According to the dispatch, these particular bombers did become their own victim.
Wretchard at Belmont Club speculates that wasn't just by chance:
Quote:
What Yon omits is as tantalizing as what he describes. A lot is happening offstage that we are not allowed to see; we are given only glimpses. There are staged IED attacks to lure out the enemy into the sights of snipers. The are constant meetings with the Iraqi police whose subject matter is never described. Inexplicable things happen, like the the IED triggerman being taken back to his neighborhood right even while fire is being exchanged at the failed ambush site by Army officers who are certainly too busy to just shoot the breeze or idly wander around town. Bombs are left on the road and just happen to blow up when the insurgents attempt to retrieve them later. Large explosive caches are discovered in ways that are never divulged. A car bomb factory is about to be raided as Yon ends the post, in the cliff-hanger manner of the Republic Serials, and we are left not only to wonder what will happen, but how the raiders came to that very door.
(Speculation alert) We are probably going to have to wait a decade to find out how the battle of Mosul was fought out. But I think it is probable that a large role will have been played by electronic warfare in particular and information warfare in general.
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