Yesterday, as I was walking to do a security detail at the house of the mayor of Mosul, I saw a blue string running down the road. We watched it as we walked, looking for anything it might be tied to. At the end, we found a brick. We continued on to the house. A short time later, we heard an explosion. Turns out that at the end of the string we first passed was an 82mm mortar round rigged to a detonating unit - won't go into details. Anyway, this IED was found by a 14 y/o kid, who while playing with it, blew himself up. The fucked up thing is that his parents watched it get emplaced the night before and didn't bother to tell anyone about it. These people were content to let terrorists rig a device in their neighborhood that was designed to kill us. At first I felt guilty for not insisting that we find out what was on both ends of the string, but after I found out about the parents, I can't say I feel the same way. The apathy of these people is disgusting.