What's an IED ? How do you defeat IEDs?

The other day I was lunching with a bunch of girlfriends and I happened to bring up the recent deaths of our soldiers and the reporter Lang, all of whom, I told them, were killed by IEDs. Not a single girlfriend at the table knew what an IED happened to be. Worse, they are so not aware of what is happening over there on the battleground and so blind to everything around them. Either I need to get myself a new batch of lunch buddies or give up going out on these junkets altogether. If you ask these bimbos about Brad Pitt and other brainless idiots from Hollywood they will be able to give you the minutest details of the kind of equipment they have in their pants and their sexual perversions, but ask them anything else and they are all round-eyed and hopelessly unaware of how dumb they are.

Here is the information I have sent to these girls and thought it good enough to make into this blog post.

An IED or improvised explosive device .is defined as a device placed or fabricated in an improvised manner incorporating destructive, lethal, noxious, pyrotechnic, or incendiary chemicals and designed to destroy, incapacitate, harass, or distract. It may incorporate military stores, but is normally devised from non-military components