house. Daniel and two sergeants went into this one. Kicking down a bathroom door, Daniel found 30 (pounds or gallons) of a chemical explosive sitting on the commode, a detonation fuse running out of it.

Exiting, they called a bomb detonation squad who showed up and opted to blow it in place. Daniel said it was a really big explosion.

When he was in basic training he would tell me about this that or the other weapon, expecting I would know what he was talking about. I would laugh and say, "Daniel, was it a little boom, a medium boom or a big boom?" When I asked him about this one, he said, "Mom, this was not a boom I wanted to be anywhere near."