Austin Bay on the bombing of the Askariya Shrine

Austin Bay has a post up including some informed commentary from one of his military buddies:

"Sapper"is a long time friend. He is a Vietnam vet (combat engineers). He also served in the US Army Reserves for over thirty years. He is a civil engineer, by trade.

The following is his analysis of the terror bomb attack on the Askariya Shrine in Samarra. Understand that his analysis is informed speculation, but speculation by a man who knows how to build buildings as well as destroy them.

[. . .] My best guess from the review of the photos and with some help from an OSHA Inspector with experience in Accident investigation/reconstruction is that the explosion took place about 1/2 up the dome. The bricks in this area may have been only one or two thick. Without a view of the interior of the Shrine there is a lot left to conjecture. The amount of explosive required at any one point to do the damage would not be that great about ten pounds as an off hand guess based upon a quick glance at Junior Woodchuck Manual (FM 5-34), the demolitions section. Placed around the circumference at say twenty separate points would add up to a total of 200 pounds of TNT. Using C4 or an equivalent would decrease this by a factor 1.34. A question posed is, was this a quick in and out job or would it have taken some time to plant the charges. My guess is that it probably took some time to plant the charges. The charges would have to be taken into the building placed at a point some distance up in the structure of the dome itself. With only people power to move the stuff up there, place the charges and rig the ignition circuits I would tend to believe this was an operation covering three to five hours, not just a quick in and out raid.