Falluja secrets revealed

The Belmont Club is a must read blog. Just start at the top and scroll down.

Here is just one insight into Falluja and what really goes on in mosques in Iraq.

The New York Times' Robert Worth has a fascinating article on the battlefield archaeology of Fallujah centering on the contents of a mosque just to the north of the main east-west road through the city, Highway 10. (Hat tip: FreeRepublic) The murdered Blackwater contractors must have driven just yards from it on their way to the bridge.

The mosque, in a residential area just north of the main east-west artery known as Highway 10, included at least a dozen brick outbuildings packed with bombs, guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and ammunition. The diversity of the weapons surprised the officers here: in the street outside, a ship mine stood in a puddle. Just inside the mosque compound was an aluminum shed full of mortars and TNT. Like many weapons depots in Falluja, it had been wired to explode, and had to be carefully dismantled by an American explosives team. Inside the compound was a document explaining how to destroy tanks using rocket-propelled grenades. General Natonski picked up a white pilot's helmet among the mortars and gazed wonderingly at it. "Did you find any Darth Vader helmets?" he asked the marine captain next to him.

One of the more interesting artifacts was a very special kind of ice-cream truck, probably driven by a laughing, mustachoied gentleman of the sort one would never suspect.

In the back of the compound was an ice cream truck, its sides colorfully decorated with orange, red and blue popsicles. Inside it was packed with rocket-propelled grenades and bomb-making materials. "This was probably a traveling I.E.D. factory," General Natonski said, using the military term for improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs.

I hope the troops over there are "thinking outside the box" and are checking things like ice cream trucks, hearses and any other unlikely vehicle for explosives.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------