![]() ![]() It’s Rawlings’ job to make sure they don’t get blown up trying. It’s their job to find the bombs that the insurgents plant. It doesn’t help that Rawlings’ soldiers - with whom I am embedded - are the leading edge of a $6.1 billion Pentagon effort to win the war against roadside bombings in Iraq. ![]() In fact, once we leave the base, the shrapnel he mentions will become an all-too-likely possibility, considering the 25,000 improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that have been aimed at American troops since the war in Iraq began, severing limbs and crushing the skulls of U.S. Neither do I, given that I’m going to be riding in one of these minesweeping trucks tomorrow. Maybe if Rawlings mounted some fire retardant next to the gas can, it would powder in a blast? Render the fuel inert? And then act as a fire retardant for the whole thing? “That’s not too bad,” Asymmetric Warfare Man declares, gaining momentum. He taps its exposed gas can, and continues. “This gas can, OK, it sits right here?” The Asymmetric Warfare Man squats beside the dryer, which resembles a lawn mower engine bolted to a jet turbine bolted to an elbow of air-conditioning duct. He’s here to help the Army combat unconventional weapons by inventing contraptions such as the dryer, which is supposed to blow dirt off of buried bombs. A retired officer, he has his web belt cinched so tight that it acts as a corset, flaring out his rib cage. ![]() The Asymmetric Warfare Man - who has what I can only hope is an irrational fear that if I use his name, insurgents will go to America and hunt down his family - bites his lip. “What happens if hit with shrapnel?” he asks the Asymmetric Warfare Group man. But he’d like to make sure that this step is really necessary. His brow furrows, his comic-book square chin dips with respectful curiosity. In such situations, Rawlings - who is 6-foot-2, 230 pounds - resembles an offensive lineman who has been asked to dance ballet. Nate Rawlings ’04 is standing in the Camp Liberty motor pool, just west of Baghdad, trying to figure out why a NASCAR track dryer should be welded to one of his minesweeping trucks. 29, 2006, issue of The Washington Post Magazine.ġst Lt. Editor’s note: A longer version of this article appeared in the Oct. ![]()
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