What were they thinking?

Via Captain Ed comes this amazing story of some very foolish terrorists who thought they could take on the US military head-on. The results were predictable.

The attack began about 3:45 p.m., when insurgents armed with a car bomb tried to blow down the concrete barriers of the combat outpost, which is manned by a small force of soldiers. An armored military vehicle then sped to the outpost.

The armored vehicle "found itself pretty much in the middle" of a improvised car and roadside bombs that had been set up to attack any American vehicles coming to the aid of the outpost, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a military spokesman in Mosul, using military acronyms for improvised roadside bombs and car bombs. The armored vehicle, he said, fired its .50-caliber machine gun to explode or disable the bombs, and proceeded to the outpost.

There, the American troops were attacked by a coordinated force of about 50 insurgents who fired rocket-propelled grenades and semiautomatic weapons. At that point, two F-18 and two F-14 military jets swooped down on strafing runs and also fired Maverick missiles, wiping out much of the insurgent force. "That's when the close-air support came in and did a job on them," Colonel Hastings said.

One can only hope they try this new tactic repeatedly.