Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
ArmyTimes.com
September 17, 2008
By William H. McMichael, Staff writer
The number of roadside bombs in Iraq that exploded or were discovered and neutralized tumbled from a high of roughly 2,600 per month in March and June of 2007 to 555 this past August — a decrease of 79 percent.
Coalition casualties fell at a similar rate over the 2-year period from August 2006 to August 2008, according to U.S. Central Command. The command says 47 troops were killed by roadside bombs in August 2006, a total that fell to seven this past August — an 85 percent drop. And while 384 troops were wounded by roadside bomb explosions two years ago, that figure fell to 52 this past August — an 86 percent reduction.
Roadside bombs remain the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq. The military does not provide specific figures, but Pentagon data indicates that more than 70 percent of combat deaths have been caused by roadside bombs. The Pentagon says a total of 4,151 troops have died in Iraq since the start of the war.
The roadside bomb casualty figures, declassified for the first time by CentCom and provided to Military Times on Wednesday by the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, mirror a substantial reduction in violence in Iraq; Defense Secretary Robert Gates, while cautioning that the situation in Iraq remains fragile, told the House last week that overall violence in Iraq has fallen 80 percent over the past year.
The improvements have prompted the Bush administration to bring another 8,000 troops home by early February and to bump up overall U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan, where coalition forces are battling a revitalized insurgency.
CentCom began tracking roadside bomb attacks in June 2003. Incidents first peaked in November of that year, when 500 such bombs were found and cleared; roughly 275 detonated but were rated as ineffective; and about 125 caused coalition casualties. Some figures are approximations from a graph provided by the command; other figures are precise.
The numbers continued to climb over the next 36 months with only five short-lived declines. By August 2006, CentCom recorded 2,273 roadside bomb attacks in Iraq — 1,051 found and cleared; 638 ineffective attacks; and 190 attacks that produced the 47 deaths and 384 woundings that month.
The figures remained generally as high or higher over the following 12 months, roughly paralleling the intense insurgent-driven violence that prompted the Bush administration’s 2007 “surge” of roughly 30,000 troops and the first months of that surge, when troops coming into greater contact with the enemy resulted in some of the war’s highest casualties.
Officials and analysts attribute the drop in violence to several factors: the troop surge, and the dispersal of those troops from large bases to smaller combat outposts; improved special operations targeting of insurgents; the unexpected cooperation of Sunni tribes — the “Sons of Iraq” — in fighting against al-Qaida terrorists; and much-improved political cooperation within Iraq’s national government and provinces.
September 17, 2008
By William H. McMichael, Staff writer
The number of roadside bombs in Iraq that exploded or were discovered and neutralized tumbled from a high of roughly 2,600 per month in March and June of 2007 to 555 this past August — a decrease of 79 percent.
Coalition casualties fell at a similar rate over the 2-year period from August 2006 to August 2008, according to U.S. Central Command. The command says 47 troops were killed by roadside bombs in August 2006, a total that fell to seven this past August — an 85 percent drop. And while 384 troops were wounded by roadside bomb explosions two years ago, that figure fell to 52 this past August — an 86 percent reduction.
Roadside bombs remain the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq. The military does not provide specific figures, but Pentagon data indicates that more than 70 percent of combat deaths have been caused by roadside bombs. The Pentagon says a total of 4,151 troops have died in Iraq since the start of the war.
The roadside bomb casualty figures, declassified for the first time by CentCom and provided to Military Times on Wednesday by the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, mirror a substantial reduction in violence in Iraq; Defense Secretary Robert Gates, while cautioning that the situation in Iraq remains fragile, told the House last week that overall violence in Iraq has fallen 80 percent over the past year.
The improvements have prompted the Bush administration to bring another 8,000 troops home by early February and to bump up overall U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan, where coalition forces are battling a revitalized insurgency.
CentCom began tracking roadside bomb attacks in June 2003. Incidents first peaked in November of that year, when 500 such bombs were found and cleared; roughly 275 detonated but were rated as ineffective; and about 125 caused coalition casualties. Some figures are approximations from a graph provided by the command; other figures are precise.
The numbers continued to climb over the next 36 months with only five short-lived declines. By August 2006, CentCom recorded 2,273 roadside bomb attacks in Iraq — 1,051 found and cleared; 638 ineffective attacks; and 190 attacks that produced the 47 deaths and 384 woundings that month.
The figures remained generally as high or higher over the following 12 months, roughly paralleling the intense insurgent-driven violence that prompted the Bush administration’s 2007 “surge” of roughly 30,000 troops and the first months of that surge, when troops coming into greater contact with the enemy resulted in some of the war’s highest casualties.
Officials and analysts attribute the drop in violence to several factors: the troop surge, and the dispersal of those troops from large bases to smaller combat outposts; improved special operations targeting of insurgents; the unexpected cooperation of Sunni tribes — the “Sons of Iraq” — in fighting against al-Qaida terrorists; and much-improved political cooperation within Iraq’s national government and provinces.