Homemade bombs greatest threat to troops, Bush says in broadcast
Posted: 03/11/2006 14:00:32
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Saturday the greatest threat to U.S. troops -- and to the future of a peaceful Iraq -- are remote-controlled, homemade bombs that terrorists hide in cars or set along roads.
In his weekly radio address, Bush said terrorists in Iraq know they cannot defeat the U.S. military so they have resorted to using lethal improvised explosive devices, which are the leading killer of American troops in Iraq.
The president was to receive a briefing Saturday about the devices from Montgomery Meigs, a retired general who heads a Pentagon organization with a multibillion-dollar budget to find ways to counter the threat.
"We're harnessing every available resource, the ingenuity of our best scientists and engineers, and the determination of our military to defeat this threat -- and we're not going to rest until this danger to our troops has been removed," Bush said in his broadcast.
Troops are receiving more extensive training on how to spot the bombs, which sometimes are buried or hidden inside animal carcasses.
But Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who also will be at the briefing, said there are no new technological breakthroughs to report to the president at this time.http://www.abc15.com/news/morenews/index.asp?did=25358sad . . .