BAGHDAD, Oct. 25 -- After 31 months of fighting in Iraq, more than half of all American fatalities are now being caused by powerful roadside bombs that blast fiery, lethal shrapnel into the cabins of armored vehicles, confronting every patrol with an unseen, menacing adversary that is accelerating the U.S. death toll.
U.S. military officials, analysts and militants themselves say insurgents have learned to adapt to U.S. defensive measures by using bigger, more sophisticated and better-concealed bombs known officially as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. They are sometimes made with multiple artillery shells and Iranian TNT, sometimes disguised as bricks, boosted with rocket propellant, and detonated by a cell phone or a garage door opener.
The bombs range from massive explosives capable of destroying five-ton vehicles to precision "shaped charges" that bore softball-size holes through thick armor, the main defense of troops in the field, and they are becoming a key factor in the fast-rising U.S. death toll.
It took about 18 months from the start of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq to reach 1,000 U.S. deaths; it took less than 13 months to reach 1,000 more. A major reason for the surge, statistics show, is the insurgency's embrace of IEDs, together with the military's inability to detect them.
"It's the dreaded IED that's killing our soldiers," said Michael White, the creator of http://icasualties.org/ , a Web site that tracks U.S. military casualties. "I read in the paper that we have some new device to detect them, or we're taking extra care to make sure we don't get hit, and death after death keeps coming in, and it's IEDs."
Somehow, this doesn't surprise me. The insurgents greatest advantage is to hide in plain sight against the U.S. troops, and this is the perfect way to fight them. Saddam's old army had millions of tons of explosives sitting in barracks and ammo depots that were never secured or guarded by the U.S. forces during the waning days of the invasion--all just sitting there waiting to be picked up. Now that the insurgents have been getting plenty of help and training for experienced foreign terrorists, they've been adapting these explosives into newer and deadlier weapons to attack U.S. convoys and patrols. These insurgents are not going to step out and fight mano to mano--that plays into the U.S. advantage of bringing in overwhelming firepower. Consider this from the Post:
In the first six months of battle in Iraq, only 11 soldiers -- about 4 percent of the 289 who died -- were killed by homemade roadside bombs. In the last six months, at least 214 service members have been killed by IEDs, or 63 percent of the 339 combat-related deaths and 53 percent of the 400 U.S. fatalities, according to data complied by the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index.
"The IEDs are the biggest threat we have," said Lt. Col. John Walsh, commander of Task Force 1-163, a Montana Army National Guard battalion that is completing a year-long combat tour in Hawija, a Sunni Arab city about 30 miles southwest of Kirkuk. Walsh's soldiers have encountered more than 600 roadside bombs, 60 percent of which exploded before they were detected. The unit has lost four soldiers, two from roadside bombs, and had 68 wounded, a casualty rate of 8.5 percent.
"Right now they're probably four times more powerful than when we first got here," 1st Sgt. Stanley Clinton said, referring to the bombs. Clinton, 53, has been deployed for the past year in Kirkuk for Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion, 116th Brigade Combat Team.
Clinton said that when the 116th combat team, an Idaho Army National Guard unit, arrived last December, the insurgents employed "backwoodsy stuff" -- often tiny bombs fashioned from items as basic as Coca-Cola cans. Now, he said, they often consist of one or more 120- or 155-mm artillery rounds, 15 or 20 pounds of rocket propellant or shaped charges that concentrate the blast and punch through armor plating.
Of course, it gets better:
In some instances, insurgents have constructed IEDs powerful enough to kill soldiers inside 22-ton Bradley Fighting Vehicles, which are more heavily armored than Humvees.
And you can bet that as this war goes on, the insurgents will be getting even more powerful explosives. Consider this:
According to a former Iraqi army officer who lives in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi and is now a member of al Qaeda in Iraq, the group headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi, insurgents have advanced beyond the crude bombs they once used, such as dynamite or gunpowder mixed with nails and buried beside a road. Now, he said in an interview, militants have access to TNT from Iran that he said was about seven times stronger than the TNT available in Iraq. He said they were also using old Austrian missiles from the former Iraqi army and detonating them with electric wires, cell phones and other remote-control devices.
I can continue to go on with example after example from this Post story. Invading Iran will not stop the weapons from getting into the hands of the insurgents--it will just create another American protectorate to be occupied by more American troops--which we don't have--that will become targets for new Iranian insurgents using the same weapons and tactics as Iraq. This is a tactic of death by a thousand cuts. It is a tactic that favors the insurgents, and so far there is no way for the American military to respond in its current state.
We are losing the war in Iraq. It is time to get out--NOW!
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